Duplicate Virtual Contact Events

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#1

I have a rule that I use to trigger an Alexa/Echo routine, and the Alexa routine makes an announcement. The rule opens and closes a virtual contact sensor every 15 minutes. When the virtual contact sensor opens, the Alexa routine is triggered. So I get an an Alexa announcement every 15 minutes.

The problem is that the virtual contact sensor is opening and closing every 15 minutes, not once, but twice in quick succession. This triggers the Alexa routine twice. Instead of one Alexa announcement every 15 minutes, I am getting two Alexa announcements every 15 minutes.

The virtual contact sensor is in use only by this one rule.

The rule and the event history of the virtual contact sensor are below.

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#2

I'm not seeing any evidence above that the contact sensor is reporting "open" twice in quick succession. If it were, you should see duplicate events in the table, but I only see one (and one command that caused it). This is an oddity with a few specific (phyiscal) Z-Wave devices because they send two different kinds of reports and some drivers don't handle that well by only picking one, but this would be a rare oddity for a virtual device. Is this a stock driver? If it's custom, something could be going on its code -- but I'm still not seeing that above.

Can you share more information about why this appears to be happening, maybe log entries or other parts of the event/command history that suggest it? If your problem is only happening with this rule, enabling all logging for the rule and then looking at those may be helpful. If you have recently modified this rule but did not hit "Done" (or, equivalently for this purpose, "Update Rule") to re-initialize things, that may also help on its own -- but keep in mind that will have the side effect of canceling your repeat should you be in the middle of it when you do this.

#3

Look at the event history in my post above:

7:45:33.221 PM "opened" (row #4)
7:45:26.502 PM "opened" (row #8)

The virtual contact sensor Garage Door Open-Stays-Echo is opened twice within 7 seconds. "Quick succession" was a poor use of words, but compared to every 15 minutes, it is sort of quick.

The logs show the same thing:

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At 7:45 pm, it should be opened once (and NOT again 7 seconds later). Every 15 minutes it does report open as it should, but a few seconds later it reports open again.

#4

I think @bertabcd1234 is correct in asking for a complete log of the activation. Turn on logs and then post the complete sequence from the time the rule is triggered.

The virtual switch turning on twice appears to be from the rule, as it turns on twice for 5 seconds each, which is the delay in the loop.

It doesn't appear that it should, but the log should show why.

#5

I did a soft reset of my hub and restored my most recent backup. Everything is working okay now! I will continue to monitor the rule in the days ahead.

Thank you all for your help!!!

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