Device Activity Check - Skips test notification and odd notification behavior

I received some strange notifications from "Device Activity Check"

  • The notification seemed to be delayed 2 days (I checked with Twilio and they received and forwarded it within seconds)
  • The second thing I cannot understand is the notification are all marked 8:54PM. In the app I've set the Notification Options daily at 1:00PM

I then recopied the app code from github ( I had been using v1.3 but figured it would be a good place to start)
Now the Test Notification Log shows Notification skipped.

My plan is to uninstall the app and start from the beginning. However I would like to know how I got myself into this situation.
Thanks
John


If you see "Notifcation skipped," then either you're outside of the configured modes or there are no inactive devices to report. In your case, I believe it's the latter; it's supposed to say why (e.g., no inactive devices), but I see a typo in the code that would make that not happen.

Regarding the notification "delays" or schedule, I suspect there isn't really a problem. The "8:54 PM" thing, along with the date, that you're setting in the notification text is the "Last Activity At" metadata from the device on Hubitat. You can see this on the device page, and that is the same information Device Activity Check is accessing. (This makes sense if you're using the default "inactivity detection method" of "last activity time" and would be more apparent in the notification text if you had multiple devices listed; it doesn't make a ton of sense for "presence"-based detection given that generating that event causes the device to be marked as having activity, but I digress.)

Finally, not that you asked for advice here, but if you want it anyway: my guess is that you're dealing with a Z-Wave device that only "wakes up" once every day or maybe even every other, and your inactivity time threshold is too low to capture that. Decreasing the device's wakeup interval (some have a way to set this via a Z-Wave parameter; not sure what other options Hubitat provides here besides what the driver might do by default) or increasing the threshold in the app (of course, risking that there may actually be a problem in the meantime--but pretty much the case with any such device) are the only two ways I see around this--assuming my guesses about the problem, should you consider the device being in the notification to be one, are correct. :slight_smile:

You are correct. I was under the impression that the test notification "button" would exercise the test motivation function so I could be sure it was fully functional. But I see this is not the case. What would the test notification "button" accomplish.

Thanks for the advice. I have the inactivity time as 25 hours. Your app has been working for some time with this setting.
I had mad no entry for the Mode input. While looking at this issue I changed it by checking all the modes.

The WaterCop is my own driver. I use a cron string to "check the connection" every day at 6:00 AM. The WaterCop device is A/C powered and will answer whenever one wishes to talk to it.

I'll add some additional log checks.

Question: I have selected "last activity time" for the activity check.
Do you subscribe to the last activity time" events and compare them to the current time? Or do you test everything at the report "Daily at this time"?
image

I still love your app, I just added the WaterCop to my hub and need to get everything sorted out.

It would send a notification if there is text to send. :slight_smile: (Text meaning an actual notification from this app like you'd get if there were one.) If you're just interested in testing your notification device, just go to the device page and use the deviceNotify() command, the same that this app (or any, really) would use to perform that function. I will probably make the wording clearer in the UI since this isn't the first time I've heard this question.

The "Last Activity At" data is checked at the notification/report time. I believe this is the best way to do it anyway, but it's also not a "real" device event that you could subscribe to, so it's also the only way that really works.

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