I have tried everything I can think of to remedy/troubleshoot this issue… Here is the deal:
I have a Galaxy S3 phone and a Galaxy 4 tablet set up as a mobile and a LAN user, respectively. My phone receives all alerts flawlessly and is set up with a different VeraAlertsID (and different Vera User Account) than my tablet. The tablet will receive alerts in tandem with my phone for roughly 2 - 3 days, then randomly stops working. I have WiFi always enabled on the tablet, I have tried many WiFi keep-alive apps, so that leaves me to believe that the issue lies with either the application layer or the way I have my Vera Alerts plugin set up. I have tried this with 2 different tablets, and get the same failures, so we can also rule out any unique hardware issues. When I try to submit a log in verbose mode, Vera Alerts crashes.
This is where it gets weird: When it stops sending out alerts, I can SOMETIMES get it working again by doing any combination of the following: Resetting Vera Alerts’ cache under application manager, reconnecting to the WiFi, opening up the Vera Alerts app, or restarting my tablet all together. The restart ALWAYS solves the problem, where as those other methods are hit or miss.
I’m at the end of my rope here… I’ve tried making a scene to send alerts to a different user, I’ve tried sending it straight to the LAN (under the Vera Alerts plugin options), I’ve tried uninstalling and re-installing the app on the tablet. This port is my last desperation attempt before I nuke my Vera and start everything from scratch.
Thanks in advance for any assistance!
I believe this is a Google Play Services problem.
Cycle the WIFI Off then back on and see if the problem is fixed.
Thanks for taking time out to respond, Richard.
I have tried bouncing the WiFi, sometimes that’ll fix it for a few days, but then after that it just stops again. I originally thought that resetting the WiFi would fix this issue, so I created a job that disables and then re-enables the WiFi once per day at midnight – That didn’t work.
A restart ALWAYS fixes it, which leads me to believe it may be something with the way the plugin interacts with the app on my tablet. One way around it would be to root my device, then schedule an auto restart of my tablet on a schedule. The problem with that approach is sometimes it’ll work for 3 days, sometimes it’ll work for a few hours.
Any other ideas?
As I said … this is a Google Play Services problem …
Lot’s of apps that use the Google Play Services have the same problem.
Google Play Services delivers the Notifications to the phone and then to my APP.
Is there another notification option in Vera Alerts that I can use instead? If so, what would you recommend?
It’s just so odd that my phone works perfectly, but I guess I just don’t really understand how Google Play Services works. Off to Google it…
You can use Vera Alerts-LAN mode … but this eats up the batteries pretty quickly since it’s always running.
That’s what I’m currently doing, though. I have the wall tablet mounted (always on), with Vera alerts LAN mode. My phone uses the mobile alerts type, which I don’t have any issues with. It’s the LAN alert type that gives me the problem.
Sorry, I misunderstood … I will modify the APP to automatically reset the connection every 4 hours.
Wow, that’d be great! Here’s hoping it works!
Cheers.
Could it be so that there is some needed service on the tablet that crash?
I have a problem on my tablet where some service needed for the TTS function crash all the time. This means that the alerts are received in VeraAlerts but are not spoken out. I this situation I have to kill the app providing the Swedish TTS and start the app again. I know it is not the same problem as @ebgebinary but maybe the cause might be similar.
Just a thought.
@korttoma
Is this a separate APP ? Or are you referring to the Vera Alerts APP ?
I could provide an option to do a hard RESET of the app on a periodic basis.
It is a separate speech engine app called SVOX.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.svox.classic&hl=en
I use this language pack to get swedish TTS:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.svox.classic.langpack.swe_swe_fem&hl=en
You don’t need to put any effort in to a workaround for my problem since I think the root cause is the old crappy tablet that I will eventually replace. Besides that my long term plan is to use Sonos to announce things but I will need to upgrade my controller for this since my Veralite memory capacity will probably not be enough to add the sonos plugin and other needed things.
I just wanted to put the idea out there that there might be some service that crash also in @edgebinarys tablet. I think it is actually some google media service that crash for me but is restarted when I restart the SVOX app.
Kort,
I don’t think that’s the case. My Vera Alert just never receives the notification in the first place.
I have made the change to Vera Alerts APP to reset the connection earlier this week.
Thanks, Richard. I will monitor this and see if it fixes the issue.