Sluggishness / dropped "clicks"

[MrWassen (Dennis)]

Hi guys,

I am using the THR designer/IOS app with Homeseer 3 and am am hoping to get a little help on performance troubleshooting. Generally homeremote has impressed with fast loading and good crisp responsiveness when running various events and updating statuses etc., which is great compared to HSTouch. Also it seems stable and doesn’t need to be restarted every other time the app is opened (another feature of HS Touch!).

HOWEVER, I am noticing that repeat commands are sometimes being ignored, sample setup:

• Button on the remote bound to a HS3 virtual device
• HS3 event triggers off status change on the above device and sends an IP command to ROKU.

In a series of repeated clicks on the same button, the first event is processed almost instantaneously (as evidenced by the ROKU response) and can be seen in the HS3 log, however if I continue to click at a moderate, even pace, only every other command ever reaches HS3 - i.e. there are no entries in the HS3 log half of the time.

This is true regardless of whether testing in the designer sim or on the app itself.

For example during a 30 sec period I clicked around one time per second, and HS3 only registered 14 of these clicks in the log.

Are there any settings that can be tweaked to help alleviate this and/or any other things that might help ?

Thanks

Dennis

[bill (Bill Venhaus)]

What ButtonType are you using? Sounds like you would benefit from using a Repeat button. Just set the ButtonType property to Repeat then you can just hold the button down so you don’t have to click it a bunch of times in a row.

Are you writing the same value over those 30 seconds? For a Normal HomeSeer button (not Repeat), if you send a command with the same exact same value while the other is still processing, it’s likely being ignored. The HomeSeer integration I believe will ignore them because it assumes it’ll achieve the same result as the action it’s currently running. For example, if you click a button to turn a switch On while the same exact command is already running, there’s no need to run it again. It’s unnecessary. This shouldn’t be an issue if you use a Repeat button so try that & see how it works for you. If you don’t like that solution I can probably look at changing the HomeSeer integration.

[bill (Bill Venhaus)]

Yeah, right now, pretty much anything that isn’t using the MediaCommand capability will exhibit this behavior.

Again, don’t turn the Switch On if I’m already turning the Switch On. Don’t set the volume to 11 while I’m already setting the volume to 11. That’s why this is happening.

There is a Roku Plugin that uses MediaCommand capability. None of your commands will be dropped with this device.

Roku (HFN) Plugin

This is a plugin for Roku that is based on Bill’s Roku plugin originally posted April 5, 2020 in the old forum. Briefly the main changes are: various code cleanups/stylistic changes to match some other plugins I’ve written support for keyboard commands per the Roku documentation (including using some concepts from the MCE Controller Plugin I wrote) support for querying the active app via device.InputSource (note that screensaver state is not indicated, although that could be added if desired) …

[MrWassen (Dennis)]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the fast and detailed replies. I did try to play around with the “ButtonType” as well as the “RepeatInterval” properties, but I pretty much hit the same “speed limit” regardless of settings which seems to be around 2 secs as the minimum time between commands.

Without knowing much about “MediaCommand”, is there any chance such a capability could be incorporated in the Homeseer integration in a later release? (I was really hoping to keep Homeseer as the hub of things as it does so many things so well).

Thanks in advance,

Dennis

[bill (Bill Venhaus)]

Yeah, I can look into it. This is definitely something that will have be handled on a case-by-case basis. These optimizations really do help when dealing with traditional HomeSeer devices that produce discrete values like dimmers.

Right now, the MediaControl / MediaCommand capability is reserved for the HomeSeer devices that use “Device_API” 32. That API is typically associated with the Sonos & Chromecast HS plugins. I’m not really sure what “Device_API” the HS Roku plugin uses. I’ll probably have to add a different flag for your Roku device so it knows to ignore those optimization rules.

[bill (Bill Venhaus)]

This has been fixed in the 4.1.3.X release. The Home Remote will now send commands to HomeSeer as fast as it’ll take them. Those forced delays are now only applied to the Slider, ColorWheel, ColorPicker, & ColorTemperature controls. The only limiting factor now is the RepeatInterval on the Button & that is configurable on the control itself.

[MrWassen (Dennis)]

Hi Bill,

Sorry for my delayed response. At some point during the last couple of months, the response on my buttons and arrow icons used to control streaming devices suddenly improved dramatically.

So the changes you made certainly had the desired effect - I very much appreciate your efforts. (I hadn’t logged onto the forum in awhile because my THR app has otherwise been working without a hitch! ).

I do have one minor question/issue related to dimmer controls, but will open a separate ticket for this.

Thanks again!

Dennis