New to HE and and forum and I feel like I have played around with this home automation stuff long enough that I can actually start asking some questions...
I am having some issues with Mode Manager not triggering as expected. I have them set up very basically at this point since I would like to get them working with no complications before I start tweaking things.
All modes associated with the Sunset event seem to be working OK, but the event associated with the Sunrise event do not. As I was poking around trying to see if there was anything obvious, I noticed these two areas in the Mode Manager's Status Page:
I would put pictures here, but I guess I am not allowed to
I am looking at the "Event Subscriptions" and "Scheduled Jobs" sections of the Mode Manager's Status Page.
It looks to me like there is an extra item associated with Sunset (sunsetTime) and no corresponding item for sunrise (sunriseTime?). I am guessing this is because one of my modes is set to trigger relative to sunset? In which case I would expect this portion to look like this.
What is more telling to me is the Scheduled Jobs area that only lists an event for the next sunset time, and not the next sunrise time (currently as I type I am in Night mode, next mode is Sleep - which is shown - then Day - which is not).
I want to say that the Sunrise may not get calculated and scheduled until shortly after midnight (I don’t normally look at sunrise as I’m always up and moving before then). Looking at my Mode Manager scheduled events the only ones showing are the hardcoded times, the one relative to sunset is not, but they all are running smoothly.
Mode manager is a nice little app that works well when you first set it up, but it is not uncommon for it to miss events like sunrise and sunset once it has been reconfigured a number of times.
Once it messes up, the default answer is to delete the app, then reinstall it and set it up again.
If you are able to reproduce the bahaviour in RM I would strongly recommend it.
And @thebearmay is correct, the sunrise and sunset events will not get updated and scheduled until midnight.
Last note. Please make sure your location and time zone are accurate settings/location and modes.
Thank you for the replies. Right now it is about an hour before the scheduled sunrise time for my location (which have confirmed is correct) and there is still no scheduled event in mode manager to switch to the day mode at sunrise.
As far as your suggestion goes, I want to make sure I understood correctly. I should stop using mode manager and just use RM to move between the different modes?
This is also not true. Opening Mode Manager and hitting Done will cause all of its schedules and subscriptions to be removed and rebuilt. There is no inherent reason that Mode Manager should behave any differently than any other app that uses sunrise, sunset, and times.
Oh boy, my apologies, i never want to get on the bad side of "the Staff"
Let me try again - sunset & sunrise get scheduled to system events that get UPDATED at midnight (or maybe shortly after). Is that more accurate?
re: the reliability of Sunset & Sunrise - no i wasn't trying to say that Mode Manager was prone to issues with this more than anything else. Using Sunrise & Sunsets (especially with offsets) will bite you sooner or later, especially around DST. I know this has been fixed since the last transition and you only get to test it twice a year, but it has been pretty consistent since i joined the clan in April 2019.
Back to the real issue which i thought i would actually get in trouble for as i was typing it is the robustness of the Mode Manager App itself. Personally i have had to delete on two different occasions to get it to resume operation and i have seen a number of time were that has been suggested as remedy.
Even though the Day mode based on sunrise was not listed in scheduled events, it triggered anyways and went into Day mode as I would have expected
If I have any further problems, I will go with the solution suggested and use RM instead to change the modes. I am getting better with RM, although I still wish there was a way to write the IF-THEN statements manually, instead of using dropdowns to build them. I am getting better at it and doesnt take me near as long to build a functioning rule.
Sunrise and sunset change at midnight. These are system variables that some apps use, but not the built-in apps. Things that are scheduled for sunrise/sunset do not make use of these variables in any direct sense. Such schedules are driven by system events that are fired at sunrise and sunset. Just after those events fire, there are subsequent events that send the time for tomorrow's sunrise or sunset as the case may be. For schedules that entail a negative offset from sunrise/sunset, these are key events, as the next day's before-sunrise or before-sunset actions are scheduled when these events fire. For schedules at or after sunrise or sunset, the sunrise or sunset events are used either directly, or to schedule the after-sunrise/sunset actions.
As for the reliability of these events, I have good reason to believe that they are rock solid, having run Mode Manager for years and other apps for years that depend on them, and those having never skipped a beat. There have been bugs around the shift to/from DST that have been elusive for us to fix, but aside from that, the sunrise/sunset and tomorrow's sunrise/sunset events are dependable. I live where DST doesn't happen, so I only get to witness these problems, not experience them.
There is nothing about Mode Manager that makes it any different from any other app with respect to scheduling. I have no idea why you would think you had to delete it to get it to work again. The reason that this is sometimes suggested is because of database corruption. This can happen to any app, but due to its role in the way an automated house works, any problem with Mode Manager tends to be quite visible. I suppose when someone reports that Mode Manager has stopped working and nothing will get it going again, we should just advise to do a Soft Reset.
The only reason I mention all of this is to stop urban legends from taking root, ones that aren't based in facts, but are rather not fully informed ideas about what might be going on. Before you know it, there are users passing these things on as the truth, that this is the way Hubitat Elevation actually works, when it is not true in the first place.
Schedules based on sunrise and sunset are not "scheduled", but are driven by system events sent out at sunrise and sunset. You can see these in Event Subscriptions for the app on its App Status page.
I am having a similar issue with sunrise events. I changed my "Morning Mode" to +30 after sunrise, but it is still changing at my previously set 6am. (The wife is complaining that the bathroom light it turning on too bright when she wakes up. PLEASE HELP!)
When I updated the "morning mode" this morning to +120, just to test, I saw that the mode did not change to back to "sleeping" as I would have expected. Do changes to mode manager only work "going forward"?
I have faith in Mode Manager, and per Bruce, don't see any reason to switch to RM if I don't have to.
