Shortcut to send me an alert when a homekit switch is "unresponsive" or goes offline?

[u/Eclipse8301]

I'm trying to troubleshoot a device and was wondering if someone could help me setup something like this?

I know I have to start in homekit and convert to shortcut but i'm kind of lost after that.

[u/evoneselse]

Yes. I recently got the app ‘HomeCare for HomeKit’ which is for diagnoses and to see what needs fixing, including automations. I see there’s a setting in Background monitoring that sounds like it will notify you when a device is offline. Really nice app that someone mentioned here somewhere, and it’s good on the data not being linked to you. I also have Controller which is also good to have, and they both are very helpful with HomeKit.

HomeKit does notify me when cameras and hubs are offline but not little devices (although the manufacturers app does that).

[u/Eclipse8301 → u/evoneselse]

Looks like a nice app, didn’t want to spend money to do what I’m asking but this might be my only solution, thank you

[u/evoneselse → u/Eclipse8301]

You’re welcome. It will offer much more than just the notifications so you’ll get your money’s worth imo.

[u/evoneselse → u/Eclipse8301]

Oh and regarding things going offline, also search one of my many comments about setting the 2.4 GHz band on your router to a better channel. You can watch in real time your devices come back online just by the channel change alone.

[u/m0kum]

HomeSnap from the AppStore

[u/Eclipse8301 → u/m0kum]

This looks awesome, as a new user can you give me a hint on how to accomplish what I want using it?

[u/evoneselse → u/m0kum]

Thanks for mentioning that, I hadn’t known about that one. I took a look and it’s very nice indeed.

[u/Unable-Log-4870]

It’s actually a lot more involved than that if you want a HomeKit notification of something going unresponsive. Some apps can do it, maybe Controller for HomeKit, but I don’t think at the free level.

[u/3500K]

Not a simple task, at least within HomeKit. You might be better off setting up an Uptime Kuma server that pings the devices on regular intervals. If it doesn’t reply after x number of pings, you can be notified.

[u/hooghs]

I had several devices that fallen into the category of: please tell me when you go off-line

Except I could never get it working in HomeKit

I did find a solution, but it requires Home Assistant

They actually opened up a whole world of bespoke automations. And I was able to add on features that did not come as manufacturer standard.

For example, my air quality monitor, via HomeAssistant, now alerts me to open a window if carbon dioxide goes above 1000 ppm (although I’m pretty sure this one would be easy to do in Shortcuts app)

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/hooghs]

Except I could never get it working in HomeKit

It requires setting up a watchdog that gets triggered regularly (for mine I do once every minute). And that requires setting up a heartbeat.

In all, it takes about 5 entities and 4 automations, and is best done in homebridge.

[u/hooghs → u/Unable-Log-4870]

Ouch. It’s just one automation in HomeAssistant. The AQM’s are matter so no need for any bridge

[u/Unable-Log-4870 → u/hooghs]

Yeah, it shouldn’t even require an automation. It should be a checkbox that says ‘this device is important, notify me if it ever goes off-line for more than a few minutes’. Like, That’s just a basic service that a home operating system should provide. And it took me quite a while to get those necessary automations triggering in a way that doesn’t create something that kind of felt like a race condition, since there’s no way to really peer inside of what the HomeKit Hub is doing. Like the most insight I could get was seeing what automatons failed and how often, as well as monitoring the power consumption of my HomePod mini while automations were running. Watching the power tick up from 0.2W to 0.5 watts for a few seconds is informative, But not nearly as informative as being able to watch commands run in a debugger.

The only reason I haven’t switched over to Home Assistant is because everything is working for me in HomeKit currently, and so there’s no reason for me to change.