[APP][Pro] Android TV - Take control of your TV experience (NEW!)

Central Topic for Android TV | Homey app (Note Only Test version available, Links will be updated when released.)

Central Topic for the official Android TV App

For the original Community App see this Topic:
[APP][Pro] Android TV - Community (deprecated)

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The new version of the official Android TV App is now available for testing! You can find it here. Looking forward to your feedback!

A big thanks to @lucasvdh for the great work—we had a chat, and to avoid confusion between the two versions, we’ll be hiding his version of the app in the future.

Lastly, we’re exploring the addition of multimedia controls via Google Cast, but that’s still a work in progress.

Happy testing! :raised_hands:

9 Likes

Installed the test version. Will continue to test and drop possible findings here. Thanks for arranging this!

Any option to get a dropdown listing all installed apps so they can be started?

Unfortunately, there’s no way to query the device for installed apps, so that’s not possible.

Thanks for developing this app!
I installed the test version too.
When the TV is turned off the device becomes offline. I can’t turn the tv on with Homey because it is offline. When I turn the TV on it is available in Homey again.
Is this a TV limitation or can this be fixed in the app?

Too bad :frowning:

So, you have a TV running Android TV? If you have a regular TV with a separate Android TV device I would recommend playing with the HDMI CEC settings. I have a Xiaomi Mi Box S connected to a Samsung TV and had to disable the HDMI CEC in order to let the Xiaomi Mi Box S run in the background even with the TV off. So, my TV can be off, but the box can still be controlled.

Awesome :slight_smile: I installed the test version. I run it against a Nvidia Shield 2019. For some reason the app makes the device unavailable after a little while even when you just leave it and dont use anything and i have to restart the app to reconnect it. Some of the buttons dont work like the volume +/- and mute other then that everything works for me.

Yes, I have a Philips TV with android TV running on it.

I’m experiencing the same issue with my Philips OLED 804. You can adjust some power settings on the TV and turn on “Switch on with Chromecast” listed under network settings, which should resolve the problem. However, in my case, it only works when the TV is connected via Wi-Fi, not LAN. Just one of those quirks some TVs have—unfortunately, there’s not much we can do about it.

Seems like a well known issue with Philips TV’s, if the above doesn’t work you can give this Reddit thread a read

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Oké thanks., will try that when I get home.

Just tried this on my Philips OLED 804 using the Amazon Alexa trick, and it worked!

You don’t even need to touch your phone—just open the Amazon Alexa app on the TV and go through the setup. When it gets to the part where your phone needs to discover the TV on the network, just wait until the TV says no phone has been found. Then, press “Later”, and it will ask if you want Alexa to turn on your TV when it’s off. Enable that, and boom—problem solved.

Only downside; Idle power usage jumped from 0.9W to 21W when the TV is off. But hey, you win some, you lose some right :sweat_smile:

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Sorry for not maintaining the original app guys! :frowning: Life happened, and time got away from me.

Wishing Athom the best with the new app, and I hope to contribute to the Homey ecosystem again in the future when I’ve got some more time! Still using Homey every day :raised_hands:

10 Likes

Thanks for all your effort and hard work, @lucasvdh.
Very much appreciated!

I have transitioned one of my flows to the new app. This way in the morning a slide show using the TV Photos app is shown on my Samsung The Frame.
I did notice the flow shows “Device unavailable” when it is clearly up and running. Restarting the app fixes this. So, I added the Android TV app to my list of nightly restarts. If it works it is ok if not, getting it more stable would be appreciated.

On a side note: I can highly recommend the TV Photos app! I have an external HDD with about 50.000 picture that we have taken the past 22 years and that way without having to sit down to watch pictures, we are every now and then reliving beautiful moments

I had the same problem with a Google TV of Panasonic and I solved it by activating Stay Awake from the developer settings of the TV. Now the TV is always online even when it is in stand-by (I don’t know the effects on energy consumption…).

@Doekse: given the official support for this app, is the release of a new UI Components for TV remote controls planned? the management through Buttons UI is quite confusing…

Hi, I have the same issue that my Shield becomes unavailable after some time. I tried different power settings at my Shield, but that doesn’t help.
Did you find a solution for this yet?

Not yet. I have had a couple off emails going back and forward with the dev and i have a couple of tests that we have talked about that im testing. The new test version seam to work slightly better but it stil crash the device. It looks like it loose the connection to the shield and aint trying to reconnect it. Bob have a better grasp on what is happening then i do.

2 questions : do you run homey on lan or wifi? And how is your shield connected?

I run both on wifi, although I can connect my shield via lan if that would solve the problem or can help with testing. Let me know if I can help or if it would be helpfull for me to contect the dev team as well

I have tried now both lan and wifi on both units in varius combinations. All with same result. Do not think that is related in this case.

A bit off-topic, i am afraid, but its the nearest I get, and maybe someone here knows more about it. It is not about the app on Homey, but the main Homey app on Andriod-devices).
I would like to install the main Homey app (for Andriod) on my Andriod TV (Nvidia Schield Pro or another Andriod TV box) in order to run dashboards. Did someone do this succesfully?