Apple TV controls seem to time-out, take forever to reconnect

[cnicholson]

I have lots of AppleTVs (17 of them).  I am used to seeing the message “Control4 Remote Disconnected” (won’t accept commands) followed by “Control4 Remote Connected” on the TV screens occasionally.  Now this happens consistently, which is annoying.  It takes 15-20 seconds before it will take commands, which is surprisingly long when you want to grab the remote and pause your show real quick.  Once “connected,” response is very zippy— no issue there.  But then it seems to time-out and remains disconnected until I try to issue a command from remote.

I’ve tried rebooting Apple TV’s, rebooting controller, doing “Factory Reset” on Apple Bridge driver and re-enabling Apple TV controls.  Nothing seems to help.  I am mainly using Halo remotes, but I don’t think related to physical remote since I see the same thing using T4s and SR260– seems to be related to the “back end” HomeKit connection used by controller to talk to Apple TVs (and not remotes talking to C4 controllers).  Volume up/down continues to work without delay, for example.

Anybody else experiencing this?  Any advice (other than “Switch to IR”— which I am loath to do unless nothing else works, since I’d like to retain Halo voice control, which I assume requires using Apple Bridge) ?

Thanks

[South Africa C4 user]

I’ve had this problem once or twice (in the four or five years since the Bridge driver was released) but it has always gone away by itself within a day or two).  Admittedly, I only have 4 or 5 Apple TVs at each of my residences.

Certain actions also cause this (eg Refresh Navigators) but I cannot think of anything that would / should cause this continuously. I wonder if the number of Apple TVs is creating an issue?

[cnicholson]

Thanks.  C4 support tell me dealer that 17 should not be a problem, but I have the same concern.  I have had various glitches, but this time it is not solved by my normal approaches.  Kind of makes the remotes useless if you can’t grab and pause (or do other stuff) without waiting 5-20 seconds.  And the “time out” to loss of function is pretty fast— maybe 5 mins.

 

[South Africa C4 user]

6 hours ago, cnicholson said:

Thanks.  C4 support tell me dealer that 17 should not be a problem, but I have the same concern.  I have had various glitches, but this time it is not solved by my normal approaches.  Kind of makes the remotes useless if you can’t grab and pause (or do other stuff) without waiting 5-20 seconds.  And the “time out” to loss of function is pretty fast— maybe 5 mins.

 

How long since this has been a real problem?  I haven’t used my Apple TVs for a few days but will make a point of using one this weekend and let you know if I see any issues. 

[cnicholson]

It has been bad for 2-3 weeks, IIRC

[South Africa C4 user]

I’ve watched 2 hours on one of my Apple TVs now and absolutely no issues…

Weird that this just started happening for you.  Have you tried  rebooting the controller?

[tripleC]

I have this issue intermittently as well. I have 3 halos and 7 appleTV’s.  The issue resolves itself normally but it happens with my theatre room Apple TV most times.  That on also looses the ability for Siri.  The only thing I have done to fix the issue was to make sure that each remote that gets created in HomeKit was assigned to a room with the AppleTV in your HomeKit.   

[cnicholson]

5 hours ago, tripleC said:

make sure that each remote that gets created in HomeKit was assigned to a room with the AppleTV in your HomeKit

Hmm.  I assumed that C4 doesn’t “know” or care about the relationship between HomeKit “rooms” and C4 “rooms” and, therefore, I just assign the virtual remotes to random rooms (and, generally, it seems to work for me without problem).  IIRC it doesn’t even tell you (during activation of AppleTV controls) which AppleTV you are about to “place” in a HomeKit room, so not sure how you would even do that.  That said, maybe it is bad to assign more than one AppleTV per room?  I will experiment with that.   Thanks.

[South Africa C4 user]

3 hours ago, cnicholson said:

Hmm.  I assumed that C4 doesn’t “know” or care about the relationship between HomeKit “rooms” and C4 “rooms” and, therefore, I just assign the virtual remotes to random rooms (and, generally, it seems to work for me without problem).  IIRC it doesn’t even tell you (during activation of AppleTV controls) which AppleTV you are about to “place” in a HomeKit room, so not sure how you would even do that.  That said, maybe it is bad to assign more than one AppleTV per room?  I will experiment with that.   Thanks.

I can say that I assigned all of mine to separate rooms in HomeKit.  I thought it was just me being OCD (especially as it was a pain determining which is which) but maybe doing that helped me  

[cnicholson]

On 4/18/2024 at 9:53 AM, South Africa C4 user said:

I can say that I assigned all of mine to separate rooms in HomeKit.

I did another Factory Reset of Apple Bridge and re-added all AppleTVs and remotes, one per HomeKit Room.   No improvement.  . 

[South Africa C4 user]

5 hours ago, cnicholson said:

I did another Factory Reset of Apple Bridge and re-added all AppleTVs and remotes, one per HomeKit Room.   No improvement.  . 

[ekohn00]

11 hours ago, cnicholson said:

I did another Factory Reset of Apple Bridge and re-added all AppleTVs and remotes, one per HomeKit Room.   No improvement.  . 

Since I don't use remotes with HomeKit, I put everything in a fake room called Drivers.

I've noticed disconnects every now and then, over the few years this has been available I've noticed disconnects around the time of apple upgrades. however, they tend to connect again relatively quickly.

Are you using the latest iOS? 

We also have an appletv being the main HomeKit HUB. We also don't let any appleTV power off or sleep, even when the room is off.

 

[cnicholson]

2 hours ago, ekohn00 said:

I put everything in a fake room called Drivers.

Yeah, the virtual/proxy remotes seem to always all go in the HomeKit room that you tell it to put the “bridge” (your C4 controller).   I’m on latest software all around.