Architecture to solve not all lights turning off

All of the outlets, Dimmers, and Switches are Jasco/Ge products. Most, but not all, are Z-Wave Plus. There is a combination of about 85 or so of these products on my Hubitat C7 network.

Since I started with Hubitat almost two years ago most of the controls are based on Rule Machine 4.0. I have a series of lights that turn on/off depending on the mode, Day, Evening, and Night. There are no issues with turning "on" the lights. I do have a problem with turning "off" the lights. At night I have a switch next to the bed that changes the mode to "Night" which in turn acts on all 85 light controls. I want to turn off lights in the basement I may have left on and forgotten. The problem I have is there is at least one random light and often more than one random light remains on. I'm sure I'm trying to control too many devices with one action.

What's the best way to architect Hubitat actions to make sure all lights are off? Or what are the steps I need to follow to diagnose why some lights remain on?

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Are you seeing anything in the logs? Do you have any ghosts? I think there may be an app in the package manager to ensure all off lights. Another option is to use groups

The problem is the logs don't provide any information on the lights which stay on. It's as if no attempt was made to turn them off. However the dashboard on most occasion indicates the lights are off when they are on. When I look at the device itself in the device list the light in most cases indicate the light is off when it's actually on. When I hit refresh and then off the light does turn off.

Tonight I'll try groups.

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A lot of times you get false on's are off's in your case is older non plus z-wave products. They don't report status back to the hub properly so you need to install z-wave poller.

The Z-Wave network is not very robust. I had the same problem as you when turning on/off more than a couple of lights at a time. I used to manually put a delay between each device being turned on or off, to allow each device to act without the network becoming overloaded. However, there is now a better way to put a delay between each device.
Use the built-in app for Groups & Scenes. Put all of your lights into one Group. Then use the recently added feature of Groups called "enable metering". This allows you to put a set amount of delay between each device. I seem to remember that 65ms is supposed to be enough to stop most network collisions. However, I normally use 200ms. Since I did this, I no longer have problems with random lights not turning on or off.

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I did something similar with basic rule but with no delay between, just grouped them in groups of 5 to 10.

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I've set up a new group that follows "Dean's" suggestion of using groups with metering. I compromised using 100ms delay. I'll see how that works tonight.

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I had one particular set of two bulbs that would very often stay on. I added a cheap Illuminance sensor and placed it close to the bulbs and setup a rule that checked the lux value after the bulbs had turned off. If it is higher than it should be, it sends a command to turn on and then off the bulbs. I had to make a few adjustments to the rule, but since then, I have not noticed them being on when Hubitat reports them as off.

A variance of this could be setup in key rooms, especially at night to ensure that they are dark when they should be.

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What sensor are you using to check the illumanance?

I've got some of the GE stuff. Not all that impressed. I ended up ripping out all the switches and going with Lutron Caseta. I do still have some outlets but they seem to really have trouble finding a solid path though they are all within feet of repeaters. Other zwave devices in proximity do not have the same problem.

Last night all but one light turned off. Iā€™ve increased the delay to 150ms for this group. Iā€™ll see how that works this evening.

The reason Iā€™m waiting for this evening to test is because the location of the Hubitat hub is close to my router. Being close, I also believe there maybe some interference caused by the proximity to the router. By keeping time constant in evaluating Iā€™m hoping to minimize the variables. The next steps will be to move the hub.

Minimizing variables is an excellent troubleshooting method! The ZWave details page will give you some indication if you are encountering a mesh issue.

Brad5
I would consider Lutron or others than GE. What has kept me from using alternatives is I have others in the house who are flummoxed by anything with a switch. Anything that doesnā€™t look like decora type of switch is problematic.

There is another setting in the Groups that you might consider. It is the "Enable on/off optimization". If this is enabled, and HE believes the light is already off, then HE will not bother to send it another off command. Assuming that most of your lights are already off when you use this Group to turn off all of your lights, this can significantly reduce the network traffic.

But still use the delays.

The frequency used by Z-Wave (~900Mhz) is much different than the frequencies used by WiFi (2.4 & 5.0Ghz). So there really shouldn't be a problem if you are only using Z-wave. Zigbee, however, is much closer in frequency to WiFi.

So you set up an "automation" to fix a problem with another "automation"?

Personally, I would spend 10x as much money and time trying to fix the first automation. :grinning:

I've used Z-Wave associations for some secondary/tertiary switches in an N-Way setup. Seems to be a bit more reliable than doing it via rules. Of course your switches have to support it..

Maybe an app could be written to refresh a bulb/switches after on/off similar to @jwetzel1492 's excellent reliable locks.

Unfortunately, in this case the information Hubitat has is at times out of synch with the actual bulb state. I automated the manual steps I had to take to fix it.

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@pnajar did your second test night improve? I've always had glitches with bulbs not turning off in certain cases and i'm interested if your tests show it worth the effort to set delays on the commands.

Last night it worked perfect. Tonight I had two art lights that remained on. I'll adjust the delay up to 200ms and see what happens over the next few nights.

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