Advice for Harmony Hub connection issues

cw-kid · November 14, 2020, 3:34pm

Hi

Quite often in Home Remote it is unable to connect to my 3x Harmony hubs and the tiles say “Unknown”.

I never had this issue in Imperihome, however Imperihome connects to the Logitech Harmony cloud for its integration, as you have to sign in with your Harmony login details.

I assume Home Remote is using the local websocket API as I don’t think I have XMPP enabled on the hubs.

Also I believe this is not just a Home Remote issue, as when this happens and Home Remote cannot connect to the Harmony hubs, if I try to ping the Harmony hubs (static LAN IPs) from the Android device it cannot ping them.

If I SSH on to any of my Linux boxes however, the router itself an Asus RT-AC86U running Merlin firmware or my Raspberry Pi or one of my Vera hubs, all these Linux boxes can ping the Harmony hubs IP’s just fine.

After I have pinged the Harmony hubs from one of these Linux boxes, this seems to then get ping working again on the Android device running HR and it can then ping the hubs OK and in turn HR then connects to the Harmony hubs OK.

Its weird I cannot figure it out.

The Harmony hubs are connected on the 2.4GHZ WIFI as is the Android device running HR. The Wifi channel is 7 and I’ve check that no nighbours are using the same Wifi channel.

The Harmony app on my phone that also connects to the hubs via the Harmony cloud.

When the Android device / Home Remote cannot connect to the Harmony hubs, everything else still works, the Harmony remote control handsets still work, the Harmony app on the same Android device still works as does Imperihome.

Do the Harmony hubs go to sleep for pings and access to the websocket API ?

As I said it seems sometimes I have to ping the Harmony hubs from another Linux box to get things connected again with Home Remote on the Android device.

Any tips ?

Thanks.

bill · November 14, 2020, 5:13pm

The Home Remote is using the local WebSocket API so it will only be able to connect when you are on your local network. It’s not using XMPP so you should leave that disabled. I’m not aware of any issue like this that require a ping. I’ve got 1 Harmony Hub in my house & I’m not noticing this problem. Does clicking the refresh button in the app help?

cw-kid · November 14, 2020, 5:32pm

Hi Bill

I’ve tried clicking the Refresh button in the HR app but it doesn’t help.

I have a good WIFI signal through out the house, I am not using any additional Access Points or Range extender type devices, its just the one Asus router that everything connects to.

I have just changed the 2.4GHZ Wifi channel on the router from 7 to 5, after reading a Reddit post about Harmony hub connection issues. I have also set the Channel bandwidth on the router to be 20Mhz rather than 20/40Mhz that was another suggestion.

The router can ping the Harmony hubs all the time when I do it with no issues, as can my other Linux boxes they can all ping the Harmony hubs OK.

Its my Android phone that cannot ping the Harmony hubs all the time for some reason and when its like that then Home Remote doesn’t connect to the Harmony hubs and their tiles say Unknown.

My phone is also on 2.4Ghz same as the Harmony hubs. Logitech don’t support 5Ghz anyway so the hubs have to be on 2.4Ghz.

So presumably the web socket API it needs to be able to have ping communication to the Harmony hub to be able to connect to it.

Everything else works, Vera plugin for Harmony that also connects via the Web socket API and that never has connection issues to the hubs. The Harmony mobile app itself always connects OK but that seems to do it via cloud connection as does Imperihome app.

And my remote controls always work but they connect to the Harmony hubs via RF.

The only issue is sometimes the Home Remote app on my phone and tablet doesn’t seem to connect to the Harmony hubs.

I either have to start pinging the Harmony hubs from another Linux box or I have to reboot my Android device and sometimes that works and gets it connecting again.

It doesn’t make much sense to me, that a Linux box can ping a Harmony hub 100% of the time with no issues, but the Android devices sometimes cannot.

I have no overlapping or conflicting routers nearby using the same channel 5 as me.

The only dubious thing I am not sure about, is my FireTV stick 4K is broadcasting its own Wifi Direct SSID on the same channel as my router, this is for the FireTV remote control to connect to the FireTV stick etc.

This on the Wifi analyser apps shows as a “hidden” SSID overlapping with my router on channel 5.

If I change the routers channel number, the FireTV’s WIFI Direct SSID follows suit and changes itself to whatever the new channel of the router then is. This may well be a red herring and I don’t think you can disable or stop the FireTV broadcasting this WIFI Direct SSID.

It annoying when it happens as I then cannot use Home Remote to control my Harmony hub activities or devices, I have been switching back to the Imperihome app and using that instead as that still works, must be due to it not using a local web socket API connection but via a cloud connection to the Logitech Harmony servers.

cw-kid · November 14, 2020, 8:06pm

After reading this thread, I’ve turned off a setting on my Asus Merlin router and it seems to have improved the ping issue all round.

The setting is called “Airtime Fairness” and is in Wireless - Professional tab.

In the past I had issues not always being able to ping my wireless Canon printer and that was a pain in the arse to connect to and print to it. Now I can ping the printer fine from my Android phone and the Canon Print app is connecting OK.

I am hoping disabling this “Airtime Fairness” setting will also fix the issue of the Android phone and tablets not always being able to ping the Harmony hubs and thus Home Remote app then not being able to connect to them.

Fingers crossed.

And I’ve just seen something in the Harmony app that I have not seen for a very long time.

In the “Connect to hub” page of the Harmony app, all three of my hubs now have a Connect symbol next time them. This normally always says “Away” not “Connect” next to each hub.

If I switch hubs in the Harmony app its now much faster at connecting to the hubs, it looks like its doing it locally now, previously it always connected via cloud instead, so this looks very promising !