MobiLinc (iOS) 4.5/4.6/4.7: Apple Watch and Much More!

[andyf0]

Well, my beacon project is a bust! I was hoping to replace geofencing functionality when arriving home (still use geofencing when leaving home), apparently the Estimote beacons can't handle the 100 degree days here in Houston. The beacon seems to just shutdown. Works fine early morning, but not during the heat of the day. Even when it was working the phone still missed the occasional ping which is pretty bad when you're controlling the garage door and the thermostats. Need to come up with another project.

[InsteonNut]

kevkmartin and sumguyinfl18: The Today View widget is not working on iOS9b4. Haven't been able to confirm where the issue is yet, but please let me know how iOS9b4 behaves with the next MobiLinc 4.5 beta release due out at the end of the week as there are some changes to the Today View widget that might help on iOS 9.

 

Thanks elvisimprsntr! Glad you found a solution.

 

Andy: Yes, iBeacon isn't going to be a good solution to replace a geo-fence. They just work on different scales. Geo-fence is good down to 100m and the iBeacon can range from less than 100m down to 10m on low power. You might have better luck with an iBeacon you can plug into a power outlet that's inside the home (temp controlled) and lots of power from the outlet. This *may* solve your use case, but iBeacon is really better suited for areas of the home rather than as a geofence replacement.

 

Wes 

[elvisimprsntr]

Wes,

 

Update on state variable updates during departure. Today was an expedited departure scenario in an attempt to catch the phone in crossover between wifi and cell when MLHD attempts to update the state variables (original problem). Everything worked as expected. From the attached you can see I crossed my 200m geofence 32 seconds after the last beacon state variable update. So it appears the adjustments I made to location and TX power have been successful.

 

[elvisimprsntr]

Well, my beacon project is a bust! I was hoping to replace geofencing functionality when arriving home (still use geofencing when leaving home), apparently the Estimote beacons can't handle the 100 degree days here in Houston. The beacon seems to just shutdown. Works fine early morning, but not during the heat of the day. Even when it was working the phone still missed the occasional ping which is pretty bad when you're controlling the garage door and the thermostats. Need to come up with another project.

@andyf0

 

I am using Bleu Station 100 iBeacons which plug into an outlet. My original problem was the TX power was too high in a departure scenario which caught the phone in transition between wifi and cell connection, thus not updating the state variable. I suspect the AC powered beacons have higher TX power since they are not power limited. Personally I am not planning to use beacon driven state variables to trigger programs, but simply alter the behavior of existing programs.

[InsteonNut]

Hi elvisimprsntr,

 

Great! Glad to hear it!

 

Wes

[InsteonNut]

Hi Folks,

 

Just released 4.5.2 beta through TestFlight. 

 

What's New:

- Force touch MobiLinc Apple Watch app to hide/unhide the Voice Input row.

- If nothing "Near Me", Apple Watch will initially launch to the Dashboard.

- Fixed the occasional Apple Watch and Today View crash.

- Apple Watch app errors are silenced if the app is not active.

- Near Me is now sorted A-Z.

- New pop-up ad for the new plug-ins will appear if neither Extended Screens or Advanced Locations is purchased.

 

Notes:

1. With each new beta you'll need to "purchase" the plug-ins again or tap "Restore".

2. If you setup any push notifications under 4.5.1, you'll need to remove these and set them up again under 4.5.2. My apologies for this unavoidable inconvenience.

3. iOS 9 Beta users: This does not address the Today View widget "Unable to Load" issue present in iOS 9 Beta 4 nor the Touch ID issue present in iOS 9 Beta 4. 

 

If nothing major pops up, this will be the final version submitted to Apple here at the end of next week. Please post all feedback here or submit to: support@mobilinc.com

 

Thank you!

Wes

[elvisimprsntr]

Well my iBeacon testing and project has come to a screeching halt. At 0115 hours all three of my Bleu Station 100 units stopped working.

 

 

Earlier in the evening I reconfigured MLHD to use the UUID and Major to set a single state variable. Everything was working fine. I could walk anywhere in the house and the state variable would indicate INSIDE. I even left the house a couple of times and it seemed to work reliably. Obviously MLHD had nothing to do with my beacon failures.

 

We did have some fairly severe thunderstorms last night, even by Florida standards. I do have a level 2 whole house surge protector which status is good. There was no power outage at lease from the uptime of some of my other devices. I tried the 6/6/6/on manual resets, which I have successfully performed in the past. I even tried powering them with a different power source. So I must conclude there was a power anomaly which damaged all three of my Bleu Station 100 units. I doubt I will get any replacements from the manufacturer.

 

 

 

UPDATE: I went through the reset process one more time on each BS100 to successfully resuscitate the beacons. Still does not explain why the units stopped working all at the same time. Maybe this was a one time occurrence, but it should have never happened.

 

https://twocanoes.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/202863575-Bleu-Station-Reset-Procedure

 

UPDATE2: I completely lost power this morning at 0930 for approx 10 min. When I called the electric utility to report the outage, they indicated the problem was with a main feed line and had crews on site. Now I wonder if the two events are related. A lightening strike last night which damaged a feeder line, which they had to momentarily interrupt my power in order to repair the connection. I did not loose power last night based on uptime reported in my devices, but perhaps there was brown out which caused a problem for the BS100 beacons. I don't have a variable AC power supply to test that scenario, but maybe someone else does. Brown outs have historically been an issue in Florida, especially during severe weather.

[InsteonNut]

Hi Folks,

 

Just released 4.5.3 beta through TestFlight. 

 

What's New:

- Minor bug fixes.

 

Notes:

1. With each new beta you'll need to "purchase" the plug-ins again or tap "Restore".

2. iOS 9 Beta users: This does not address the Today View widget "Unable to Load" issue present in iOS 9 Beta 4 nor the Touch ID issue present in iOS 9 Beta 4. 

 

If nothing major pops up, this will be the final version submitted to Apple on Wednesday. Please post all feedback here or submit to: support@mobilinc.com

 

Thank you!

Wes

[InsteonNut]

Hi iOS 9 beta users,

 

Please update your iOS devices to iOS 9 beta 5 out this morning. I just quickly tested the release candidate 4.5.4 on iOS 9 beta 5 and it appears Apple has fixed the Today View and Touch ID issues that were present in the previous iOS 9 beta 4 release.

 

Wes

[sumguy]

Hmmmm, I can't seem to get the Today View widget to work on iOS9 beta 5. I have restarted the phone, reinstalled the MobiLinc widget, and reinstalled the App. I also restored all plugins after the reinstall. Not sure why it isn't working for me.  Touch ID is working though. I will keep messing with it and see if I can figure it out on my end.

[InsteonNut]

sumguyinfl18,

 

Are you running the latest beta 4.5.4 or the official release?

Also, how many items are attempting to appear on the Today View?

 

Wes

[sumguy]

Wes,

 

I am running 4.5.4. 

 

I have tried selecting only one item to appear on Today View and currently have 3 items selected. Neither have worked.

 

When I check Today View Widgets under settings, I see all three of the devices I selected. 

 

I have messed with it all night and can't figure it out. 

[InsteonNut]

The iOS 9b5 device I have is an iPad air2. It's possible that the iPhone hasn't been addressed yet for this particular issue.

[sumguy]

Okay i just verified it all works on the iPad running iOS 9 beta 5. Today view is still broke on iPhone beta.

[ravedog]

Some changes I was hoping to see in the newest release but so far have not. Some I think are critical (notification center and Mobilinc's implementation of Touch ID) and some are more design or use centric. 

 

1. Notification center or log WITHIN the app: The way notifications work in every other app is that they are actionable notifications. Mostly when you get a notification within an app and you click on it - it takes you to the corresponding info within that app. Mobilinc's notifications just take you to the front of the app. At the very, least it should take you to a list of notifications. Why? Because notification center can only show you the last (up to) 10 notifications. If there are more than 10 from Mobilinc, you will not ever see anything older than the newest 10. Plus in notification center's prefs, you can suppress banner or slide-down notifications but still have badge icons to keep things quiet. I brought this up a long time ago with the previous versions of the app, but I guess we disagreed about the fundamental purpose of notifications. I really think that the app needs a proper log tab or area where a person can review and/or individually (or bulk) delete notifications. There are times I have my phone muted for a whole day and I can miss notifications because of the limitation of notification center. Not to mention that once notification center has been cleared there is no history elsewhere. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE consider putting this in.
2. Touch ID: After it was first introduced last year within the app, I still think it's not implemented properly. Every other app that uses Touch ID to get in, has the user set a PIN code (or password) to get in then ties that code (saved to the keychain) to Touch ID. Mobilinc's implementation of Touch ID does not tie to any user entered code (something internally generated???). Why is this bad? Every other app's use of Touch ID (and even the iPhone itself) will fall back on the code if Touch ID does not work. There are plenty of instances (wet fingers, humidity, dirt, gloves or anything else that can invalidate the sensor, including hardware failure) where the user can fall back on the code or password. Because you do not allow for a PIN tied to the Touch ID, there could be a situation where the user could never get into Mobilinc. I activated touch ID today as a test, left the program, re-entered and it popped up with a Touch ID screen, then it let me in. If I hit cancel on the Touch ID dialog, it is supposed to default to a keypad or keyboard to enter the code. Instead, it popped up with "Failed to Authenticate: Cancelled by User" Try again. And it wanted me to use Touch ID. If the sensor failed me I would be forever locked out of the app. I brought this up a year ago and ended up turning the feature off because it never got resolved. 
3. Touch ID and hiding the app's screen when in the background: Touch ID within apps is supposed to add a layer of protection to enter the app with additional authentication from the phone itself. When a user leaves the app, Mobilinc SHOULD immediately throw up a generic cover screen graphic BEFORE it hibernates in the background. Why? Because Apple basically takes a screenshot of apps last state when they are thrown in the background so when you go to the app switcher and see all the apps - you are seeing a picture of it's last state (it's not live - only Apple apps can be live). If you are protecting an app with Touch ID, then assume that when a person flips thru apps using the switcher, they want the protected app to not reveal anything: they should only see a splash screen or static protection graphic rather than the last known contents. Mobilinc IS showing a graphic when you return to the app but not BEFORE you switch out, but the graphic is put up when you return; which means you can see the old data briefly before its covered. A good example of this is 1Password: immediately when you double click the home button and jsut activate the switcher, it throws up a protection graphic.
4. Nice "human-readable" names: The nice thing about ML, is that it provides a great GUI front end to the ISY backend. The ISY (the way I have it) is ugly in the way I name devices or programs or variables... makes sense to me from a programming perspective but trust me, the names aren't pretty. I was hoping that ML could have a field that would allow a person to enter a "human name" or even take the "VOCAL NAME" field and use that. You can already change the STATUS fields and COMMAND names from the default ON OFF FAST ON etc) why not go the whole way and add a "human-readable" device name? My notification center widget is not very nice looking because it's pulling the device name from the ISY.
5. Icons: Why not allow the user to add their own icons - define the parameters (WxH PNG w/ transparency) and allow a person to upload it to the app's icon and then use iCloud to sync it across devices (not sure how to do it across platforms) or just have them sent across devices with the built-in sync feature. If the user uploads a size too big - scale within the app. It's frustrating because some devices I have have to be shoe-horned into an existing icon (and I just translate it in my head). I'm guessing that it was never made an option because you want to keep the design esthetics but this is an app used by people who are completely controlling their Home Automation experience. 

[InsteonNut]

Hi ravedog,

 

Thanks for the feedback. Here are my comments:

 

1. We agree 100%. This is on the to-do list. There were some critical backend and app components that needed to be developed in 4.5 that are required in order to support something like this. With the new camera image notification feature on the watch, we want to expand this to the iPhone/iPad similar to how you suggest with a notification log. We have some specific ideas here we're exploring. RE tapping on the notification. This is also something we're looking at adding. The problem with the current implementation is that the notification may be for another ISY/profile that isn't active in MobiLinc at the time which makes this a bit more challenging.  

 

2 and 3. The first time TouchID fails, it will prompt you for your ISY's password. Or more specifically, the password you currently have entered into MobiLinc for your ISY or MobiLinc Connect. We've considered tossing up the splash screen on background, but TouchID in this case is just preventing unauthorized access to your system. In the case of the 1Password app you absolutely don't want someone to see your password, but for MobiLinc, I'm not sure what the privacy issue would be if someone happened to see the light status at some time in the past you backgrounded MobiLinc. That status you see on the app switcher isn't live. It's just the last status MobiLinc saw before it was backgrounded, so the actual status of any device could be any status. You'd have to get into MobiLinc to see/control the devices which TouchID would prevent for an unauthorized user.

 

4. Adding in a name override is do-able. I'll add this to the list to consider.

 

5. I don't disagree with this, but the effort to implement and support this is enormous. There have been recent advances with iCloud that does help make some of this easier, but it's a surprising amount of work to add. We have some ideas here that would address this issue, but will take some time to fully flesh out into a solution that will work for most folks.

 

Wes

[InsteonNut]

Hi folks,

 

Great news, Apple approved 4.5.4 today! The update will be rolling out via the App Store over the next 24 hours for all three apps, MobiLinc Pro, MobiLinc HD, and Orchestrated MobiLinc.

 

Wes

[Quietminded]

Download, on the watch, and everything working great. Thank you

[InsteonNut]

Thanks Quietminded! Glad to hear it!

 

Wes

[kaphely]

Hi Wes, just updated Mobilinc on my iPhone and iPad with the update that showed up on the app store today. I had not read the comments in this thread yet and just found out that today view doesn't work on IOS 9 public beta for iPhone. I have the same issue here. Today view works on my iPad with the same IOS version though.

 

I bought the extended views plugin because I have an apple watch and I found out also that there is nothing that shows up on my apple watch even after selecting "Always on apple watch" on one of my device's Extended screen option. Is this related to the today view bug for the iPhone? Because I just bought a 22.95$ plugin that is useless to me. Anything we can do?

[InsteonNut]

Hi kaphely,

 

As you've discovered, this is the risk of running beta releases of iOS. We're still holding off on loading the iOS 9 beta on our devices until it's more stable.

 

For the Apple Watch, this *should* work, but we haven't confirmed iOS 9/Watch2 OS compatibility yet on our end. Again, beta releases are quite unstable. With that said, it maybe something else. If all you see is a black screen with the time in the upper right corner, then see our website for a possible solution: http://mobilinc.com/features/TodayView/

 

Reproduced below:

Q: "The MobiLinc Watch app does not load on Apple Watch or the Today View"

A: Please try the following steps in order:

 

1. On the iPhone, make sure the iOS device is running the latest iOS version.

2. Double-tap the home button and close out of all apps.

3. Remove MobiLinc from the Today View.

4. Reboot the iPhone.

5. Reboot the Apple Watch.

6. Once the watch and iPhone are rebooted, open the watch app on the iPhone and remove MobiLinc and then reinstall.

7. Once reinstalled, open MobiLinc and go to Plug-Ins and tap "Restore".

8. Open MobiLinc on the Watch and verify that it starts up.

9. Add MobiLinc back to the Today View and verify that iOS loads the MobiLinc widget.

 

If iOS is still unable to load MobiLinc on the Apple Watch or Today View, please try deleting MobiLinc and reinstall from the App Store.

[kaphely]

FYI, I am only running the iPhone and iPad public betas, but I am using the official WatchOS 1.0.1.

 

I did all the above and the watch app still displays a black screen with the time in the upper right corner even after I set up device to show up on the apple watch.

 

Any other idea?

[InsteonNut]

Hi kaphely,

 

I am only running the iPhone and iPad public betas, but I am using the official WatchOS 1.0.1

 

 

I'm pretty certain that this isn't a supported configuration. So much of WatchOS 1.x relies on iOS 8.4 that I would be pretty shocked if this did work. In all release notes I've seen, the two OSs must be matched. IE iOS 9 with WatchOS2.

 

In either case, the way the MobiLinc 4.5 Watch extension runs, is it runs on the iPhone. So, it's mostly iOS 9 running the watch kit app which is still in beta coupled with a non-matching WatchOS version. I would be surprised if this configuration did work.

 

Wes

[kaphely]

Hi kaphely,

 

 

I'm pretty certain that this isn't a supported configuration. So much of WatchOS 1.x relies on iOS 8.4 that I would be pretty shocked if this did work. In all release notes I've seen, the two OSs must be matched. IE iOS 9 with WatchOS2.

 

In either case, the way the MobiLinc 4.5 Watch extension runs, is it runs on the iPhone. So, it's mostly iOS 9 running the watch kit app which is still in beta coupled with a non-matching WatchOS version. I would be surprised if this configuration did work.

 

Wes

Every other watch app I have works in this configuration. So it seems that there is something particular to Mobilinc that makes it behave badly. With the eminent release of IOS9 ( a month or so I guess), aren't you going to try it so everything works out on the release date? The current public beta is quite stable in my opinion, so I guess it would be a good time to start trying your app on it. We already made fixes to our apps at work so they work well with IOS9 as soon as it is released.

 

I might try going back to IOS8 but I hate having to restore everything on my phone.

 

Thank you for the support!

[InsteonNut]

Hi kaphely,

 

So it seems that there is something particular to Mobilinc that makes it behave badly.

 

It's possible. The MobiLinc extensions are quite complex. Much more so than your average app since we do real-time network connections to the ISY along with many other customization points. But from the sound of it, the watch app isn't even loading which is a bit perplexing.

 

With the eminent release of IOS9 ( a month or so I guess), aren't you going to try it so everything works out on the release date?

 

Yes, however, Apple has been known to make changes in the final version not seen by anyone until it goes out publicly. We do the best we can to test, rectify, and update the apps as soon as possible. 

 

Wes