Doorbell Silent Mode (Chime and Call)

[krelltunez]

I previously had working toggles for the "silent mode" for the Arlo Video Doorbell's chimes and calls using this add-on. I used this in a "naptime" automation that silences all Echo devices and the Doorbell, as well as my phone notifications. At some point, the toggles for the doorbell stopped working. I am not certain when this happened, so I can't pinpoint it to an HA release. It may have corresponded with one of the latest hass-aarlo updates but I cannot say that with any degree of certainty.

Any idea how I could troubleshoot this? I'm pretty good with Home Assistant but have never done a ton of troubleshooting before. I've got no idea what the next steps might be here, but I'm happy to try!

Also curious whether anyone else is seeing this? I know there may not be many users that have the doorbell.

[twrecked]

Either I broke it or Arlo changed it. I'll take a look.

But if you want to poke around in the debug - see here how to turn it on.

edit: looks like its working here for me

[krelltunez]

I'll see what I can see. When I click the toggle on, it looks as if it worked, but about 2-3 seconds later it goes back to being off.

[krelltunez]

I haven't debugged yet as I'll need to wait until I can devote more attention to that. But, I've played a bit with the HA toggles while staring at the Arlo app on my phone. Some strange behavior to report:

1. Going into the app, I found that silent mode was already on. This made me think the toggles were partially working, and I was right...
2. Clicking the "Silent Mode Chime" toggle on does indeed turn on silent mode within Arlo. Since the HA toggle immediately resets to off, though, I'm unable to turn it back off using HA. I have to do that in the Arlo app itself. (Also, note that when I click this toggle in HA, it turns on silent mode for BOTH chime and calls.)
3. Clicking the "Silent Mode Chime Call" toggle also turns it on. Same issue turning it off though - I need to go into the Arlo app to toggle it off again. (Strangest of all, this toggle turns on silent mode only for the chime, NOT for calls - even though this is the "Call" toggle in HA.)

I've got it switched off for now until I can test further later today. If the above gives you any ideas about what might be going on, please let me know.

Thanks!!

[krelltunez]

I set up debugging and the packet dumping. Unfortunately, I don't see any exceptions or errors/tracebacks. All I see in the log related to the "silent" switches is the following (when I toggle the switches):

2021-02-06 10:45:09 DEBUG (SyncWorker_27) [custom_components.aarlo.switch] Turning on silent mode for Front Door Silent Mode Chime 2021-02-06 10:45:12 DEBUG (SyncWorker_25) [custom_components.aarlo.switch] Turning on silent mode for Front Door Silent Mode Chime Call

There is nothing after those log entries to indicate something went wrong. FYI, since the toggle immediately goes back to "off" the only option I have it to turn silent mode on (i.e., I cannot turn it off as described above).

The packets.dump file is more like trying to read Greek to me, so I'm not sure what to report back.

[twrecked]

I probably need to get some packets from you to work out what is going wrong. It's working great for me (I actually have some of the doorbells).

Before we got to logs, questions:

• which doorbell version is it?
• did admin mode get removed on the account?
• can you send me the entity id of the switch?

I'll poke around here some more.

[krelltunez]

Okay... let me see if I can answer those questions:

1. It's the Arlo Video Doorbell (https://www.arlo.com/en-us/products/arlo-video-doorbell/default.aspx)
2. I don't know what this means. Where would I find admin mode? Is this in my Arlo account or somewhere else?
3. Here are the two entity IDs: switch.aarlo_front_door_silent_mode_chime switch.aarlo_front_door_silent_mode_chime_call

Also, just so you know, in the instructions about debugging, I started to not understand things once I got to the "Hiding Sensitive Data" section. If I need to encrypt stuff before sending it, I may need to work that out.

[krelltunez]

Regarding 2 above, I checked in the Arlo app where I granted access to HASS and "Front Door" (my doorbell) is checked and below the device listing I have "Allow Access Rights" turned on. Is that what you meant by "admin mode"?

[twrecked]

Sorry, those docs assume you are comfortable with python and running pyaarlo, the sister software to this.

The logs contain your serial numbers, which isn't particularly sensitive, but it's nice to hide in a public forum. You can paste your logs into here and only I will be able to view them but they will still contain your serial number.

If you can get me the logs from around when you make the doorbell silent and it flips back that would be great.

[krelltunez]

OK, I flipped the toggles at 19:12:33 and 19:12:37 according to the HA log:

2021-02-06 19:12:33 DEBUG (SyncWorker_9) [custom_components.aarlo.switch] Turning on silent mode for Front Door Silent Mode Chime 2021-02-06 19:12:37 DEBUG (SyncWorker_25) [custom_components.aarlo.switch] Turning on silent mode for Front Door Silent Mode Chime Call

And here's the encrypted packets.dump output starting a few minutes before that (I don't see any corresponding timestamps but I don't really know what I'm looking at):

-----BEGIN PYAARLO DUMP----- REMOVED -----END PYAARLO DUMP-----

Please tell me if I did this the wrong way. Thanks!

[twrecked]

You did it perfectly. Unfortunately there was nothing I could see there.

Can you send me the log - it's where you keep your config and call homeassistant.log - from around the time your press the button and it flips back.

[krelltunez]

Sure I'll clean the log to remove non-Arlo stuff and send later this morning. That said, I didn't see anything in the logs related to this except the lines showing that the mode was turned on.

Do you think removing and re-adding the doorbell (and the entities as a result) to HA would do anything? I could do that pretty easily I think.

[krelltunez]

As an aside, I am using your lovelace alpha frontend. That couldn't have anything to do with this, could it?

[twrecked]

The alpha release shouldn't have anything to do with this (shouldn't being the key work) although you've given me a good idea, the ability to mute the chime from the lovelace card.

Can you past your logger config? I want to make sure we've got everything turned on we need.

[krelltunez]

That would be cool!

Here's what I have turned on:

Debugging for Arlo Video Doorbell problem

logger: default: info logs: custom_components.aarlo: debug custom_components.aarlo.switch: debug pyaarlo: debug

Please let me know if I was overzealous excluding stuff I didn't think was applicable.

Thanks!

[twrecked]

That looks good. If you get those logs tidied and sent I'll take a look.

It could be to do with recent changes; we stopped pinging video doorbells so much, I'm just having a hard time working out how that would affect it.

Do you see any log looking like this. The silentMode is the important bit:

2021-02-05 15:03:44 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] set:ArloDoorBell/XXXXXXXXX/silentMode={'active': False, 'call': True}

You could try removing and re-adding the aarlo switch piece.

[krelltunez]

Nope, no ArloEventStream logs relating to the doorbell. Only SyncWorker ones. See lines 1069, 1070, 1150, and 1151 for the times when I toggled the switches. What I did was rebooted (after installing the latest version of your add-on), waited a bit, and then hit the toggles.

How do I remove and re-add the switch piece? In the config.yaml file? Anyway, here's my tidied up log (retaining all lines having to do with Arlo):

-----BEGIN PYAARLO DUMP----- REMOVED -----END PYAARLO DUMP-----

[twrecked]

It looks like I'm not getting the packet back I expect. Sorry but we need to turn on more debug.

Add this to your aarlo config:

aarlo:
 verbose_debug: True

And what we are looking for is the packets going in and out just after the "Turning on silent mode for ....". I have the original non-video doorbell and on my system it looks like:

2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (SyncWorker_33) [custom_components.aarlo.switch] Turning on silent mode for Back Door Bell Silent Mode Chime Call
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (SyncWorker_33) [pyaarlo] notify+ sent
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloBackgroundWorker) [pyaarlo] post+response running
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloBackgroundWorker) [pyaarlo] request-url=https://myapi.arlo.com/hmsweb/users/devices/notify/XXXXXXXXXXX
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloBackgroundWorker) [pyaarlo] request-params=
{'action': 'set',
 'from': '3952NM-336-7759821_web',
 'properties': {'silentMode': {'active': True, 'call': True}},
 'publishResponse': True,
 'resource': 'doorbells/XXXXXXXXXXX',
 'to': 'XXXXXXXXXXX',
 'transId': 'web!XXXXXXXXXXX'}
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloBackgroundWorker) [pyaarlo] request-headers=
{'xcloudId': 'RMKGBFKM-1005-140-6162386'}
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloBackgroundWorker) [pyaarlo] request-end=200
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloBackgroundWorker) [pyaarlo] request-body=
{'success': True}
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] packet-in=
{ 'action': 'is',
  'from': 'XXXXXXXXXXX',
  'properties': {'silentMode': {'active': True, 'call': True}},
  'resource': 'doorbells/XXXXXXXXXXX',
  'to': '3952NM-336-7759821_web',
  'transId': 'web!XXXXXXXXXXX'}
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] sending doorbells/XXXXXXXXXXX to XXXXXXXXXXX
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] Back Door Bell DOORBELL got one doorbells/XXXXXXXXXXX
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] set:ArloDoorBell/XXXXXXXXXXX/silentMode={'active': True, 'call': True}
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] Back Door Bell: child got doorbells/XXXXXXXXXXX event **
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] Back Door Bell: got doorbells/XXXXXXXXXXX event **
2021-02-07 11:28:56 DEBUG (ArloEventStream) [pyaarlo] doorbells/XXXXXXXXXXX:XXXXXXXXXXX bounded device!

[krelltunez]

OK, I'll turn that on and reboot. I expect that I'll get back to this later this evening.

Thanks for all your help. Hopefully we can figure this out!!

[krelltunez]

Bad news - I'm obviously not the expert here, but I see the request going out, but I don't see the packet coming back in. You'll see that I toggled both switches and neither got back anything. Included ~500 lines for good measure but I don't see any "packet-in" events related to the doorbell or silent mode.

So... should I remove/re-add? What do you recommend, removing the doorbell completely (from the HA Arlo user I set up) and re-adding it? Or modifying my config.yaml somehow (perhaps to remove the "doorbell_silence" line)?

switch:

• platform: aarlo siren: True all_sirens: True snapshot: True doorbell_silence: True siren_volume: 8 siren_duration: 30

Here's the log:

MOVED TO FILE Log.txt

[twrecked]

I can see the issue. We're not getting the response I'm expecting back. I'll take a look at how to fix it.

I guess something changed, hence not seeing this before.

You don't need to remove the switch, the problem is my code.

[jesserockz]

I don't use silent mode but I can give it a try when I have some time.

Also @krelltunez you might want to paste the encrypted text into a file and upload it into your comment. It takes ages to scroll past on mobile =)

[twrecked]

@jesserockz Thanks for taking a look; the problem @krelltunez is seeing is the silentMode never comes back from Arlo. I guess I'm looking for confirmation. I have a fix that looks good just want to make sure.

[jesserockz]

Ok here is what I see:

Change ...silent_mode_chime to be on and it goes on -> off -> on - I think just a delay in server feedback as it turns on live in the mobile app at the same time as the "second" on. ...silent_mode_chime_call turns on at the same time as the "second" on as well.

If I switch the silent switch in the Arlo app then the switches in HA toggle at the same time to the correct state.

So for me the switches are working as intended.

I have the AVD2001 - Wire Free Doorbell connected directly to WiFi

[krelltunez]

Also @krelltunez you might want to paste the encrypted text into a file and upload it into your comment. It takes ages to scroll past on mobile =)

Thanks for the tip. I'm new to providing logs so pardon the bad form!

Change ...silent_mode_chime to be on and it goes on -> off -> on - I think just a delay in server feedback as it turns on live in the mobile app at the same time as the "second" on. ...silent_mode_chime_call turns on at the same time as the "second" on as well.

Difference is mine goes on -> off and never comes back on. And, of course because it doesn't show as on in HA, toggling it in the Arlo app does not show anything in HA.

[twrecked]

It should be fixed in 0.7.0.10 by pr #386

[krelltunez]

I was SO excited... alas, I'm still seeing the same - the toggle goes on -> off and stays off, despite the fact that it did actually turn on silent mode on the doorbell.

Anything I can do? Obviously if this is working for you and others, mine must be some glitch specific to my setup.

[twrecked]

Can you send me the logs around the time you silence the chimes. I guess I must have missed something.

[krelltunez]

Here you go - starting with the switch toggle and including everything afterwards for a couple minutes. Please let me know if you need more. Thanks. HA Log Encrypt.txt

[twrecked]

It's doing what I expect it to do; I must have missed a step. Leave it with me.

I noticed the switch was missing some debug which I've added in. This might be a bit of a grind finding out what is happening but this should give me a better idea. I'll push a new update.

[krelltunez]

Just installed 0.7.0.11 and gave it another shot. Same behavior, toggle doesn't stay on.

EDIT: Adding logs.

HA Log Encrypt.txt

[twrecked]

Thanks. There is definitely something strange going on. We both get the same packet and handle it differently. I think something isn't getting set up correctly.

edit: found it, I went to the hard work of passing the packet back then I got it wrong... Give me a few minutes.

[twrecked]

Hopefully this 0.7.0.12 will fix it. I wasn't passing the packet back correctly so the switch didn't know what to do with it.

[krelltunez]

BINGO! It works!!!

[twrecked]

Excellent!

[dejan2101]

Don't know if there is any connection but i'm getting this log error:

Logger: homeassistant.components.binary_sensor Source: custom_components/aarlo/pyaarlo/doorbell.py:112 Integration: Binary sensor (documentation, issues) First occurred: 10:14:24 PM (2 occurrences) Last logged: 10:14:24 PM

Error adding entities for domain binary_sensor with platform aarlo Error while setting up aarlo platform for binary_sensor Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/helpers/entity_platform.py", line 315, in async_add_entities await asyncio.gather(*tasks) File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/helpers/entity_platform.py", line 506, in _async_add_entity await entity.add_to_platform_finish() File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/helpers/entity.py", line 531, in add_to_platform_finish self.async_write_ha_state() File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/helpers/entity.py", line 296, in async_write_ha_state self._async_write_ha_state() File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/helpers/entity.py", line 323, in _async_write_ha_state attr.update(self.device_state_attributes or {}) File "/config/custom_components/aarlo/binary_sensor.py", line 126, in device_state_attributes attrs['chimes_silenced'] = self._device.chimes_are_silenced File "/config/custom_components/aarlo/pyaarlo/doorbell.py", line 112, in chimes_are_silenced return self._load(SILENT_MODE_KEY).get(SILENT_MODE_ACTIVE_KEY, False) AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get'

Any idea what am i doing wrong? Sorry if it's not connected to that bug, didn't want to open new issue if it is :)

[twrecked]

That's something I just added... I'll take a look.

[twrecked]

Can you try v0.7.0.13

Thanks.

[dejan2101]

It does set up binary sensors now, thanks! But now they are not showing the right state

[twrecked]

Which sensors? Just the ding ones?

[dejan2101]

the motion

[twrecked]

What is it showing?

[dejan2101]

It's off (clear) all the time, even when there is motion (and a video in app).

[twrecked]

This is the doorbell device? Because if so, I took out some code that was generating false positives but I guess I needed to refine it instead.

I'll get a fix in later.

[twrecked]

Do you know what firmware you are on?

[dejan2101]

Yeah, it's doorbell. FW 1.14.0.0_809_9259536_c33dc90

PS oh, and i can't seem to be able to switch modes on alarm control panel in HA - but it does switch in HA when i change it in the app

[twrecked]

I'll correct it and push the fix later.

I'm on 1.2; so that may explain the difference.

[twrecked]

Can you try 0.7.0.14; I've restored the connectionState is a motionDetected code.

[krelltunez]

Hi again. I'm using 0.7.0.14 and I want to report back on some behavior.

As an aside, I'm able to arm/disarm the panel within HA and it's immediately reflected in the Arlo app.

Regarding the doorbell chime/call, some observations:

1. I am able to control it via HA. On/off is working now (but see below).

2. If I toggle it in the Arlo app, it does not reflect in HA. This includes turning it on or off; no matter what, the state of the toggles in HA remain unchanged. For me, this is OK because I seldom go into the Arlo app (thanks to how awesome this integration is!). But others might be having a similar issue.

3. I'm confused about the way the toggles work. I suspect these are NOT issues with HA , but rather with Arlo.

• Within HA, when I toggle "switch.aarlo_front_door_silent_mode_chime", the Arlo app shows silent mode as on and says chimes are off, but beneath that the two toggles for "Incoming Call" and "Traditional Chime" are on. I don't know what this means - perhaps it means my doorbell will ring as well as my phone, but then what exactly is silent? It seems inconsistent.

• Within HA, when I toggle "switch.aarlo_front_door_silent_mode_chime_call", the Arlo app shows silent mode as on and says incoming calls and chimes are off. But, beneath that, the toggle for "Incoming Call" is off and the call for "Traditional Chime" is on. Again, I don't know what this means - perhaps it means that my doorbell will ring but not my phone? This makes a little more sense than when both toggles are on.

• Within ARLO, if I toggle silent mode (which again does NOT reflect in HA), I noticed that both toggles underneath are OFF - i.e., "Incoming Call" and "Traditional Chime" and it says incoming calls and chimes are currently off. This is inconsistent with the scenario immediately above.

• Finally, within HA, when I toggle "switch.aarlo_front_door_silent_mode_chime_call" it also toggles "switch.aarlo_front_door_silent_mode_chime". Is this by design? It would make sense if it was, but I'm still confused about how the Arlo app presents all of this. I would test things if it weren't frigid cold outside.

Pictures of the various Arlo settings screen are below if anyone is smarter than me (not hard to be that) and can figure this out.

Thanks.

[twrecked]

To quickly address point 2 - I'm seeing updates in HA when I change settings in the Arlo app. This might also explain why your button stopped working, you used to receive them and don't any more. One way to check this is to use your HA Arlo account on the my.arlo.com website and see if toggling the chimes in the Arlo app affects that.

It it does work on the website it probably means I need to update my code.

As for the other pieces, I'll take a look. At first glance it does look like the switches are wrong, I'll take a look at them.

edit: I think the underlying protocol has changed, I'll take a look into it.

[twrecked]

I just pulled #389 and it's in 0.7.0.15.

The underlying code wasn't lining up with Arlo so I've fixed it. The naming of the switches isn't great but I'm not going to change that so I don't break any installs.

But it's working great for me - either setting in HA or the Arlo app. Let me know how it goes.

[krelltunez]

Broken, unfortunately. I get an error when I toggle any of the 3 switches - 'ArloDoorBell' object has no attribute '_chimes'

Log attached.

HA Log Encrypt.txt

[twrecked]

Got it. Give me a min. I have chimes so I missed a variable.

[twrecked]

Hopefully: #390

You don't have chimes - thanks for the logs, they really help - so I handle that now.

Sorry this is taking longer than it should but I don't have all the Arlo devices so I rely on other people debugging this stuff.

[krelltunez]

Getting there. I'm seeing some strangeness. Going through switch by switch:

1. xxx_silent_mode_call
   • stays toggled on (and toggling off in HA works)
   • Arlo app is inconsistent, though - see below:
   • Under "Silent Mode" it says "Incoming calls and chimes are currently turned off."
   • Under "WHEN SILENT MODE IS ON" the first toggle ("Incoming Call") is off and the second ("Traditional Chime") is on
   • (See screenshot 3 in my post from yesterday)
2. xxx_silent_mode_chime
   • does not stay toggled on
   • Arlo app is inconsistent - see below:
   • Under "Silent Mode" it says "Chimes are currently turned off." BUT...
   • Under "WHEN SILENT MODE IS ON" both toggles ("Incoming Call" and "Traditional Chime") are on
   • (See screenshot 2 in my post from yesterday)
   • It seems like the "Traditional Chime" toggle should be off, right?
3. xxx_silent_mode_chime_call
   • stays toggled on (and toggling off in HA works)
   • Arlo app is inconsistent, though - see below:
   • Under "Silent Mode" it says "Incoming calls and chimes are currently turned off." BUT...
   • Under "WHEN SILENT MODE IS ON" the first toggle ("Incoming Call") is off and the second ("Traditional Chime") is on
   • (See screenshot 3 in my post from yesterday)
   • It seems like this should look like screenshot 1

Finally, if I toggle silent mode on in the Arlo app, I'm still not seeing it reflected in HA. I checked my.arlo.com and that lines up with what I see/do in the app, so I think this is on the HA end of things.

And no worries at all, I'm happy to keep helping. The only part that's hard/annoying for me is dealing with the log file.

[twrecked]

The traditional toggle should be fixed now.

As to the last point; it updates in the webpage if you change it from the app; I'll take a look at that from here. Everything normally comes in over a websocket, which I open from Arlo, so maybe it's getting opened differently.

[krelltunez]

Looks like it's working now. Note that when I toggle xxx_silent_mode_call, the message in the Arlo app says "Incoming calls and some chimes are currently turned off." When I toggle xxx_silent_mode_chime_call, it says "Incoming calls and chimes are currently turned off."

I still don't understand the logic behind the toggles under "WHEN SILENT MODE IS ON" in the Arlo app, because they don't always seem to match the message under "Silent Mode." But that's for another day.

Now that it's a little warmer outside, I will try to test this out when I won't drive my family nuts by doing so.

[twrecked]

That bit of the App is really confusing, I think that message must be statically generated. I did notice when you turn them both on - ie, allow both when silent - it turns silent mode off. There's too much double negative for me.

What's more interesting is the fact that when you change your silent mode in the app it updates on the web page. hass-arlo and the web page use the same mechanism -server sent events (sse) - so if the web page gets that information so should we but I'm not seeing it in the logs. I've spent some time looking at headers in the URL request and I've updated the ones in the Arlo code, that might help but I'm not too hopeful.

[dejan2101]

Sorry, wasn't around yesterday :/ I'm sad to report my binary_sensors are still not being updated when motion/ding happens and also the recent activity and last event sensors are not updated.

[twrecked]

@dejan2101 Sounds like you have other issues going in. Can you:

• check on the main account you still have admin access
• log in to Arlo with your HA account - you'll need to stop HA for a short time - and make sure the sensors work there

If that doesn't show anything we'll need to get at the debug logs.

[dejan2101]

everything seems to be ok in the Arlo app

[twrecked]

In that case we need to look at the logs. If it's just a crash we might not need to on any debug. Open in homeassistant.log, it will be created next to configuration.yaml, and look for the word traceback.

[wizonesolutions]

When I turn on Silent Mode from the web, I see:

{"from":"[snip]","to":"[snip]","action":"set","resource":"doorbells/[snip]","transId":"[snip]","publishResponse":true,"properties":{"silentMode":{"active":true,"call":true,"chimes":{"[snip]":true,"traditionalChime":true}}}}

Does this help? Is it different than the payload switch.aarlo_CAMERANAME_silent_mode_chime_call sends? No combination of the pseudo switches turns on full Silent Mode for me, but it works from the web. I have an Arlo Video Doorbell Wire-Free.

[wizonesolutions]

Ah. I see the problem in https://github.com/twrecked/pyaarlo/blob/master/pyaarlo/doorbell.py#L127

It seems that on my system, the property is called traditionalChime. However, pyaarlo expects it to be called traditional. Does this need to be configurable? I don't know if it varies by device or something.

[wizonesolutions]

Opened https://github.com/twrecked/pyaarlo/pull/76

[twrecked]

@wizonesolutions Thanks for looking into this, I'll take a look at your PR this week.