Messages

1

One on one support / Re: VC - Trial Mode Issue

« on: September 17, 2017, 05:01:36 PM »

The activation process is the same as the first time you activated: how to activate.

Hey James, the problem still persists post activation. I activated several times and it was successful but it still said trial mode. They only thing that works is closing and restarting 5-10 times.

Also note that it suddenly goes into trial mode (whenever it does happen) when idle, so not on restart or such.

As of now it is AOK, not sure what causes it though.

2

One on one support / VC - Trial Mode Issue

« on: September 17, 2017, 03:21:25 AM »

Hello,

Have an issue with VC, even though i have the original version, it keeps saying im using the trial version and keeps displaying that on the UI in addition to recommending that i buy and stopping after 40 uses. Any idea what i can do to address this?

Thanks in advance!

3

One on one support / Re: Beam Issue...

« on: September 09, 2017, 04:52:53 AM »

Thanks Kalle, checking on it now and will report back asap

4

One on one support / Beam Issue...

« on: September 08, 2017, 02:37:32 AM »

Hello Everyone, i'm having issues getting the BEAM to work now.

I did everything as suggested through documentation:

1) Plugged in the BEAM and the blue light came on.
2) I then used my IOS to connect to the beam, if failed about 5 times and then connected
3) I then proceeded to 192.168.4.1 clicked on Device Setup (ADMIN)
4) Clicked on the SSID
5) Entered the password, assigned a static IP to the BEAM and entered my router IP and netmask

I then clicked on  save and after about 3-5 mins it said failed.

NOW i cant get my beam to blue retry, it powers on Yellow and then nothing seems to happen.

MY first goal is to get the Blue light back so i can reconnect to the Beam there are some blue lights on but not bright blue so not sure if that would work, either way cant find beam on my networks, any of them.

Please help. was SOO close!

Edit: Just to be clear, theres blue lights all inside the dome and its powered on perfectly well so the issue is i cant get it to iliumunate blue like it does yellow and yes it doesnt show up in my network, tried my PC, Laptop, IPhone, Android-Motorla, Samsung and Ipad.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: VC EVENTS are already showing up for the beam though!

https://imgur.com/a/HmNYT

Not sure what to make of that.

5

One on one support / Re: Hue Scene Error Issue

« on: September 06, 2017, 12:10:34 AM »

Hello Sorry for the delay, been travelling on corporate work protocol.

James, you were right, VC works AOK when attached directly rather than through wifi, although it confounds me as to why this is really so. I do conclude that there is an issue with my Wifi but i dont know how or where to begin to resolve that issue, everything i do, i do through WIFI and i have had no issues; games, HD movies (Netflix, Amazon), download a ton of data, upload significantly etc. I know you stated it may work fine when actively being used, but i did ping it overnight and there was no packet loss.

I know this is a VC support forum, but could you possibly help me look for issues that may resolve the Wifi issue im having, where do i start?

Thanks in advance.

6

One on one support / Re: Hue Scene Error Issue

« on: September 02, 2017, 05:19:57 PM »

Sorry had an issue yesterday so was a rushed reply.

So what's the problem?  Keep doing that.

Yes for now i'm simply looping all actions that have failed in the past, but id still like to get to the bottom of this and establish if this is indeed a wifi issue since there are a lot more devices i plan to connect to this network in addition to what i already have.

I'm not sure how you are doing your ping test but packet loss should be 0%.  Ping is probably not really a perfect test though.  To be effective you'd need to query the Hue Bridge and get valuable data back.  That test would need to be performed at a long enough interval to account for the possibility of WiFi getting sleepy.  If you are doing a request every second then it's obviously not going to go to sleep.

I've pinged the hue bridge through network analyzer on IOS and CMD and no packet loss just varying MS. I get the part about a continuous test not being conclusive, if you have any method that can test as you have suggested let me know.

You didn't mention if you tried the new DLL with the 9 second timeout. In the case that you are using this DLL and it still fails when loading a scene, how long does it take for the error to appear in the VC history window?

Checking and testing this still, will revert back shortly.

There is no reason why a wired device would not be able to talk to a WiFi device (or vice-versa) on a properly configured network.  Not sure what's up there but I don't know how your LAN is set up.  I just realized that your bridge is on WiFi.  If possible you should attach your bridge by Ethernet as well.  I have an older bridge that does not even have WiFi as far as I know.  My Vera Edge has Wifi capabilities but I would never even consider connecting it by WiFi.  Ethernet is way more reliable.

It was an error on my part along with a fault in the network, i now managed to attach the wire to the same switch the hue bridge is on, i have 2 Wifi setups in my room (2 routers, i had to get a 2.4GHZ due to the broadlink Pro because even when i disabled the 5GHz on my older router, the broadlink refused to work until the router was changed) and the wiring was wrong, i now attached it to the same router as the hue bridge and am about to stress test scenes. Also my Hue bridge is not on Wifi, it is directly connected to the router via cable with a dedicated IP assigned to it. I mentioned them being on same network because the hue bridge has an IP assigned to it which is part of the current network. Again, i am still learning how these things work, I've never done any of this before.

Loading the scenes page on the plugin settings should also take a fraction of a second.  How long does it take?  Does it always load?"

It takes between 1-3 seconds for the scene to load, however sometimes, the scenes window takes about 3-6 seconds to load and freezes 10% of the times in which case i sometimes have to terminate VC and reopen.

Actually on that scenes window there is a "Refresh" button.  I would suggest testing using that refresh button repeatedly and let me know if it always works, and if it is sometimes slow, exactly how long is it taking?

Refresh takes about 2-3 seconds on the wifi, it used to take a second more but after i deleted over 100 scenes it goes through quicker.

I am about to test heavy with the wired connection so lets see how that goes. However i just left the PC alone for about 2-3 hours and ran a ping on CMD and IOS for the network and the bridge, no packet loss thus far, will keep checking and report back.

7

One on one support / Re: Hue Scene Error Issue

« on: September 01, 2017, 10:22:59 PM »

The thing is i've extensively tested my ping as well and it seems fine, the MS may vary but no real packet loss or such. I've currently looped every scene and it fails once or max twice at times and then goes through the third time worst case.

I tried calling scenes 20-25 times too and when they do fire they almost do instantly, about 20% fail but others that go through are instant.

I did attach to the same switch the hue bridge is on and it doesn't work, it only does if its on the same Wifi network the bridge is on.

If i did a ping test for a longer time, say over an hour and saw almost no packet loss would that mean the connection is stable? MS does vary though as i said, but is that conclusive or would that not matter?

8

One on one support / Re: Hue Scene Error Issue

« on: August 31, 2017, 07:26:53 PM »

The issue still persists after installing the new DLL.

http://imgur.com/a/dUbrc

Tried twice.

I also tried all scenes one after the other and all load really fast when they do, but then this happens every now and then.

Thanks.

EDIT: OK, deleted over 120 unwanted and duplicate scenes through the Hue.Scene.Delete command, lets see if that changes things. Will report back soon.

EDIT 2: Nope, happened right after that too and double checked Wifi, its working AOK and very fast (upload and download). Alexa responds almost instantaneously to IFTTT Hue commands.

9

One on one support / Re: Hue Scene Error Issue

« on: August 31, 2017, 06:40:51 PM »

This is almost certainly due to a problem with your network or your Hue bridge.  The request that is being sent to the bridge by VoxCommando is timing out because the bridge it not responding fast enough.

I might be able to solve this for you by increasing the amount of time that VC waits before giving up but it's possible that this will not help if you have unreliable Wifi.  Most likely it is already waiting much longer than would normally be required for a normal healthy network connection. If your VC computer is on Wifi and you can switch to a wired connection I suggest that as your first course of action.  Wired is always a better choice for lots of things assuming it is possible.

If the problem is your bridge there might not be much you can do but a factory reset could theoretically help if you've had it for a long time and it has gotten "gummed up" with too much in the way of unused scenes etc.  That's just a wild guess though, I don't really know if it would help or not.

MY wifi is pretty fast so not sure why that is happening, i watch HD videos and its a 50MBPS service that clocks 11MPBS download speeds. Issue is, if i use a wired connection it wont work with Hue, WEMO or any other device since they need to be on same network, but im guessing im missing something?

The timeout was set to 1 full second, which should be more than long enough for the bridge to respond, but here is an updated version that waits up to 2 seconds.

See the following page if you are not sure how to install a test dll properly:

http://voxcommando.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Unblock_DLL

Let me try this out and revert.

One thing i should mention is: When i click on Hue Plugin - edit scenes it takes quite long to open and sometimes freezes so it does seem like an issue with bridge processing, also, and crucially, there are several unused scenes in the bridge itself that dont show up in the app, so im not sure how to delete them. For e.g. If i change a scene called "sunset" it will create a new version of that scene and add it to the list rather than replacing (in the Hue plugin) like it does in the APP, the app simply replaces. Is there any way to deal with this without factory resetting?

10

One on one support / Hue Scene Error Issue

« on: August 31, 2017, 03:12:09 AM »

Hey guys,

I've been facing this issue on and off and initially it was a rare occurrence so i chose to ignore it, but now it happens often, when i try and load a scene, it manifests the following error:

http://imgur.com/a/7wPvf

If i call the same scene again, it loads fine, but when the issue hits, it happens twice at most and then on the third attempt it works.

Edit: Also, to confirm this happens with random scenes, not just one or 2.

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<!--VoxCommando 2.2.3.7-->
<command id="360" name="Set Scene Forest" enabled="true" alwaysOn="False" confirm="False" requiredConfidence="20" loop="False" loopDelay="0" loopMax="0" description="">
  <action>
    <cmdType>Hue.Scene.Load</cmdType>
    <params>
      <param>478388e99-on-0</param>
    </params>
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <phrase>Set Scene Forest</phrase>
</command>
Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: Just transpired with another scene:

http://imgur.com/a/0gCbC

Code: [Select]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<!--VoxCommando 2.2.3.7-->
<command id="353" name="Set Scene Cool blue" enabled="true" alwaysOn="False" confirm="False" requiredConfidence="30" loop="False" loopDelay="0" loopMax="0" description="">
  <action>
    <cmdType>Hue.Scene.Load</cmdType>
    <params>
      <param>39559ee98-on-0</param>
    </params>
    <cmdRepeat>1</cmdRepeat>
  </action>
  <phrase>Set Scene Cool blue</phrase>
</command>

11

One on one support / Re: VC- ECHO Help

« on: August 23, 2017, 06:41:44 PM »

Ok, called over an expert networking technician to take a look, will see what he says!

12

One on one support / Re: VC- ECHO Help

« on: August 23, 2017, 05:15:04 PM »

That is the same thing.  The WAN IP is the external IP of your router as seen by the internet and is the address you should see when you visit http://whatismyipaddress.com

The other IP is the IP of your local PC which is running VoxCommando.  The external port request on the WAN IP should be forwarded to the IP of your local PC.

Then, "unfortunately" i've done it all exactly as instructed. Port forwarding includes a free port and the IP address of the computer VC is installed on. Not sure what else to do. Any ideas?

13

One on one support / Re: VC- ECHO Help

« on: August 23, 2017, 04:34:12 PM »

Can you try it again with running VC and TCP plugin?
I don't know if this makes a difference, but we will get sure this is not the issue.

Obviously VoxCommando needs to be running and the TCP plugin needs to be configured, before doing any kind of test.  At least I hope that is obvious!

Yep, that was the first thing i did, after which i restarted VC and then proceeded with subsequent steps, still no joy with port forwarding of any kind.

As shown here:

http://imgur.com/a/XM6Hp

And yes i did save settings too before restarting VC.

I also called my ISP and my backup ISP (Both have issued static IPs), tried with both their static issued IPv4 IPs and still no luck. They also confirmed that they have no filtering or blocking with regards to port forwarding of any kind.

One question when forwarding, its your static Ipv4:port right? And the static ip is as shown on "https://whatismyipaddress.com/" correct? What is the difference between that IP and my WAN IP? Am i supposed to use my WAN IP in any way?

14

One on one support / Re: VC- ECHO Help

« on: August 23, 2017, 01:51:00 AM »

Hey cglobal,
thanks for the info about different code - I have corrected this issue (the code for the “Sample Utterances” which is showing in the video is correct).

At what point did you get the error? Did you start VC with TCP plugin?

Hey Kalle, no, this is when i test through service simulator as shown below:

http://imgur.com/a/ipp6n

15

One on one support / Re: VC- ECHO Help

« on: August 23, 2017, 01:33:04 AM »

Ok well, ignore the above, i figured out the problem and set everything right in Amazon, but here is the error i got "The remote endpoint could not be called, or the response it returned was invalid."

Comes down to port forwarding not functioning?

For my port forwarding issue does this make any sense, if so cam someone help with this?


Here is another post about it:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/40858-42-open-ports

Please see last post - "Best Answer".