Custom Rule: I'm getting an alert even though alert shouldn't get triggered

I've set HSM to watch humidity and alert me when it's above 65 percent or below 40 percent:

image

However, the Custom Rule I have set up seems to send me alerts even when humidity is well within the non-alert values:

Has anyone experience this? Are custom rules just being funky here?

One thing I see that it says temperature and not humidity. Don't know if that matters.

Edit: there was also an issue where everything or nothing was monitored. I ran into it with battery levels and kind of got similar behavior. Don't know if it relates to this though.

Yeah, I know that confusing, but it's because the name of the sensor is "Guest Bedroom Temperature" - it's a temperature and humidity sensor.

It's set to Celsius, and while 50.68 degrees Celsius would definitely be alert-worthy, it's correctly showing the humidity value.

It just seems to be alerting for no good reason.

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What happenes if you set it up in RM instead? or even just Notifications?

I'm not seeing any problems with this sensor (or other sensors that seem to randomly produce false alerts in HSM Custom Rules) anywhere else.

However, I'm really only using webcore for all my automations, and Maker API to display the sensor status in the dashboard.

The only place where I seem to be getting either a false reading or a false alert is in HSM.

I just wrote a quick webcore piston to mirror this particular HSM rule to see if I get false reports outside of HSM, but I've been using these sensors for a quite a while (previously on SmartThings), and I just don't think it's a sensor issue.


As a side note: is there a more appropriate channel to report issues like this one? I feel it doesn't impact me very much, I'll probably just write a couple of webcore pistons to monitor these sensors and I'm mostly using HSM because I was too lazy to write a piston in that moment.

So this feels more like a bug report than a plea for help - is there a bug report channel that we should use instead?

Do you have more than one sensor in that HSM Rule or just this single sensor?

More than one sensor.

It will also give false alerts for other sensors.

And it's not just this Custom Rule.

I have another Custom Rule to watch temperatures. And that one, too, will occasionally give a random false alert for a sensor.

The problem is that it's infrequent enough that I'm having a hard time deciphering any kind of pattern.

The only consistent things are that

  • it's always a Custom Rule, and
  • both the alert itself and the direct sensor readings will show a value where the rule simply shouldn't have triggered.

Ok I had to dig deep on this but I distinctly remember an issue similar to this in Rule Machine where multiple devices with numerical values were being evaluated. The issue was that if any one device reported a new value it causes the rule to evaluate ALL the triggers. So if some other device selected in the rule triggers had a value meeting the criteria the rule would trigger. The problem is that if you used the triggering device/value in the rule, it would be the device that last changed and caused the rule to run, not necessarily the one with the value within range. Seems sort of unlikely in your case but if you follow me would this at all be possible what is happening?

So that would mean that the alert legitimately should be triggered, and the Custom Rule is - on some rare occasions - simply reporting the wrong device and value as the one causing the alert?

Hmm. I guess that's possible. I haven't really checked if some other sensor might have been in the alert zone whenever Custom Rules reported a false alert.

I'll have to pay attention to this possibility!

to: @Shenanigans @jtp10181
Nonetheless, if this was the case, the Hubitat staff should be made aware of the issue - they will fix bugs like that. (And, it does sound like a bug).
All you have to do is prove the case, and they will get on it.

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The case I brought up I believe was some sort of design limitation in RM and was not planned on being changed, If I am remembering it correctly. @bravenel Bruce does HSM use the same engine as RM? Do you you remember this issue coming up (mentioned above).

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I was able to replicate this with humidity and temp. Looks like a bug to me. @support_team

Setup

I looks like everything is fine until the alert is triggered. If any monitored device updates the tracked attribute after the alert fires, then that device will show in the alert inside of HSM. There's no impact to push notifications.

Replication
  • Set test-2 to trigger the alert:
    image
  • Trigger an update to humidity on test-1 and the alert text updates:
    image
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Confirming this.

I checked my log of push notifications, and there's no entry for the false alerts. Only real alerts will create a push notification.

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