Frient app states: "not installed"

Questions & Help
21

Same with me, about 10 devices affected

23

Thank you for these forums. Had the same issue this morning. Small panic attac because of 2 HAN and 11 smoke/heat detectors not working. Reassuring that I wasnt the only one having issues :slight_smile:
A reboot of Homey solved the issue for me and they are all back online now.

24

FYI, I rebooted Homey now and the devices got back online again. Still, I think this warrants a deeper discussion regarding how Zigbee is handled on the Homey, I still don’t understand how problems occuring on the internet is affecting anything Zigbee related, this is all supposed to run locally, does anyone have any insight into this?

25

Since this is a community forum, you probably should submit a support request about this: https://support.homey.app/hc/en-us/articles/360015784034-Submitting-a-support-request

I don’t think anyone here has an idea on why this app (and, AFAIK, others too) failed, but it suggests something inside Homey’s app handling (not necessarily Zigbee handling) that has a cloud dependency. Even though Athom states “Local First”, they have historically lacked the mindset to not depend on a bunch of cloud dependencies for Homey that keep coming back to bite them whenever $PLATFORM is offline.

26

@robertklep At my home only the Frient devices were affected. That raises the question for me: is this a (common) Homey problem, or is it a result of the way the specific app is built. If the devices always need cloud information to work, then this specific app is not build “local first”. So: who is to blame: Homey, or this app builder?

27

Two reboots did the trick, confirmed

28

If Homey states that an app isn’t installed, when it clearly is, that’s a Homey problem. How apps are installed or managed isn’t up to the app developer, that’s handled by Homey and Athom.

There’s no such thing as apps not being built “local first”: all apps run locally, on Homey. They may depend on cloud information, but not to the point that not being able to reach a particular cloud service causes Homey to say the app isn’t installed.

Also, I checked the Frient app and it looks like it doesn’t rely on any external information. But since the app page states that it was updated 23 hours ago, it could well be that Homey tried to update the app, ran into issues due to Cloudflare, and then was left in some sort of in-between state where it thought the app wasn’t installed when it was. Which suggests the app update mechanism in Homey might be broken.

2 Likes
29

Thanks for your explanation, Robert. It makes sense that it has something to do with the Frient app update process.
However, I now have the following problem. A Frient motion sensor pro won’t connect properly. The device is detected and paired (it’s also in the Zigbee list in the developer account), but it gets stuck on “Device unavailable - Initializing
”. Restarting Homey, reinstalling the Frient app, deleting the device, repairing the device, nothing helps. It still gets stuck on initializing.
What can I do?

30

Take Homey off power for 10 minutes.

If that doesn’t fix it, try replacing Homey’s power supply. If that doesn’t fix it, you probably need to ask Athom for support.

1 Like
31

Did not work (Homey down for 15 minutes, new stronger power supply). First contacted developer Frient by mail. Will report the solution if I get it.

32

Pairing isn’t handled by the app but by Homey itself, so it’s an issue that the app developer cannot fix.

33

For me it was the network adapter which was causing this kind of issue’s. So if you use one try without this adapter.
Eventually all problems became much worse till the moment i contacted Homey and got a replacement.

34

SOLUTION!

There was an update. But you must go the appstore and install the Frient app again. After a few second all the unavailable devices came back online

35

@Robert: As mentioned, I contacted the Frient developers by email. I received a very quick and clear response: the problem was their initialization of the sensor. It would be resolved with a software update. That update has since arrived, and today I had time to re-register the sensor with Homey. And indeed, it went smoothly now. Frient communicates quickly and clearly, and acts quickly, so I’m satisfied.

1 Like