Trouble Shooting

Trouble Shooting Help

Echo does not discover my ha-bridge?
Workaround for linking Google Home to ha-brigde.

Q: Echo does not discover my ha-bridge?

A: There are a few items to consider here.

The first is that the main IP Address of your machine is not the one selected by the ha-bridge or that the one you entered for the UPNP IP Address is not the machine's main IP. Set the UPNP IP Address int the bridge control tab to the main IP of the machine.
The second issue, is that you have selected a different port than 80. Most apps that try to discover the ha-bridge are expecting it to be on port 80.
A third issue, is that UPNP is disabled on your router or IGMP Snooping is enabled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Universal_Plug_and_Play#IGMP_snooping_and_reliability

UPnP is often the only significant multicast application in use in digital home networks; therefore, multicast network misconfiguration or other deficiencies can appear as UPnP issues rather than underlying network issues.

If IGMP snooping is enabled on a switch, or more commonly a wireless router/switch, it will interfere with UPnP/DLNA device discovery (SSDP) if incorrectly or incompletely configured (e.g. without an active querier or IGMP proxy), making UPnP appear unreliable.

The next thing you can do is turn on Trace UPNP Calls in the bridge control tab. This will put out debugging information of the discovery process from the ha-bridge's point of view. Look at the IP addresses calling the bridge to see if the correct unit is finding the bridge. This is a big tool to help you figure out any issues.
Your log file to review will be in the directory you started the ha-bridge if using command line or if you used system utilities to start the ha-bridge, the output will be in the system log on your machine, i.e: If your are on linux, it most likely will be part if /var/log/syslog.
You may need to change the UPNP Send Delay in the Bridge Control tab to be a shorter or longer value. The default is 650. You can try 250 or 1000 and see what works best for your system.
If you have a 2nd Gen Echo, it may be a little touchy, try this:

Make sure you have enabled the 'Use Link Button' in the ha-bridge security settings!

1) start discover on Alexa
2) press the link button on the ha-bridge 'Bridge Devices' tab
3) most likely this discover will not find anything
4) start discover on Alexa again
5) press the link button on the ha-bridge 'Bridge Devices' tab
6) after Alexa finishes, you should see your devices or new devices added

Q: Workaround for linking Google Home to ha-bridge

A: Short How To (for people with no android devices or old ones or iPhones) from @harolds

Thanks to @333ryan18 (https://community.home-assistant.io/u/333ryan18) I linked my Home to ha-brigde!

Comments can be made on issue #626 https://github.com/bwssytems/ha-bridge/issues/626

First of all, you need Android (or the older iOS app, but it's way easier to downgrade apps on Android), in my case I do not own a recent Android device, so I created a VirtualBox VM running RemixOS using osboxes excellent VMDK: http://www.osboxes.org/remix-os/

VM settings:

General: Type = Other, Version = Other/Unknown (64-bit)
Base Memory: 2GB
Network: Bridged Adapter

And then add the virtual disk:

snap 2017-06-06 at 13 05 42

After downloading, creating and booting the VM, Use the "Play Activator app" to install Google Play services and Play Store and 'activate' them. IMPORTANT: Reboot RemixOS after Play Activator is done.

Open Play Store and download the Google App.
Open the Google App and press on the Update Google Play Services, to update it.
Open Chrome inside RemixOS and go to APKMirror10 (http://www.apkmirror.com/apk/google-inc/google-home/google-home-1-19-29-release/google-home-1-19-29-android-apk-download/) and install version 1.19.29.

First make sure ha-brigde is running (on port 80!!!).

See the attached images for the next steps: