HS4 features

[pete@malibubeach.com]

Am I missing something---I have finally installed HS4 and I don't see anything at all functionally different from HS3. The UI has changed (not for the better in my opinion but maybe I'll grow into it). The plug-in installation process seems to be significantly more streamlined (though the previous grouping of plug-ins was nice and unless it is hidden somewhere I haven't found, I am sorry to see that go). I don't see that the custom page feature still exists (at least I cannot find the custom pages I had on HS3. I had problems installing plug-ins -- a couple worked but at least two failed to install. Rebooting the machine resolved it (restarting HS4 did not resolve it---I had to reboot the machine). I am assuming the new UI is mobile friendly (which I guess is a good thing), but I cannot tell because for some reason I cannot access HS4 from any computer (or device) except the local Hometroller machine. If I stop HS4 and restart HS3 (fortunately, I followed the instructions to have them both installed in parallel), everything works from any computer or device; but with HS4 running (same computer; same port; same everything), it is not accessible from any other computer. And finally it is not accessible from myhs.homeseer.com (which is trying to access it at http:0.0.0.0 which may be a hint to my other access problem, but I cannot find anywhere to set the bind to IP address except for the SSL setup (which I have not done).

So after an evening spent trying to upgrade, I have something that appears to be functionally equivalent (except I cannot access it from another computer and some custom pages are gone) with a different (I won't say better or worse: just different) UI. Right now I'm kind of sorry I spent the money for the upgrade and I doubt I'll be upgrading my other installation any time soon. Unless I am missing something (which is entirely possible), it isn't worth the effort (and I still have to figure out why the system is inaccessible which may take a call to Homeseer in the morning).

[Guest]

In general, the new ui is faster to load pages, but at the cost of more click to do everything (I hope that will change one day), and also more devices because of the new feature paradigm (I find this limiting for developers)

After almost 1 year on hs4 I am now used to it...but I also use the older hs3 pages when I need to edit multiples events or need to see the global variables page.

[drhtmal]

It would be useful to have a lot more info to help troubleshoot your connectivity problem.

[pete@malibubeach.com]

It would be useful to have a lot more info to help troubleshoot your connectivity problem.

Not sure what more information there is.
I start HS4 and click the "Web Interface" button (or start a chrome browser on HomeTroller and enter http://192.168.16.194) and the UI comes up on the local Hometroller machine. Enter exactly the same URL on a different machine on the same local network and the request times out.

The I terminate HS4 and start HS3 on the Hometroller machine and enter http://192.168.16.194 on the other local machine and it works. I am not terribly conversant in the low level TCP protocol (once it gets to the HTTP level, I am quite knowledgeable, but I've never had a problem like this): it appears that it sends a SYN to port 80 and expects an ACK. With HS3 running, the ACK comes back and the HTTP GET request follows. With HS4 the ACK does not come back, the client sends a few retries and then gives up. Unless I get a quick answer (going to file a case with Homeseer shortly), I may install Wireshark on the Hometroller and see what it is seeing.

If someone more knowledgeable than me has any suggestions, the two Wireshark files are in the attached zip file.

By the way, I normally use Microsoft Edge, but just to make sure that was not the cause of the issue, I confirmed the same results on Chrom and Firefox.

Thanks,
Pete

[pete@malibubeach.com]

For reasons that I do not understand, my connectivity was a firewall issue. For some reason, I can access HS3 with the firewall fully enabled, but I can only access HS4 if I disable the private network firewall in Windows Defender, But I still cannot access from myhs even with all firewall options turned off.

[mterry63]

Windows firewall has a lot of options to create rules. If you chose the method of allowing the executable and pointed it to the hs3 exe, that rule would not allow HS4 even if it's using the same port.

Personally I believe it's a failure on HST's part to not create these firewall rules automatically. It can easily be integrated in the installer and that is frequently done by other software vendors. Since HSx requires at least 4-5 firewall rules for full functionality, it would make sense to simply give an option to create these by default.

Same applies to the "automatic startup by task" conversation that gets beat to death on this board. It should be done by the installer as an option. We wouldn't see as many "my HSx software stops working after 3 days" messages if they simply did that.

[Bruce26]

I just upgraded to HS4 also - been putting it off for a long time. The FireWall rule they created pointed to port 80 for the web interface. I do not use port 80. Modifying the rule to my HTTP port fixed the issue so I can get to it from outside the PC it runs on. But yes, you could modify all the HS3 rules to work w/ HS4.EXE instead and it should work.

FYI: I found some things missing in the HS4 GUI: Where are the "global variables"? Used to be with timers/counters. Found a back-door to see them, but how long before they close that?

Also the change from all "devices" to "features" is causing some scripting issues, and I'm having trouble searching the forum or help files to find out what to use to get the "feature" name (instead of hs.devicename in scripts, or perhaps it's a parameter for hs.devicename) .