Simple fix for long standing bug

[paul]

Hey rjh, I know you're all busy with HS4 and mobile and such, but there is one, single, small but really annoying thing with HS3Touch on iOS that would be really really awesome if you could address at some point.

There's been a lot of activity in the past around how HS3Touch client responds when you leave the app and come back to it, and I know you went through a few iterations of troubleshooting and trying to speed up the process. For me, certainly, it's never really been solved. At the moment, if I open HS3Touch on any of my iOS devices, then leave, and then go back into it, it spends an extraordinarily long time saying "Connecting to server" before finally connecting.

Rather than spin a broken wheel and try to troubleshoot that process all over again, I think a really simple fix would be to simply change whatever routine it is that deals with 'reconnecting' upon returning to the app, to simply go to the beginning and start the app from scratch. If I kill HS3Touch and let it open fresh, it starts up super fast, way way faster than if I exit and come back to it and let it figure out where it was.

Now, I also know that not everyone had this issue, so it may be a question of not everyone wanting this. How about simply adding a configuration option to say "start from scratch when returning to app". Check that box, and boom, when you leave and come back, it just restarts.

I figure that would be the simplest solution to fix the problem for those of us who still encounter it, without killing a bunch of unavailable time doing more troubleshooting.

Please? Pretty Please????

regards,

Paul

[Guest]

There's been a lot of activity in the past around how HS3Touch client responds when you leave the app and come back to it, and I know you went through a few iterations of troubleshooting and trying to speed up the process. For me, certainly, it's never really been solved. At the moment, if I open HS3Touch on any of my iOS devices, then leave, and then go back into it, it spends an extraordinarily long time saying "Connecting to server" before finally connecting.

Paul,

As I just mentioned on another thread, Touch clients seem to have problems when the IP (LAN) address of the client is dynamic. This is especially true for Android tablets, but may be true for iOS.

If you are using dynamic IP addresses on your clients, suggest switching to use a fixed IP address instead (I use "IP Reservation" on the router to accomplish this). Yes, it should be fixed, but in the meantime....

[teladog01]

If you are using dynamic IP addresses on your clients, suggest switching to use a fixed IP address instead (I use "IP Reservation" on the router to accomplish this).

This isn't possible when on any other network other than at home, especially so for LTE data connections.

paul is spot on with his description of the issue. One thing I will add is that when the app is stuck "Connecting..." often times for me it just simply crashes, no error, just disappears. Then I relaunch it and it connects right away. This is a looooooong standing bug in the iOS client that must be fixed.

[paul]

Paul,

As I just mentioned on another thread, Touch clients seem to have problems when the IP (LAN) address of the client is dynamic. This is especially true for Android tablets, but may be true for iOS.

If you are using dynamic IP addresses on your clients, suggest switching to use a fixed IP address instead (I use "IP Reservation" on the router to accomplish this). Yes, it should be fixed, but in the meantime....

Yeah, i'm using a fixed IP in my house, but as mentioned above - we've done hours and hours and hours of troubleshooting this in the past, some of it directly with rjh, including making code changes to try to solve it, and we've never solved it. Then people got busy with other things, and I've just sorta lived with it ever since. And I know there are a lot of people that experience this and just live with it.

That's ok, though - At this point in the game I'm not really interested in taking up people's time to troubleshoot it further - I know there are bigger fish to fry. but I do think that my suggestion would at least band-aid it for a lot of people who experience this issue, without taking up a lot of overhead from Homeseer to do it....

regards,

Paul

[Guest]

+1; same goes for Android tablets, I have 7 Android tablets; all have fixed IP addresses;
same issue as decscribed above. couldn't say it better, but I'll copy/paste it just in case:

"At the moment, if I open HS3Touch on any of my *Android* devices, then leave, and then go back into it, it spends an extraordinarily long time saying "Connecting to server" before finally connecting.

Rather than spin a broken wheel and try to troubleshoot that process all over again, I think a really simple fix would be to simply change whatever routine it is that deals with 'reconnecting' upon returning to the app, to simply go to the beginning and start the app from scratch. If I kill HS3Touch and let it open fresh, it starts up super fast, way way faster than if I exit and come back to it and let it figure out where it was.

Now, I also know that not everyone had this issue, so it may be a question of not everyone wanting this. How about simply adding a configuration option to say "start from scratch when returning to app". Check that box, and boom, when you leave and come back, it just restarts.

Thanks Paul.

[Mark S.]

I'll confirm that fixed IP addresses do not make it any better. And I also see the crashes that teladog01 references. It just means that I try not to use my iPads for anything but HS, but a fix sure would be nice.

[rjh]

On IOS, in the IOS settings, there is a setting to allow background processes. I forget if its per app or global, but can you mess with that setting and see if it makes a difference? I think we are looking at that. The code it totally differently between IOS and Android so if the issue happens on both, it's most likely not the same code. I do have 7 HSTouch clients running in my home and I don't see this. But the clients are all dedicated to HSTouch, the app is never closed, so I don't have get into a situation where I need to reconnect.

Just so I understand, you have the app running, you simply switch to another app, then when you switch back the app displays but does not update? Does that happen on both a phone and an ipad? Does the app have to be in the background for a long time? Or does if fail instantly?

[Guest]

I don't know guys, but the problem with Android tablets is quite reproducible, and not just by me. However, the fix only works if you are connecting on your LAN directly to Homeseer (not going through MyHs).

Since rjh says that the code is different, then that probably means that the problem on Android is a different one. However, since the symptoms are the same, it was worth mentioning.

Tablets can have connectivity problems for more than one reason.

[Mark S.]

On IOS, in the IOS settings, there is a setting to allow background processes. I forget if its per app or global, but can you mess with that setting and see if it makes a difference? I think we are looking at that. The code it totally differently between IOS and Android so if the issue happens on both, it's most likely not the same code. I do have 7 HSTouch clients running in my home and I don't see this. But the clients are all dedicated to HSTouch, the app is never closed, so I don't have get into a situation where I need to reconnect.

Just so I understand, you have the app running, you simply switch to another app, then when you switch back the app displays but does not update? Does that happen on both a phone and an ipad? Does the app have to be in the background for a long time? Or does if fail instantly?

Under Settings for the HS3Touch app, there is a setting for Background App Refresh. It doesn't seem to matter whether that is on or off, the delay is the same.

The issue happens just hitting the iPad Home button - you don't even need to open another app. But just going back to HSTouch causes the Connecting.... delay. It happens on iPad and iPhone. It doesn't seem to matter how long the app has been in background, it fails instantly, but might be a little shorter with a fresh opening.

[paul]

On IOS, in the IOS settings, there is a setting to allow background processes. I forget if its per app or global, but can you mess with that setting and see if it makes a difference? I think we are looking at that. The code it totally differently between IOS and Android so if the issue happens on both, it's most likely not the same code. I do have 7 HSTouch clients running in my home and I don't see this. But the clients are all dedicated to HSTouch, the app is never closed, so I don't have get into a situation where I need to reconnect.

Just so I understand, you have the app running, you simply switch to another app, then when you switch back the app displays but does not update? Does that happen on both a phone and an ipad? Does the app have to be in the background for a long time? Or does if fail instantly?

Hi Rich, Not quite - here's a step by step of what I see:

- Start up iOS app. Things connect very fast and work well
- Switch to another app, then switch back.
- When it switches back, I get "Connecting" at the bottom of the screen, generally for about 12-15 seconds. Occasionally faster (5 seconds), but usually 12-15 at least.

If, however, I kill the app and restart it, I'm usually at the main screen within 2-3 seconds. So my usual habit this days is when I go into HSTouch on my phone, when finished, I try to remember to make a point of killing it rather than just switching away. But that's of course annoying to have to do, in addition to the fact that if I forget, then I'm waiting that long time again.

I also have several full-time connected screens, but as those are connected full time, I don't notice any issue there.

I'll give the background task switch a try and let you know how that goes.

Any questions please don't hesitate to let me know.

regards,

Paul

[paul]

A quick update to my last post - I just tried turning off the Background Refresh, that didn't alter the behaviour.

regards,

Paul

[Guest]

Any progress on this issue?
I did further research on the forums and more testing just in case I forgot something; Already done/tested:

- Fixed IP addresses
- Disabled energy management
- checked background data enabled (this seems to only apply to Mobile data on my S8 - couldn't find an option to enable/disable background wifi data)
- tested both via MyHS and local LAN/IP

Still same behavior:

If I :

• switch applications,
• if the phone goes to lock screen/sleep mode
• the AP/SSID changes
• or any scenario other than keeping a tablet on the wall full time on HStouch with constant connection to the same AP,

when I try to return to HStouch either via the app button or by switching apps, it always ends up freezing and/or not connecting.

On the other hand, 100% of the time, if I kill the app and start fresh, everything runs fine in a matter of 1 or 2 seconds.

rjh, I'm pretty sure there is some root cause to this related to the device or something else, but I spent hours testing and troubleshooting with no result in sight;
since a certain number of people are experiencing the same issues, would you consider adding a simple "automatically start new session" checkbox to the HStouch client?
Until we find a better solution, this would resolve the issue with minimum effort. What do you think and/or anything else I could test?

Thanks for you support,


As a last resort, I'll check if I can set up a tasker macro to automatically kill the active session and open a new one via some shortcut.

[rjh]

It's slated to be looked at and we will work on it when we get some time, a bit overloaded with HS4 at the moment. I will update when we make some changes.

Any progress on this issue?
I did further research on the forums and more testing just in case I forgot something; Already done/tested:

- Fixed IP addresses
- Disabled energy management
- checked background data enabled (this seems to only apply to Mobile data on my S8 - couldn't find an option to enable/disable background wifi data)
- tested both via MyHS and local LAN/IP

Still same behavior:

If I :

• switch applications,
• if the phone goes to lock screen/sleep mode
• the AP/SSID changes
• or any scenario other than keeping a tablet on the wall full time on HStouch with constant connection to the same AP,

when I try to return to HStouch either via the app button or by switching apps, it always ends up freezing and/or not connecting.

On the other hand, 100% of the time, if I kill the app and start fresh, everything runs fine in a matter of 1 or 2 seconds.

rjh, I'm pretty sure there is some root cause to this related to the device or something else, but I spent hours testing and troubleshooting with no result in sight;
since a certain number of people are experiencing the same issues, would you consider adding a simple "automatically start new session" checkbox to the HStouch client?
Until we find a better solution, this would resolve the issue with minimum effort. What do you think and/or anything else I could test?

Thanks for you support,


As a last resort, I'll check if I can set up a tasker macro to automatically kill the active session and open a new one via some shortcut.

[Guest]

Hi and others following this thread,
Until HS finally launches HS4 and gets back to fixing HStouch/HS3 bugs , here's a great workaround to the HStouch connection issues:

This is for Android, not sure if there is an IOS equivalent

Install Tasker
Create new task

1. Kill HStouch
2. Launch HStouch

click bottom dotted square
choose icon
back to tasks
click and hold newly created task
options
export
As app (you will need to install a Tasker plug-in)

It will create a new application with your chosen icon which essentially kills any active Hstouch session and starts a fresh new one.
As expected, works all the time.

Now to avoid using workarounds,
all that would be needed is either a better way for hstouch to manage connectivity within the app itself or to add a "start new session" option.

BTW, the HStouch app launcher found in the designer/client has the exact opposite issue where you can't choose to "switch" to an active app;
It restarts the application you want to launch by default, which is quite longer than just "switching" to an active app. You also lose any active data/page.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,

[Guest]

Hi and others following this thread,
Until HS finally launches HS4 and gets back to fixing HStouch/HS3 bugs , here's a great workaround to the HStouch connection issues:

This is for Android, not sure if there is an IOS equivalent

Install Tasker
Create new task

1. Kill HStouch
2. Launch HStouch

click bottom dotted square
choose icon
back to tasks
click and hold newly created task
options
export
As app (you will need to install a Tasker plug-in)

It will create a new application with your chosen icon which essentially kills any active Hstouch session and starts a fresh new one.
As expected, works all the time.

Now to avoid using workarounds,
all that would be needed is either a better way for hstouch to manage connectivity within the app itself or to add a "start new session" option.

BTW, the HStouch app launcher found in the designer/client has the exact opposite issue where you can't choose to "switch" to an active app;
It restarts the application you want to launch by default, which is quite longer than just "switching" to an active app. You also lose any active data/page.

Hope this helps,
Cheers,

Thanks for the suggestion. However, my tablets are very stable ever since I assigned fixed IP addresses to them. Its very rare when they hang up, and I can usually point to something abnormal that occurred when one does hang up.

I will admit that I do bring down Touch at night (except for a couple), and bring down them all when the house is empty. May have something to do as to why mine are stable, I suppose. Stopping and running Touch is done automatically via an Homeseer event working with Tasker and Autoremote.

I do not see the same effect with launching android apps from Touch. When the launched app is restarted, it is happily where it left off. So I would be interested in exactly how you are launching the app, and also how you exit the app to return to Touch. I suppose it could also depend on the app we are considering.