Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting

The integration does not appear after installing

Restart Home Assistant. HACS copies the files in, but Home Assistant only notices new integrations at startup.

If it still does not show up, check that the folder is at config/custom_components/philips_pet_series/ and contains a manifest.json.

One trap if you installed by hand: do not keep a backup copy of the folder inside custom_components. Home Assistant scans everything in that directory and a spare copy sitting alongside the real one produces confusing errors. Keep backups somewhere else entirely.

The code never arrives by email

Check your spam folder first, that is usually where it went.

Make sure you used the exact email address your Philips or home.id account is registered under. It has to match the phone app.

Codes expire fairly quickly. If a few minutes have passed, start the flow again and ask for a new one.

No devices were found after signing in

The integration only sees devices that already exist on your Philips account. Open the phone app and confirm the feeder is there and working. If it is not paired yet, pair it in the app, then reload the integration in Home Assistant.

If the feeder is in the app but not in Home Assistant, it may be a model that is not recognised yet. Please open an issue and say which model you have. Adding one is usually a small change.

"Error opening stream" and "Connection refused" in the log

Expected in the default on-demand mode, and not a fault.

The integration releases the camera connection a few minutes after you stop watching, so the feeder is free for the phone app. Home Assistant's video worker then tries the old address again, fails, and logs it. Open the camera and it reconnects normally.

If you want it to stop, set Camera streaming to Always on in the integration options, or raise the camera idle timeout so the connection is released less often.

The camera does not load, or takes a long time

Give it a few seconds on the first open. The connection to the feeder has to be built from scratch and it is not instant.

If it never loads:

• Check switch.<feeder>_privacy_mode is off. Privacy mode really does turn the camera off.
• Check Camera streaming is not set to Disabled in the options.
• Check the feeder is online, using binary_sensor.<feeder>_device_connectivity.
• Close live view in the Philips app and try again. The feeder only allows a couple of video connections at once and the app may be holding one.

If you have an NVR pulling the stream constantly and Home Assistant will not show the camera, that is the same limit. The recorder is using the connection.

The Philips app cannot show live view any more

Same limit, other way round. If you set Camera streaming to Always on, Home Assistant holds a connection permanently and the app may not get one.

Switch back to On demand if you want to keep using the app for live view. You cannot have both at the same time. This is the feeder's limitation, not something the integration can route around.

The picture is upside down or sideways

Turn on switch.<feeder>_recorded_image_flip if the feeder is mounted upside down.

For a rotation of 90 degrees, do it in go2rtc or your recorder rather than in Home Assistant. There is an example in docs/nvr.md.

Bands or flicker across the video

Change select.<feeder>_anti_flicker. Try 50Hz in Europe and most of Asia, 60Hz in North America. If one looks wrong, the other is right.

Motion alerts fire constantly

Lower select.<feeder>_motion_sensitivity one step and give it a day.

If you want motion completely off, switch.<feeder>_motion_alarm does that.

Some entities are stuck on Unavailable

If you have been running the integration since an early version, you may see leftover entities that never update, often duplicates of ones that work fine. They are from an older naming scheme and are safe to remove: open the entity, click the cog, choose delete.

New installations do not have these.

Everything stopped and Home Assistant is asking me to reconfigure

Your Philips session expired. Click Reconfigure on the integration, ask for a new code, and enter it.

Your devices, entity ids, names and automations all survive this. Nothing is recreated and nothing gets renamed.

Turning on debug logging

Useful before opening an issue. Add this to configuration.yaml and restart:

logger:
  default: warning
  logs:
    custom_components.philips_pet_series: debug

Then reproduce the problem and download the log from Settings, then System, then Logs.

Have a look through it before attaching it. It can contain your email address and device identifiers.

Reporting something

Open an issue and include:

• your feeder model
• the integration version
• your Home Assistant version
• what you expected, and what happened instead
• the relevant part of the log, with personal details removed

For questions rather than bugs, Discussions is the better place.