Harmony Hub and Emby Server on Mac-Mini M1 - Newly discovered issue

[mobilelawyer 2]

I was about to pull my hair out until I realized I was overlooking the obvious.

Within the past several weeks, I discovered an issue with my Harmony Hub remote which was causing me to constantly lose the ability to connect to my Emby server from outside my local network. 

Emby worked fine when I was using my Mac Mini locally. Outside connections which had worked flawlessly for months suddenly failed. I use my own domain hosted through Google and connect through Cloudflare. This arrangement, of course, requires the installation of an SSL certificate locally, Cloudflare configuration, and port forwarding in a process which has been outlined before in these forums. When I tried to access using my domain, I got an error message that my browser was working, and Cloudflare was working, but that the connection to the computer where my Emby server was installed was timing out. I checked and re-checked my configuration and it was all correct.

But in looking at the lights on my router, and checking the set up though its web interface, the connection to the Mac Mini showed up as a 100mb connection rather than gigabit. I fooled with the network settings on the Mac and changed out cables between it and my router- all to no avail. 

I then noticed all the router leds were green and I was getting snappy connections from outside the network, but only during my Harmony Hub activity to view my Mac Mini. If I swtiched out of that actvity to watch another device, the network led on the router would switch from green to off, and then back to the dreaded orange, indicating a low-speed connection. I could ping the Mac from another computer in my local network and get a reply, but Emby would not work if accessed through other local network devices, and connections from the outside always timed out.

I had to dig down into the Harmony software to see that it was set to turn the Mac off when the actvity ended instead of leaving it always on. What the Harmony software was doing was putting the Mac to sleep when I turned the activity off, even though the Mac was set to never sleep. I was able to change the device setting for the Mac to "always on" in the Harmony software and this cured the problem with the Mac being put to sleep, and fixed all my connection issues. I suspect a Harmony Hub software update somewhere along the line somehow changed the "always on" setting, becuase this issue had never arisen before.

While I realize my issue does not reveal any flaw or bug in the Emby software or my Mac Mini, I suspect that many home theater users continue to rely on the Harmony Hub remotes for their home setups and might run accross this problem, so I thought I would share. I suffered hours of frustration before I was able to diagnose it and correct the problem. 

I have seen other Mac users report Emby connection issues which may have arisen from other causes. But Harmony Hub/Mac users should take note of my experience if a similar problem arises with their set up.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, thanks for sticking with it to find a solution and for sharing it with us!