Official Homey Android App discussion topic

Jesper

Another tip which might help solving the problem. I'm able to say OK Google even when I'm in another app. Only when I'm in the Homey app the OK Google is also not working anymore.

JaapPelt

superice said:

Holy crap. That doesn't happen to me or my collegues at all  
That's insane! I'll see what I can do, I totally agree this is unworkable.
phones... Very odd.

It isn't that bad. I'm just one personen als my battery still lasts a day. It would be perfectly fine with me to prioritize other bugs first and see if other users have the same problem. Of course this issue needs to be solved eventually. I will continue to monitor the battery use and app usage for you.

Fire69

The app isn't consuming a lot of battery on my S6. It's not in the list when I check battery usage.

The app does crash rather often.  Both on my phone (5.1.1) and tablet (4.4.2)
I sent a report this morning, hope you find something.

superice

Fire69 said:

The app isn't consuming a lot of battery on my S6. It's not in the list when I check battery usage.

The app does crash rather often.  Both on my phone (5.1.1) and tablet (4.4.2)
I sent a report this morning, hope you find something.

That is greatly appreciated, reports are super useful for me. 9 out of 10 times they immediately pinpoint the problem

There have been some bugs concerning the geofencing, and I had hoped to have fixed them all, but that does not seem to be the case. 

JaapPelt said:

superice said:

Holy crap. That doesn't happen to me or my collegues at all  
That's insane! I'll see what I can do, I totally agree this is unworkable.
phones... Very odd.

It isn't that bad. I'm just one personen als my battery still lasts a day. It would be perfectly fine with me to prioritize other bugs first and see if other users have the same problem. Of course this issue needs to be solved eventually. I will continue to monitor the battery use and app usage for you.

Thanks I'll try if I can find the cause, a collegue of mine has a Nexus 5 which he doesn't use, so I'm gonna test with that to see if it's phone-specific.

Fire69

I'm not using the app very much right now (due to Homey not being to stable for me at the moment), so I don't really mind the crashes.
But when it crashed, I have to manually open it once to get the notifications back, and that is a little annoying.
I created some test flows to check the voice recognition and when the app has crashed, I don't get the text sent to my phone anymore

superice

Fire69 said:

I'm not using the app very much right now (due to Homey not being to stable for me at the moment), so I don't really mind the crashes.
But when it crashed, I have to manually open it once to get the notifications back, and that is a little annoying.
I created some test flows to check the voice recognition and when the app has crashed, I don't get the text sent to my phone anymore

Hmm, interesting. That would suggest the crash is not in the geofencing part, as I assumed, but in the push notifications part. I can see more as soon as the Google Play crash reports come in, which can take up to a day.

superice

Fire69 said:

I'm not using the app very much right now (due to Homey not being to stable for me at the moment), so I don't really mind the crashes.
But when it crashed, I have to manually open it once to get the notifications back, and that is a little annoying.
I created some test flows to check the voice recognition and when the app has crashed, I don't get the text sent to my phone anymore

Nevermind, the report just came in. I know what the bug is, and I'll have a fix ready soon. The bug is caused due to the main thread of the app being closed by Android because the phone needs resources, while the push notification and geofencing thread (those are managed by the Android system, and started when needed) depend on something set by the main thread. As soon as the main thread is killed, the info the other two threads depend on is gone. I fixed this for the geofencing in 1.1.4, but I just found out the push notifications suffer from this issue as well.

Not sure when I get around to it, but it's an easy fix, so you can expect an update between now and begin next week

Fire69

Thanks

MarcoBannink

I am managing to control my devices via the screen in the app and to receive notifications of the homey. 

My question though is if  the app should be voice controlled as well? It seems to be listening, but it never got a reply yet.

JaapPelt

I'd like to have a better dashboard to more easily control devices without switching zone. Also, I want less taps to control the primary function of a device.

For me, controlling devices via my smartphone is more important then voice control.

superice

MarcoBannink said:

I am managing to control my devices via the screen in the app and to receive notifications of the homey. 

My question though is if  the app should be voice controlled as well? It seems to be listening, but it never got a reply yet.

Yes, this is because Homey replies on the internal speaker of Homey itself, not through your smartphone. We will implement this sometime though.

JaapPelt said:

I'd like to have a better dashboard to more easily control devices without switching zone. Also, I want less taps to control the primary function of a device.

For me, controlling devices via my smartphone is more important then voice control.

What would you like to see differently exactly?

By the way, I've tested the app on an old Nexus 5, but it seems to behave fine on it. I really don't know why it uses up so much energy on your phone. Does it still use up that much energy?

JaapPelt

JaapPelt said:

I'd like to have a better dashboard to more easily control devices without switching zone. Also, I want less taps to control the primary function of a device.

For me, controlling devices via my smartphone is more important then voice control.

What would you like to see differently exactly?

By the way, I've tested the app on an old Nexus 5, but it seems to behave fine on it. I really don't know why it uses up so much energy on your phone. Does it still use up that much energy?

There are a few main things I want to control in my house and a few things I want to see. Being able to quickly set a scene or check a sensor is in my opinion the primary function of an smartphone app and also the distinguishing factor from the website. 

To be more specific, I like to control multiple lights in my living room with a single click. I have a flow to set the living room lights to a cozy colored mood, to turn them all to full brightness or to turn them all off. Instead of these 3 flows taking up my entire screen, I'd like to have a small icon for each of them (or a single icon which I can use to toggle between each scene).

Secondly, I often forget to turn of the lights in the kitchen, so instead of standing up and walking all the way to the kitchen, I'd like to just pop-out my phone and turn off the kitchen lights with a single tap.

Finally, I'd like to see some basic sensor data like the indoor and outdoor temperature as well as the current energy usage. 

A "home screen" (4x4 grid for example) with small icons to initiate and show basic sensor data of the entire house would be a very nice addition. I can also imagine such a home screen could serve as a dashboard for wall-mounted tablets.

Whatever new features you will develop, I'd like to see the app focus on some kind of quick control to distinguish itself from the website. 
Please note that this is my personal preference as I do not prefer voice control due. I have some speech issues which prevent me from speaking reliable. This makes smartphone and switch control all the more important for me.
Currently, I prefer to use the website on my smartphone as it show slightly more accurate information on my philips hue lamps. 


On the battery issue: My average battery use of the Homey app is currently 2%. I suspect the battery drain occurred when I was home. Since I haven't been home a low lately, I have not been able to reproduce the same scenario. I did notice that the app no longer shows a pop-up when I'm home.  

Rather than using the forum, is there a way i can submit bugs for the app?

superice

JaapPelt said:

JaapPelt said:

I'd like to have a better dashboard to more easily control devices without switching zone. Also, I want less taps to control the primary function of a device.

For me, controlling devices via my smartphone is more important then voice control.

What would you like to see differently exactly?

By the way, I've tested the app on an old Nexus 5, but it seems to behave fine on it. I really don't know why it uses up so much energy on your phone. Does it still use up that much energy?

There are a few main things I want to control in my house and a few things I want to see. Being able to quickly set a scene or check a sensor is in my opinion the primary function of an smartphone app and also the distinguishing factor from the website. 

To be more specific, I like to control multiple lights in my living room with a single click. I have a flow to set the living room lights to a cozy colored mood, to turn them all to full brightness or to turn them all off. Instead of these 3 flows taking up my entire screen, I'd like to have a small icon for each of them (or a single icon which I can use to toggle between each scene).

Secondly, I often forget to turn of the lights in the kitchen, so instead of standing up and walking all the way to the kitchen, I'd like to just pop-out my phone and turn off the kitchen lights with a single tap.

Finally, I'd like to see some basic sensor data like the indoor and outdoor temperature as well as the current energy usage. 

A "home screen" (4x4 grid for example) with small icons to initiate and show basic sensor data of the entire house would be a very nice addition. I can also imagine such a home screen could serve as a dashboard for wall-mounted tablets.

Whatever new features you will develop, I'd like to see the app focus on some kind of quick control to distinguish itself from the website. 
Please note that this is my personal preference as I do not prefer voice control due. I have some speech issues which prevent me from speaking reliable. This makes smartphone and switch control all the more important for me.
Currently, I prefer to use the website on my smartphone as it show slightly more accurate information on my philips hue lamps. 


On the battery issue: My average battery use of the Homey app is currently 2%. I suspect the battery drain occurred when I was home. Since I haven't been home a low lately, I have not been able to reproduce the same scenario. I did notice that the app no longer shows a pop-up when I'm home.  

Rather than using the forum, is there a way i can submit bugs for the app?

Thank you for using the time to write out your thought on this. The way I see it, most of these issues are resolved when we introduce the widgets for triggering flows. That way, you can create a flow that turns your lights on or off, while using a widget on your phone as a trigger. The 'home screen' you describe can easily be created to put all the widgets in one tab of your home screen on your Android device, while still being very flexible.

As for the sensor data, I think an Insights-page in the app would be the most logical way to implement this, however, I'd have to talk with both Emile and Jeroen, to brainstorm how this should relate to the webinterface of insights, and how this is going to be implemented on iOS. I personally like the idea of having an Insights part in the app, but I'm not sure where this would rank on our priorities list though, so I won't promise anything at this point.

About the battery issue: I have a theory. I'm guessing Homey didn't detect your location well enough automatically, and you were just on the edge of the geofence in your home. Because of the way geofencing works, it drains more energy when you get closer to the edge of the radius. This is to detect a crossing of the geofence as fast as possible. If the issue occurs again sometime in the future, try to set the location of your Homey manually in the Homey Settings in the webinterface.

MarcoF

We had 2 first gen nexus5 phones and both phones had dead batteries when the were 2 years old. The month before the batteries died, batteries lifetime dropped, on 60-80% remaining battery the phone just turned off.
In the period before the battery really died, I noticed very weird app battery consumption with for example 70% WiFi battery usage or chrome taking 50% batterie. 
I have no idea how old the spoken nexus5 is, but maybe this could be the problem. 

I would also see some sort of dashboard and/or more info on device block and/or quicker accessible devices. 
My android app for the vera3 is ImperiHome and that's also a zone oriented app. But in this app it's possible to configure custom screens with different grid of 1-30 placeholders for device info and/or switches and that's great! 
Here's an example:

Mobile pic add and can't resize.... 

Thiemen

MarcoF said:

We had 2 first gen nexus5 phones and both phones had dead batteries when the were 2 years old. The month before the batteries died, batteries lifetime dropped, on 60-80% remaining battery the phone just turned off.
In the period before the battery really died, I noticed very weird app battery consumption with for example 70% WiFi battery usage or chrome taking 50% batterie. 
I have no idea how old the spoken nexus5 is, but maybe this could be the problem. 

I also had battery problems with my Nexus 5, just after one year. After replacing the battery i enjoyed the Nexus 5 for another year.

JaapPelt

superice said:

Thank you for using the time to write out your thought on this. The way I see it, most of these issues are resolved when we introduce the widgets for triggering flows. That way, you can create a flow that turns your lights on or off, while using a widget on your phone as a trigger. The 'home screen' you describe can easily be created to put all the widgets in one tab of your home screen on your Android device, while still being very flexible.

As for the sensor data, I think an Insights-page in the app would be the most logical way to implement this, however, I'd have to talk with both Emile and Jeroen, to brainstorm how this should relate to the webinterface of insights, and how this is going to be implemented on iOS. I personally like the idea of having an Insights part in the app, but I'm not sure where this would rank on our priorities list though, so I won't promise anything at this point.

About the battery issue: I have a theory. I'm guessing Homey didn't detect your location well enough automatically, and you were just on the edge of the geofence in your home. Because of the way geofencing works, it drains more energy when you get closer to the edge of the radius. This is to detect a crossing of the geofence as fast as possible. If the issue occurs again sometime in the future, try to set the location of your Homey manually in the Homey Settings in the webinterface.

I agree that widgets could provide homescreen-like functionality and it will definitely meet my initial needs.

Something like insight and/or dashboard functionality as shown by MarcoF will be the primary added value of an app over the website. This is mainly because the website works already very well on android devices.

Your explanation of the battery issue makes sense. I will continue to monitor the battery use once in awhile, but I don't think further attention is needed. 

Controlling Philips Hue lamps works better on the website than in the app. Do you want me to log these kinds of small bugs in this topic or in a bug tracker?

superice

JaapPelt said:

superice said:

Thank you for using the time to write out your thought on this. The way I see it, most of these issues are resolved when we introduce the widgets for triggering flows. That way, you can create a flow that turns your lights on or off, while using a widget on your phone as a trigger. The 'home screen' you describe can easily be created to put all the widgets in one tab of your home screen on your Android device, while still being very flexible.

As for the sensor data, I think an Insights-page in the app would be the most logical way to implement this, however, I'd have to talk with both Emile and Jeroen, to brainstorm how this should relate to the webinterface of insights, and how this is going to be implemented on iOS. I personally like the idea of having an Insights part in the app, but I'm not sure where this would rank on our priorities list though, so I won't promise anything at this point.

About the battery issue: I have a theory. I'm guessing Homey didn't detect your location well enough automatically, and you were just on the edge of the geofence in your home. Because of the way geofencing works, it drains more energy when you get closer to the edge of the radius. This is to detect a crossing of the geofence as fast as possible. If the issue occurs again sometime in the future, try to set the location of your Homey manually in the Homey Settings in the webinterface.

I agree that widgets could provide homescreen-like functionality and it will definitely meet my initial needs.

Something like insight and/or dashboard functionality as shown by MarcoF will be the primary added value of an app over the website. This is mainly because the website works already very well on android devices.

Your explanation of the battery issue makes sense. I will continue to monitor the battery use once in awhile, but I don't think further attention is needed. 

Controlling Philips Hue lamps works better on the website than in the app. Do you want me to log these kinds of small bugs in this topic or in a bug tracker?

Right, thanks for your input. I am going to think about some kind of interface to make this all easier, but I'm not sure if that's going to be in the next update already.

Where you report the bugs doesn't really matter to me; I have my own internal issue tracker for the Android app, and whether you report it here, or on github, I'd have to copy it either way.

What are your issues with the app exactly? I know there is an issue with the selection of the middle part, like 'hue', 'saturation', 'brightness' etc. (see: https://github.com/athombv/homey/issues/55), is this comparable?

JaapPelt

superice said:

Right, thanks for your input. I am going to think about some kind of interface to make this all easier, but I'm not sure if that's going to be in the next update already.

Where you report the bugs doesn't really matter to me; I have my own internal issue tracker for the Android app, and whether you report it here, or on github, I'd have to copy it either way.

What are your issues with the app exactly? I know there is an issue with the selection of the middle part, like 'hue', 'saturation', 'brightness' etc. (see: https://github.com/athombv/homey/issues/55), is this comparable?

The issue I'm currently experiencing is that the App reports that my lights are on while the website reports the lights are off. (The website is right btw). 

When I try to turn on a lamp, I do not see the updated status right away. When I refresh the website, the updated status appears, but I cannot refresh the app, so I don't know if the light is on or off.

A separate bug is that when I disable voice control in the app, the app becomes unusable and i have to reinstall the app to reset the setting. (You might want to prioritize this one )

bvdbos

Bought a Fairphone 2 cause my previous phone didn't support the Homey-app. Some issues:
1) Turning microphone off in the settings (first option) makes the app crash on restarting. The only way to get the app back to work is deleting the app and re-installing. Luckily the settings are also deleting when deleting the app  . When using the second option it can be restarted.
2) the notifications (icons) in the top-bar keep piling up, they don't disappear when having opened them.

Peao

I haven't got the "microphone-line/wave" at the bottom, to indicate speech.
Wasn't aware of this until I installed the App on another smartphone.
Phone without line : samsung galaxy s6
Phone with it : htc one mini 2

Fire69

It seemed like an S6 issue at first.  On my wife's S4, there is no problem.
But today I checked my Note-tablet and it has no voice either.
I guess it's a Samsung issue, but not on all devices...

bvdbos

BasVanDenBosch said:

2) the notifications (icons) in the top-bar keep piling up, they don't disappear when having opened them.

Guess I'm too old-fashioned, it's all about swiping now and of course i can swipe these notifications away

Wimstradamus

Is it just me or does the app not give a notification sound on recieving notification?
Search github and forum also checked my phone/app settings, other apps do play notification sound
Nexus 6  android 6.0.1

MartijnHarte

Wimstradamus said:

Is it just me or does the app not give a notification sound on recieving notification?
Search github and forum also checked my phone/app settings, other apps do play notification sound
Nexus 6  android 6.0.1

This is a known issue  

superice

MartijnHarte said:

Wimstradamus said:

Is it just me or does the app not give a notification sound on recieving notification?
Search github and forum also checked my phone/app settings, other apps do play notification sound
Nexus 6  android 6.0.1

This is a known issue  

Not only is it a known issue, it is already fixed in the codebase, and will be release in the upcoming beta of 1.2.

Jesper

@superice; Any idea when the voice input in the app for the Samsung Galaxy S6 will be fixed? With no voice input on my S6, Homey not understanding my voice input and no widgets/flow triggers in the app I have to use IFTTT to trigger flows but this is not very fast.

mruiter

Also no voice input on the Samsung S6 edge ..

But hey, lets get real, Homey is a problem in listening.
It has trouble with his own mic and phine mics 

but all will come good when Homey will clim up the mountain and talks to the gods of Athom. Thenafter he will come back to us normal people with the 10 commands

Peao

Please add a volume control in the media tab of the app.

superice

Jesper said:

@superice; Any idea when the voice input in the app for the Samsung Galaxy S6 will be fixed? With no voice input on my S6, Homey not understanding my voice input and no widgets/flow triggers in the app I have to use IFTTT to trigger flows but this is not very fast.

Last friday I spent some time on this issue. It seems to be an issue with OpenGL rendering of the wave at the button, although I've not been able to localize the exact issue. It seems to be a pretty hard problem (especially hard to debug), so I can't really give you an estimate for when the fix is coming.

Fire69

So is it only the wave that's invisible? The recognition should work without the wave being shown?