The Sure Petcare integration randomly becomes unavailable

roldengarm commented 1 year ago

The problem

The Sure Petcare integration randomly becomes unavailable, and therefore I can't unlock/lock my cat flap anymore. At that time, the app seems also slow. I'm not sure if that's related though as the app is always slow and sluggish. It does work via the app, but HA still shows Unavailable. E.g. 11 minutes ago it became unavailable:

I could log in via the website fine, which I believe uses the same API, see further more for details.

After ~23 minutes the problem has been resolved this time, but it is going to happen again I'm sure.

Our network is very stable and I don't have any other networking issues. No other issues in HA.

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2023.8.0

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant Container

Integration causing the issue

surepatcare

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/surepetcare

Diagnostics information

home-assistant_surepetcare_2023-08-04T06-43-16.215Z.log

Example YAML snippet

n/a

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

2023-08-04 18:15:28.145 ERROR (MainThread) [surepy.client] Can not load data from https://app.api.surehub.io/api/me/start
2023-08-04 18:15:28.153 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.surepetcare] Error fetching surepetcare data: Unable to fetch data: 
2023-08-04 18:31:11.144 ERROR (MainThread) [surepy.client] Can not load data from https://app.api.surehub.io/api/me/start
2023-08-04 18:31:11.146 DEBUG (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.surepetcare] Finished fetching surepetcare data in 60.003 seconds (success: False)

Additional information

I was able to log in to the website fine via https://www.surepetcare.io/account but at the same time HA threw above error in the logs about not being able to load the data from the API. It also called the same endpoint with a proper 200 result in the website:

I've also sent them an email to ask if they are aware of server issues.

home-assistant[bot] commented 1 year ago

Hey there @benleb, @danielhiversen, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (surepetcare) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks!

Code owner commands

Code owners of `surepetcare` can trigger bot actions by commenting: - `@home-assistant close` Closes the issue. - `@home-assistant rename Awesome new title` Renames the issue. - `@home-assistant reopen` Reopen the issue. - `@home-assistant unassign surepetcare` Removes the current integration label and assignees on the issue, add the integration domain after the command.

_{^{(message by CodeOwnersMention)}}

surepetcare documentation surepetcare source _{^{(message by IssueLinks)}}

MadMonkey87 commented 1 year ago

I have the same issues with the integration

Laho812 commented 1 year ago

I think it might have something to do with the issue #93814. I guess they limit the polling rate of the user agent the surepy integration uses.

roldengarm commented 1 year ago

@Laho812 that is a very possible scenario. SureFlap seems to be reading along here, on the HA forum. See e.g. the topic about making HA local; Sureflap has released firmware updates to make that harder/impossible.

Laho812 commented 1 year ago

Does someone know the new path of the surepy/const.py to change the user agent? The one mentioned in this comment no longer exists ... Edit: it just changed to python3.11 so I changed my user agent and I will see if it becomes still unavailable sometimes.

Laho812 commented 1 year ago

Changing the user agent has no effect. I still got connection issues. Today at 15:18, 06:43 and 06:23 CEST. I analyzed the last 3 weeks (07.08. - 27.08.) and thats the result: 06:20 - 06:48 | 20x 07:10 - 08:00 | 5x 08:40 - 10:10 | 5x 13:00 - 15:00 | 4x 16:40 - 18:05 | 15x 21:20 - 22:30 | 5x Time in CEST (UTC +02:00).

It doesn't look like the connection issues are random, rather than at regular times of the day. So I guess it's a load issue on surepetcare side.

magicmega commented 1 year ago

I'm also having the same issue, actually with the SureHA custom integration but I think that uses the same polling. Anyone had any luck fixing it?

roldengarm commented 1 year ago

No luck here @magicmega Because of this issue, my scheduled unlock/lock randomly fails as well. So, I've added a "while" loop to my automations to actually wait until it's locked or unlocked.

phred91 commented 1 year ago

I have also been experiencing random connection problems between HA and the Sure Petcare backend. In my case, however, whenever HA loses connectivity, the ears on the Sure Petcare Hub, which is plugged into the house network via Ethernet cable, also loses connectivity and the ears start flashing red. Checking the App or Browser access to surepetcare.io, I can connect, however the App informs me that the door is offline. I have tried resetting both the Hub and the Door, I even opened a ticket with the company. They never got back to me about the ticket. In the meantime, it just randomly starts working again and then a few days later stops for a few hours or a few days. The Hub and the Door are quite close to each other, so that shouldn't be an issue as it had been working for years with no issues.

My guess is some sort of network issue. Out of curiosity, do all of the people above having problems: a) Also have the connectivity issue between Hub and Door with flashing red ears? b) Use some sort of ad blocker such as PiHole, which may be blocking some sort of phone home telemetry that they don't like you blocking? (This one is a long shot I know!)

roldengarm commented 1 year ago

a) No, no red ears. b) I have pi hole and didn't have to whitelist anything.

I've "fixed" it by adding a while loop in my automation to unlock it, wait 1 minute, check if it's unlocked, if not try again.

bertrijken commented 11 months ago

My Sure Petcare integration has been unable to get information about the locks for quite some time. I do see if my pets are indoors our outdoors, but I'm not able to adjust the locks or for that matter even see the status of them. Within the Sure Petcare app, all looks normal.

Benniepie commented 11 months ago

@Laho812 that is a very possible scenario. SureFlap seems to be reading along here, on the HA forum. See e.g. the topic about making HA local; Sureflap has released firmware updates to make that harder/impossible.

I've had a sure pet cat flap for a while, and have also recently experienced the red flashing hub ears and the integration becoming unavailable which also seems to cause their terrible app to either hang or show the hub/catflap as disconnected. Even prior to using the HA integration and Sure Pet's recent hostility to us, it has never worked reliably. More effort goes into thwarting their DIY customer base than they do into making their product better or more reliable. The product is an expensive bag of spanners in so many ways. It makes an absolute racket with its clunks and bangs, one of my cats won't go near it. Frequent outtages, gobbles batteries, random disconects are the norm. I came back from a weekend away to find the cat flap disconnected and an extra cat (not mine) in my house. This has happened twice, last one caused a lot of damage.

I really do appreciate the effort that has gone into the cat and mouse game (sorry) against SurePet to keep the HA integration working for the users. Sure pet does not deserve its customer base.

Sorry for rant - seen those red ears one too many times...!

roldengarm commented 11 months ago

@Benniepie totally agreed, the app is terrible, and it's crazy the cat flap doesn't work very well with rechargable batteries. I'm still using it with them, but they only last ~3 weeks, they start at only ~40% SOC. Guess the flap doesn't work well with 1.2V vs 1.5V

Their support is pretty good, but I don't want to rely on a company + their online platform to manage my cat flap. Hopefully one day we can have local HA support again.

FYI regarding local support see: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/local-deployment-for-sureflap-surepetcare-connect-using-only-local-mqtt-broker/274494

Laho812 commented 11 months ago

@Benniepie totally agreed, the app is terrible, and it's crazy the cat flap doesn't work very well with rechargable batteries. I'm still using it with them, but they only last ~3 weeks, they start at only ~40% SOC. Guess the flap doesn't work well with 1.2V vs 1.5V

Their support is pretty good, but I don't want to rely on a company + their online platform to manage my cat flap. Hopefully one day we can have local HA support again.

FYI regarding local support see: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/local-deployment-for-sureflap-surepetcare-connect-using-only-local-mqtt-broker/274494

Hi, Can confirm, the flap wants 1.5V batteries and you have to change them when voltage drops below 1.2V, so using 1.2V rechargeable batteries is nearly impossible. I hardwired my flap with 6V, so the battery is always at about 80% in HA. Furthermore I added a relais between the hardwire and the batteries, so the flap works even during power outage.

neutronwrangler commented 9 months ago

@Benniepie totally agreed, the app is terrible, and it's crazy the cat flap doesn't work very well with rechargable batteries. I'm still using it with them, but they only last ~3 weeks, they start at only ~40% SOC. Guess the flap doesn't work well with 1.2V vs 1.5V

Their support is pretty good, but I don't want to rely on a company + their online platform to manage my cat flap. Hopefully one day we can have local HA support again.

FYI regarding local support see: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/local-deployment-for-sureflap-surepetcare-connect-using-only-local-mqtt-broker/274494

I found that even alkalines had a short life. I fitted these 1.5V lithium ion 4 weeks ago, and no reduction in voltage until the HA lost authentication last week. I expect there will be a sudden drop sometime, but they are rechargeable

EBL 8 Slots AA AAA Lithium-ion... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08914YZXY?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

roldengarm commented 9 months ago

Same for me, I bought some Li Ion at Aliexpress, and they've been at 74% for a couple of weeks now.

wtluke commented 5 months ago

Related to it becoming unavailable, would it be possible to have a HA boolean switch in this integration for when it can/can't connect to Sure's API? (here in Surepy I think). I don't think it's possible at the moment but shout if it is, it would be really useful to see when the flap is on/offline to send me a notification (and to track just how terrible it is and email their CS).

roldengarm commented 5 months ago

@wtluke I previously created an automation for this, as the status will become "Unavailable" when the API is down. However, I found out it becomes unavailable pretty often, so I've disabled it.

issue-triage-workflows[bot] commented 2 months ago

There hasn't been any activity on this issue recently. Due to the high number of incoming GitHub notifications, we have to clean some of the old issues, as many of them have already been resolved with the latest updates. Please make sure to update to the latest Home Assistant version and check if that solves the issue. Let us know if that works for you by adding a comment 👍 This issue has now been marked as stale and will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

home-assistant / core