Devices not updating after "show screen on top"

[skarragallagher]

I have the latest Android client. I use HSTouch actions in events to show a screen on top on my Android clients when there is audio or motion in the babys room.

Currently the event loads the screen, waits 30 seconds and then simulates a button press that closes that screen. This all works fine.

What I am left with is what I believe is a bug. The previously loaded screen that was active before my popup window showed up no longer updates device status from status tracking. Changing pages and then switching back causes devices to start updating again.

A work around (haven't tested yet) would be to add an additional hstouch action that loads a screen by itself however it's not ideal. Ultimately there should be some logic that "activated the screen" that was under once the popup screen closes.

Any one else see this behavior, if so I will log a bug

[skarragallagher]

The workaround does work BTW

[skarragallagher]

So I logged a bug, Feel free to add your name to it

http://bugzilla.homeseer.com/bugzill...ug.cgi?id=3206

[skarragallagher]

Would really appreciate this bug looked at

[skarragallagher]

Hey Rich,

Any chance you have been able to reproduce this bug?

Anything I can do to help narrow things down for you?

[sdesbles]

Same problem

I can confirm the same issue.

[skarragallagher]

Thanks for confirming this. Have you tried opening a screen on top locked?

[skarragallagher]

So to work around this issue, I created an event and used an HStouch Action to simulate a button press instead of "show screen on top"

Then I created a hidden button in HStouch Designer and used the action to show screen on top locked.

This method seems to not have any issues with status tracking however every now and again I get a blank White screen when closing the screen (by event)

[skarragallagher]

So there are issues with loading a screen on top locked, but I may have another workaround.

Configure your event, script or button to issue the close screen twice. This seems too solve the issue for me and status tracking resumes on the page underneath.

[skarragallagher]

So what I have found is that although closing the screen twice command does work for status tracking, you can not layer multiple screens on top.

To resolve this i mainly use show screen by itself in combination with statically setting the back button to go the previous screen.

What would solve all of this nonsense if there was an option that used a variable to go to the previous screen(hstouch would need to track the screen your on) within the designer and project. Then we can set all back buttons to go to the previous screen "by itself" instead of using on top.

[gregoryx]

I've reported this a couple times - including filing a bugzilla.

It doesn't have this issue with Windows, which might be why not many people are noticing it. Not sure about iDevices. But in Windows, each behaves very differently.

In Android, only one "window" updates anything - variables, clock, states... all do not change except in the "active" window. As if that isn't bad enough, close the top window and they still don't update. Best solution is to re-load the back / base screen and all works again.

I'd REALLY like to use windows in multiple layers on top of a variable background (a menu window sitting permanently on top of a content window - and sub-content inside the content window).

But... as has been commented so many times in this area of the HS world... not much love in the HST space. We got a burst for a few months that addressed a bunch of bugs and performance issues - for which, I'm quite grateful and things have been VERY stable since. Still, not much on the Bugzilla front or any indication that this is even known as a "bug" or is un-fixable from those who might be able to say.

[skarragallagher]

So issuing the command to close the screen (that you loaded on top) twice seems to solve the issue with the back screen (loaded by itself) not updating status tracking.

However you can't load multiple screens on top and close them in this fashion. It will cause an hstouch crash.

[gregoryx]

Huh. Hadn't tried the "close twice" thing. Interesting. Seems like that would be fixable.

I didn't have success with early attempts to open multiple windows. At the time, there seemed to be many other issues so I didn't explore deeper.

Okay... just tried that. Three windows open: back / main, medium sized one, smaller one. All functional. Of course, only the front one updates.

That's on the latest Android client from the Play store.


One little thing that's been in my "maybe that'd work" mind: a web-site in a background window updates. I haven't figured out how I might take advantage of that if the HS guys don't/can't fix this, but... my one hope.

Alternative: since my first preferred use for this is to overlay a menu, maybe able to have the menu on top but be the one that /isn't/ updating? Maybe a way to flip focus from HS to cause updates? Dunno.

[skarragallagher]

Hstouch isn't designed the way you are trying to use it as you have experienced.

I use the show screen but itself purely for navigation between screens however I have several screens that pop up for various different triggers, like motion in my driveway shows a screen with the camera feed.

The problem that closing the screen twice fixes is the screen loaded underneath wouldn't resume status tracking after the screen loaded on top closed.

I was issuing a show home screen command instead which either but it caused some usability issues. Closing the screen twice fixes the status updates and leaves you on the screen that was underneath. Seems to work okay.

Only issue that I have is occasionally I get a blank white screen on ask of my clients. Not sure what causes this.

[gregoryx]

Tough way to describe it there! "Hstouch isn't designed the way you are trying to use it"? Geez. My bad. LOL.

I'm with you, @skarragallagher, on the "message box" sort of premise. The local message thing is quick and easy, but a nice on-top screen with a variable or a temporary overlay of a camera are nice. But it /should/ be capable of having a screen covering another screen and both of them actively update variables/timers/status.

Seriously... @HS guys... I get updates on background stuff in Windows HST - though it's just used for testing. Is this fixable in the Android client?

I think it'd be great if HST populated variables in HS for clients: state (connected / dis); active screen(s) and their state (top / back / whatever). And also had unique variables at the client level (clientname, mostly).

But I could create all that if I want to. Not too hard... just a bunch of time. I had to build all that for ML and it was... just a pain.

But this lack of update? I can't work around that. I just have to build a unique screen for everything. Not cool.