[homekit] "No response" error on all openHAB items

[radokristof]

Dear Community and Developers!

I have been using the homekit addon now for months and I have a problem with it, which I found on the forum, most of us has this problem.
Sometimes the whole Home becomes unavailable, all the items in the Home app shows "No response" message. I have tried to debug it, but I can't find any relevant info, openhab does not show any error or log message when this happens. Also it happens very randomly... Sometimes works for days, sometimes just for hours.
The only solution is to restart openhab (but somehow it works after a while, no need to restart, but this can take hours).

Tell me how can I help to solve this bug!

Ways to reproduce the bug:
Use the builtin HomeKit addon and enable on a device the Hub function.

Solution:
It seems that the Hub feature causes this issue. Temporary fixes:
Turn off the Hub
Use the temporary workaround by @andrey-yantsen

Thanks!

[worried-networking]

Same problem here. I've enabled TRACE-log on the binding couple days ago and those are last log messages related to homekit, before items become unavailable:

2018-05-06 00:24:22.839 [TRACE] [ons.LengthPrefixedByteArrayProcessor] - Received message of length 0. Existing buffer is 0
2018-05-06 00:24:22.840 [TRACE] [ons.LengthPrefixedByteArrayProcessor] - Returning 0 results
2018-05-06 00:24:22.840 [INFO ] [.hap.impl.http.impl.AccessoryHandler] - Terminated homekit connection from /192.168.88.67:49425
2018-05-06 00:25:12.016 [TRACE] [ons.LengthPrefixedByteArrayProcessor] - Received message of length 0. Existing buffer is 0
2018-05-06 00:25:12.017 [TRACE] [ons.LengthPrefixedByteArrayProcessor] - Returning 0 results
2018-05-06 00:25:12.017 [INFO ] [.hap.impl.http.impl.AccessoryHandler] - Terminated homekit connection from /192.168.88.68:52146
2018-05-06 00:27:34.333 [TRACE] [ons.LengthPrefixedByteArrayProcessor] - Received message of length 0. Existing buffer is 0
2018-05-06 00:27:34.333 [TRACE] [ons.LengthPrefixedByteArrayProcessor] - Returning 0 results
2018-05-06 00:27:34.334 [INFO ] [.hap.impl.http.impl.AccessoryHandler] - Terminated homekit connection from /192.168.88.66:52228

After this events those 3 clients can't communicate with HomeKit (unfortunately I don't have any more HomeKit clients available), but, unfortunately, I'm unable to confirm if communication dies always after those messages. 192.168.88.67 is my AppleTV with HomeKit hub.

BTW, @rkrisi. it's not required to restart entire OpenHab instance, for me it's enough to just to refresh homekit bundle via karaf console, just send following command:

bundle:refresh org.openhab.io.homekit

And after few seconds the items will return.

P.S. I'm using OpenHab 2.2-stable under Docker, on amd64 virtualbox VM, but the issue is annoys me since the time when I've used OpenHab 2.1-stable on Raspberry Pi 3.

[worried-networking]

I've initiated a small bounty for this issue, feel free to join the club :)

[worried-networking]

As for now I've created a workaround using python and mqtt to monitor amount of active homekit connections and refresh homekit bundle when last connection lost.

[wborn]

Thanks adding a bounty @andrey-yantsen! 😄

[radokristof]

@andrey-yantsen Thanks, I'll try your method!
Anyway, how can I change the logging level in openHab?

Now I don't know what about anyone's Home app, but sometimes it just shows that connected items not responding, but usually the openHab thing (or I don't know what it is called in Home app) and all other items are not responding...

[worried-networking]

Anyway, how can I change the logging level in openHab?

For my workaround it's enough to use default INFO log level, but if you really want to change loglevel to TRACE for homekit bundle — just say log:set TRACE com.beowulfe.hap in your karaf console.

[radokristof]

@andrey-yantsen Thanks!

[piejanssens]

Ping @beowulfe

[radokristof]

My original post on the forum:
https://community.openhab.org/t/homekit-no-response-on-all-openhab-items/43540

[radokristof]

I have tried logging and as @andrey-yantsen said, there is no real error message before the connection dies.
It seems that it stops working after all the connections are lost to HomeKit devices. But why? Also we have 2 iPads which is connected to the HomeKit and always at home (one of them is the Hub), so I don't know why it sometimes loses connection and why does it stops working after losing connection.

[piejanssens]

This seems to be related to the fact that you are using a hub in your configuration. You could confirm this by removing the hub from the equation for a while and see if the issue still occurs.

[worried-networking]

I'm not really sure if using a hub is the root if this issue: I'm also using a hub (Apple TV), but I can see in the logs that my phone connects directly to openhab instance.
BTW, everything work correctly for almost 2 weeks now, even without my workaround.