X10 Community Forum

📱🖥️PiX10Hub => 🏥Help and Trouble Shooting => 🧞 ⛑HomeGenie Help => Topic started by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 05:50:14 PM

Title: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 05:50:14 PM
I installed HG on my main PC to try and learn as much as possible before my new Pi arrives tomorrow. It took forever to finally get a main screen as all I got was a spinning wheel.

I changed one of the switches to a virtual switch and I fooled around with the demo security system. The problem is for example when switching the security system to "away" it stays as home unless I close the web page and reopen it. IOW, things do not refresh. How am I supposed to know the status of any given device? I don't see a place to set a refresh time.

OTOH, I was able to add my API key from wunderground and that seems to work properly although again updating can be an issue.

Thoughts please.

Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: Tuicemen on December 30, 2018, 06:03:29 PM
I believe the issue may be i  your host file I cant rememer where it is. The PiX10Hub attemps to fix this. I believe there is a post on homegenie.club explaining this issue.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 06:28:50 PM
I searched the HG forum and actually found a post that claims to have fixed it but so far no joy for me. I actually saw that @tuicemen had posted in that same thread.
I posted, asking for detailed info on how to fix this. Even though HG will be running on the Pi I plan on accessing it from my main PC, obviously. I assume most people do not have GUI as part of the PiX10Hub image.

Most importantly, does HG behave like this on the RPi? Ever?

If you know of a different thread at homegenie.club please advise.


Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: petera on December 30, 2018, 06:53:59 PM
I believe the issue may be i  your host file I cant rememer where it is. The PiX10Hub attemps to fix this. I believe there is a post on homegenie.club explaining this issue.

The "host" file you refer does in fact refer to the etc/hosts file which is a Linux only file and nothing to do with Windows. I already posted this solution on the forum but for those who are running on a Raspberry Pi only setup the addition to this file is the following

127.0.0.1 localhost theraspberrypiname (change this to whatever your raspberry Pi is called)

Maybe you could post this solution somewhere that users could easily see it.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: Tuicemen on December 30, 2018, 07:04:28 PM
@Petera I'm  not sure you 100 % correct on this but will take your word. I have edited the Windows host file before to fix sever issues which is what HG is.

@racerfern
If you use Google and search for editing the windows host file it may help with your endever. Also if your using the latest HG build you may wish to revert to a few versions back as I'm not convinced this is 100 % bug free even though it has a stable label.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 07:08:08 PM
@tuicemen - I had this problem with HG a few times over the years and on different machines (all windows). Going backwards will not fix this.

I'm not a linux nerd, nor a windows nerd so I'm not about to start editing where I shouldn't be. I downloaded a stable version .29 so it's not like I have a beta.

@petera - Do you any pointers on this problem? It's not uncommon based on the comments I've read. Thanks.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 07:15:26 PM
My hosts file is empty of entries. The few lines are all commented out.
# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#   127.0.0.1       localhost
#   ::1             localhost
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 07:24:13 PM
And from the homegenie.club site:

Hi. I never made it work on windows consistently. Many (all?) others the same.

I gave up, bought a $5 raspberry pi zero W card and have it working consistently now x10 forum now has a working SD card image you can download and make the pi work HG right away). It too had same load partially issue but there is a file called hosts that can be modified with name of the pi network name and it becomes rock solid and works. Windows has the same host file (windows/system32/etc/hosts) and someone who still is working with the windows version should investigate it changing it fixes windows also. I moved on. Each time I and others thought we find a windows solution, the lock ups came back anyway. I shows the mod to hosts in my last reply to someone on this forum this morning - search for it and try? Good luck!
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: petera on December 30, 2018, 07:27:27 PM
My hosts file is empty of entries. The few lines are all commented out.
# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
   127.0.0.1       localhost raceferncomputername
#   ::1             localhost


You have it on the second last line so. Assuming Windows handles calls in the same way Linux does as a loop back just remove the # and add your computer name like I did above on your example.

I don't do Windows but I imagine settings would be similar. Try it and see what happens
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 07:29:02 PM
I'll keep you posted, thanks!
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 30, 2018, 08:13:30 PM
It's a ton better, at least no more spinning box most of the time. However, after adding a Zooz z-wave switch (5 on/off controls for outlets) it only shows 1. I realize that not a problem for this forum but there is a delay of over 60 seconds before the display on the screen reflects the actual state of the switch. Somewhere there must be a setting for refresh time. If I try and refresh, I get the spinning circle. Quite frustrating. I've had to stop the service and re-start it numerous times.

Do others see this?
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 31, 2018, 12:31:25 PM
@petera
I changed hosts to read as below since that is the computer name when I click on This PC, then right click and select properties.
127.0.0.1 localhost 3187-Home

Then I restarted the PC just to be safe and I am upwards of ten minutes and only have a black Homegenie screen with a spinning wheel. Do I need a ":" or "." between localhost and 3187-Home?

Any help is appreciated.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: petera on December 31, 2018, 01:46:58 PM
@petera
I changed hosts to read as below since that is the computer name when I click on This PC, then right click and select properties.
127.0.0.1 localhost 3187-Home

Then I restarted the PC just to be safe and I am upwards of ten minutes and only have a black Homegenie screen with a spinning wheel. Do I need a ":" or "." between localhost and 3187-Home?

Any help is appreciated.

You're drawing me into that dark world of Windows  rofl

Ok as with any server, the  changes you made I assume were with full administrator rights. ??

Assuming you have I suggest reverting that change back to exactly the way it was before you made it. Once we've established that all is normal we need to establish exactly how your system views your computer name. Using reserved characters in naming is fraught with danger.

Dare I say it, do a backup of your PC before making system changes.

Do that and report back
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 31, 2018, 02:44:03 PM
1. you can only make changes to the hosts file with admin privileges.
2. I have restored to the way it was before I made any changes.
3. As far as I can tell, the hosts is the same on both windows and linux
4. Understanding that a ":" is reserved then why the line "::1"?

I just can't figure out if it's
localhost
localhost 3187-Home
localhost.3187-Home
localhost@3187-Home

or something else.

 
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: petera on December 31, 2018, 03:01:22 PM
1. you can only make changes to the hosts file with admin privileges.
2. I have restored to the way it was before I made any changes.
3. As far as I can tell, the hosts is the same on both windows and linux
4. Understanding that a ":" is reserved then why the line "::1"?

I just can't figure out if it's
localhost
localhost 3187-Home
localhost.3187-Home
localhost@3187-Home

or something else.

Reserved as in "-" in your computer name.

In Linux it would be localhost 3187-Home assuming that's what Linux would recognise as your computer name. Try to ping 3187-Home and see what response you get.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on December 31, 2018, 03:30:19 PM
Worked fine, pinged in less than 1ms.
Let's stop this for now since I just received the RPi3. I'm going to try and run HG off that first rather than off my PC. If I run into problems I'll get back to you.
Thanks for following up with me.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: petera on December 31, 2018, 03:47:17 PM
Worked fine, pinged in less than 1ms.
Let's stop this for now since I just received the RPi3. I'm going to try and run HG off that first rather than off my PC. If I run into problems I'll get back to you.
Thanks for following up with me.

Well you've just worked out that you use a "." in that localhost computer name.
Title: Re: Home Genie Screen Refresh
Post by: racerfern on March 03, 2019, 06:22:09 PM
I am still struggling with this problem. Either using Chrome or Edge, the screen does not refresh. It's a simple local network.

If I use VNC to log into the actual machine, using a web browser on that machine works perfectly.

Why can't I seem to get to the bottom of this? Do others have this issue? If not, what was the fix?