Harmony Hub w/Remote ~ Delays? - RESOLVED

Devices & Integrations
62

Glad your network is back up and running with good performance.

I understand how the Pi-Hole works. I probably didn’t explain my hypothesis well enough.
Question for you… Did you replace your home router during the move? Or are you using the same one that you originally had at the old house? Did you configure your router to force clients to use the PiHole as their DNS server? If you were using the old pre-configured router, without the RPi up and running, every device would have to timeout trying to perform DNS resolutions until the Pi-Hole server was back up and running.

Just a hypothesis.

Earlier this year Logitech pushed out a firmware update to the Harmony hubs that caused delays. This was fixed in a firmware patch.

63

My guess is your AP is handing out the pi-hole’s ip for dns resolution… without the pi-hole doing the dns it waits for timeout then falls back to other means of name resolution.

Edit: oops, @ogiewon beat me to it :smiley:

64

Since I’m here already… my previous issue with my harmony hub and remote controlling my dish joey is due to wifi network congestion. If I let harmony control the dish receiver via IP then I get sluggish response when wifi is congested. I redid the setup and just opted to control the receiver via IR, no lag issues.

65

Completely different router. This is why I was thinking that the pi-hole was fixing the issue. My hubs are all up to date as well.

66

I’ve had the same issue for several months.

VERY long delays, like minutes.

However when I use iPhone app rather than the physical remote it works immediately.

It’s very frustrating. Any ideas?

67

Same problem here. It drives me crazy. Once the remote “wakes up” it seems OK, but that can take 10 or 15 seconds - sometimes more. Wish I knew of a way to fix it.

68

Might be a little late, but this is how I solved the issue: After a lot of unsuccessful attempts, I started focusing on the hub. I have had the hub for years and it has gone through a lot of software versions. Just to make sure that the hub did not have any issues from all those updates (and possible data migrations), I did a hard reset on my hub. You power it off, then hold the little button in the back and power it on. The LED blinks at a high frequency for about 30 seconds. Then you add the hub back in to your system and you restore the hub. All delays were gone.

69

I experienced similar slowdowns and long-delayed responses to remote button presses. B12’s suggestion of a hard reset of the hub itself fixed the issue for me.

FYI: Be sure to employ the physical reset button as described. Just power cycling the hub wasn’t enough.

Joel

70

Well, like so many others, I too ran into the awful eight second delay between my Harmony remote/hub (Companion) and my Roku Premiere. From all the reading, research and surfing I could do, I never found a solution, but I did learn some things that helped me ultimately fix my problem… let me repeat that:

I FIXED IT !!!

I totally stumbled into this solution, but I knew what to do when confronted with a critical choice. Other posters had theorized that the IP (network) communication between devices was flawed and that reconfiguring your hub to communicate via IR and dispense with the IP network approach would fix the delay. Apparently the delay is caused by the hub’s failure to connect via the IP protocol and after it times out, it defaults to an IR transmission, in my case it was an eight second delay for every command I pushed.

My problem was, I could not find any option to reconfigure my hub to change from an IP connection to IR in any of the settings on either the Roku or the Harmony apps. I had nowhere else to turn, until lady luck showed up.

For no particular reason, I put the harmony remote down and I started playing with my Harmony app on my Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus. Just as with the physical remote, I was getting the exact same results and behavior - eight second delay with each button push on the app.

[This may be significant, probably not.]

I tried adding the Roku Premiere again as a “Device” in my current group of devices within that group (I have multiple hubs around the house). After filling out the manufacturer and model menu, it offered me to choose one of the two Roku Premiere devices it found in my house. So I chose one at random and labeled it Roku Premiere 2.

I then accessed it via the devices in my harmony app, and when punching the buttons, nothing happened. No big surprise, no idea what Roku Premiere I actually ‘set up’. But because I was offered two Roku’s when adding it, I repeated the process and chose the other Roku it offered. Again, punching the buttons on the app (like pause, play, skip, etc) didn’t do anything.

So I deleted the device again. And then I went back to the original Roku Premiere (device) which had been there the whole time.

[Now this is significant!]

I punched a button on the app and waited for the eight second delay. Hmm… uh oh, this time nothing happened. So as I was staring at my phone and the app wondering what the heck just happened, suddenly an error message popped up on the screen (the best error message ever!!).

I so wish I would have taken a screen shot of it, ARGH! So this may not be a perfect, word-for-word translation, but in essence it said:

Can’t communicate with device via IP, please choose one of the following:

  1. Fix IP
  2. Switch to IR

Had I not read about the whole IP/IR theory, I probably would have chosen the ‘Fix IP’ option, but heck no, I chose the “Switch to IR” option and voila!!! My roku remote is now in the drawer and my harmony remote/hub is flying high with instant commands and responses again.

I hope this helps someone. I can’t guarantee you’ll get that same error message and options to fix it, but keep hammering away as I did, with any luck, you’ll get that message to pop up.

The bottom line for me is, I fixed this using the harmony app. Rebooting Roku, rebooting the hub and searching for settings which might hold the keys to this mystery were all dead ends.

Good luck!

71

I had the same problem with my Harmony Elite and Roku4.

After a considerable amount of experimenting and debugging, and some fortuitous help from a post on a web forum, I figured out what was going on on my system. It turns out that my Ooma VoIP was doing DHCP. Worse yet, it was assigning IP’s in a different network prefix than my router (172.27.xx.xx vs 192.168.xx.xx). I turned off DHCP years ago when I first set up the Ooma box. Apparently something turned DHCP back on again. I have no idea whether it was an Ooma software upgrade, or a bug, or a bad reset after a power failure, or something else that turned on DHCP. Regardless, that was the culprit. From time to time Harmony would get an IP from my router, resulting in everything working fine. Other times the Ooma would get in front of the router’s DHCP and serve a bogus IP to the Harmony hub. When that happened, having Harmony interact with the Roku ranged from very slow to incredibly slow.

After turning off DHCP on the Ooma (again), the problems went away with Harmony and Roku. On the one hand, this doesn’t sound like a very broad problem, however the kind of customer that is likely to have a Harmony and a Roku might very well have an Ooma VoIP, or some other intelligent device that could accidentally be doing DHCP.

Hopefully, this will be of some use to the readers of this forum. If you are having this problem, check your network to make sure your Harmony Hub has an IP in the same range as your Roku device, and/or look at your net for any device that might be doing DHCP (especially if you have an Ooma.)

72

I had this exact problem also with my harmony hub and simple remote. Someone else on here mentioned the battery shooting out of its compartment which I also experienced. I solved it by wadding up a little bit of paper towel and using that on top of the battery to hold it in place when I replaced the cover. That seems to have made a big difference. The issue was definitely with the remote and not the hub, since the hub worked great when I used the harmony iPhone app. I suspected it might’ve been a battery contact issue and that seems to have been what it was.

73

I know this conversation is old and somewhat resolved, but I think there is another approach to solving the problem that has not been discussed precisely. I had same problem as noted above with some sort of wifi conflict between the hub and Roku ultra whereby there would be intermittent lost connections lasting usually 5-10 seconds, but sometimes up to 20-30 seconds.

As noted above, the solution by Dryslot Eric Thomas involves switching the device control from IP to infra-red. The problem is that once the Roku has been added to the remote via wifi scanning, there is no way to change the control from IP to infrared. If one goes to the device control page of the setup app, the option is grayed out.

The work around is to delete the Roku device, unplug it (so it will not be found during the wifi scan), and then add the device back. Now, when the add device routine is run the program will not find the roku on wifi. It will still add the device (though to be specific in my case I had to run the “add device” routine twice) but not as an IP controlled device. Now when going to the “device control page” the option of infrared control (Hub +/- blasters) is no longer grayed out. And control of the Roku is now via infrared rather than IP. Power the Roku back on, and all is good!

Hope that helps someone.

74

I had massive delays with 5 seconds or more between device startups and shutdowns. I was thinking about hard reseting the hub and checking my router. But someone on here said that the same issues did not happen when they used the Harmony smartphone app. I found mine was exactly the same. So I changed the remote control batteries and everything is now working great. I know this has been mentioned before but it is worth trying if you find that the smartphone app does not have the same issues as the remote :slight_smile: