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Troubleshooting Guide

Colorado Four Wheeler edited this page Mar 28, 2018 · 7 revisions

Troubleshooting HomeKit Bridge Issues

Let's face it, this is a complicated plugin. For all intents and purposes it is having to interpret everything you want to send to HomeKit from one system to another and that is a lot of moving parts and plenty can go wrong. Every attempt is made to test as thoroughly as possible but things can slip through the cracks.

That being said, you should try to be self sufficient as much as possible, this is a free plugin and there isn't a staff on hand to answer all your questions or assist with every issue you might have. You can make this easier all around if you try some of these common troubleshooting techniques.

Table of Contents


Everything Shows as "No Response"

Is it "everything" or is it everything? It's easy to think it's all hung up but do you have multiple servers and can you confirm that devices across multiple servers are not responding?

You have two choices when this happens. If it's just one server that seems impacted, restart that server by going into Indigo and turning off and then turning on the server, this will validate the folder, rebuild the configuration and restart Homebridge and likely fix your problem.

If it's all devices then restart the plugin and see if that resolves the issue. It probably won't but it's worth a try. Also try restarting your computer itself, there could be a rogue process interfering with communication.

If you have tried everything then it's likely that your HomeKit data has gotten corrupted. Nobody knows why this happens but it does happen - to some more than others. There are folks that haven't had a glitch in years and others that cannot seem to stabilize.

If your HomeKit is messed up then the first thing you should try to do is delete the accessory for your HomeKit Bridge servers, this should allow you to re-add them again. Yes, it's a pain, but that works 95% of the time.

If you cannot seem to keep things stable then you should remove every home you have added to HomeKit, give it an hour to propagate to all of your various HomeKit enabled iPhones, Apple TV's and iPads and then start a fresh home because it's likely that your entire setup is problematic.


Cameras Not Showing Video

Especially if it broke between releases and there were no major updates to the camera integration you should try a few diagnostics.

Start by opening the Advanced Plugin Actions menu option.

In the Device portion of the window select the server with your cameras and select the option to view the log.

If there were any problems with your camera feeds they should be showing up in the log and be fairly obvious, otherwise you'll just see an ordinary log.

[2018-3-28 15:25:53] Loaded plugin: homebridge-camera-ffmpeg
[2018-3-28 15:25:53] Registering platform 'homebridge-camera-ffmpeg.Camera-ffmpeg'
[2018-3-28 15:25:53] ---
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Loaded plugin: homebridge-indigo2
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Registering platform 'homebridge-indigo2.Indigo2'
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] ---
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Loaded config.json with 0 accessories and 2 platforms.
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] ---
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Loading 2 platforms...
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] [HomeKit Bridge Server] Initializing Indigo2 platform...
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] [HomeKit Bridge Server] HomeKit Bridge base URL is http://127.0.0.1:8558
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] [HomeKit Bridge Server] HomeKit Bridge serverId is 731949716
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] [Camera-ffmpeg] Initializing Camera-ffmpeg platform...
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Loading 0 accessories...
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] [HomeKit Bridge Server] Listening on port 8454
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Basement Camera is running on port 51431.
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Driveway Camera is running on port 51432.
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Front Camera is running on port 51433.
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Garage Camera is running on port 51434.
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Greatroom Camera is running on port 51435.
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] Roving Camera is running on port 51436.
[2018-3-28 15:25:54] [HomeKit Bridge Server] HomeKit Bridge request: http://127.0.0.1:8558/HomeKit?cmd=deviceList&serverId=731949716
[2018-3-28 15:25:56] [HomeKit Bridge Server] Discovered Device Lightbulb (ID eaf4361d458682eec5f87941ffe45f907744fcbe6ac938e8847df5f2c025046b): Camera Test Device
[2018-3-28 15:25:56] [HomeKit Bridge Server] Created 1 accessories
[2018-3-28 15:25:56] [HomeKit Bridge Server] Initializing platform accessory 'Camera Test Device'...

If everything looks good there then use the same Advanced Plugin Actions menu option and view your Homebridge configuration file to see if everything looks good and to see the URL's for your feeds.

You'll see a breakdown of all of your cameras. Do the usernames and passwords look right? Is the server address correct?

{
		"videoConfig": {
				"maxBitrate": 500, 
				"maxWidth": 1280, 
				"packetSize": 1316, 
				"stillImageSource": "-i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++image?cameraNum=2&width=1280&height=720", 
				"source": "-re -i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++video?cameraNum=2&width=1280&height=720", 
				"maxHeight": 720, 
				"maxFPS": 10
		}, 
		"name": "Camera 1"
}, 
{
		"videoConfig": {
				"maxBitrate": 500, 
				"maxWidth": 1920, 
				"packetSize": 1316, 
				"stillImageSource": "-i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++image?cameraNum=11&width=1920&height=1080", 
				"source": "-re -i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++video?cameraNum=11&width=1920&height=1080", 
				"maxHeight": 1080, 
				"maxFPS": 25
		}, 
		"name": "Camera 2"
}, 
{
		"videoConfig": {
				"maxBitrate": 500, 
				"maxWidth": 0, 
				"packetSize": 1316, 
				"stillImageSource": "-i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++image?cameraNum=4&width=0&height=0", 
				"source": "-re -i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++video?cameraNum=4&width=0&height=0", 
				"maxHeight": 0, 
				"maxFPS": 10
		}, 
		"name": "Camera 3"
}, 
{
		"videoConfig": {
				"maxBitrate": 500, 
				"maxWidth": 640, 
				"packetSize": 1316, 
				"stillImageSource": "-i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++image?cameraNum=1&width=640&height=480", 
				"source": "-re -i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++video?cameraNum=1&width=640&height=480", 
				"maxHeight": 480, 
				"maxFPS": 10
		}, 
		"name": "Camera 4"
}, 
{
		"videoConfig": {
				"maxBitrate": 500, 
				"maxWidth": 1280, 
				"packetSize": 1316, 
				"stillImageSource": "-i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++image?cameraNum=0&width=1280&height=720", 
				"source": "-re -i http://username:[email protected]:8000/++video?cameraNum=0&width=1280&height=720", 
				"maxHeight": 720, 
				"maxFPS": 31
		}, 
		"name": "Camera 5"
}

Next you should try copying the URL's from the cameras having an issue into Safari, the feeds should show up and if they do then you have verified that everything should be working with your cameras.

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