Recently I have been seeing a light that is part of a Motion Lighting configuration turning off when the time is out of the normal range. This light is only automated to turn off by Motion Lighting. I am trying to figure out how to troubleshoot this.
My ML config is set to turn on “Hue Color Candle 2” at night when motion is detected. It turns on and set it to Red. Light turns off 1 minute after motion stops so usually 2 or so minutes when accounting for the motion sensor to clear.
I forgot to get a shot of the app this morning but I have it set automate until 5:45am every day. Below is the shot of the logs where the light goes on and off. How to I figure out why the light is turning off and what should I do about it? I have deleted and recreated the routine already and that did not seem to help.
The times check out with the correct night start and morning stop. In the logs I see at7:36am on and off at 7:48am. That does not match what I would expect from the Motion Lighting. That is usually much shorter.
How do I know what app:201 is as shown in the logs?
Something is really weird. I have completely removed Motion Lighting and all child instances. The lights for each rule turn off.
If I add the Motion Lighting App back and recreate apps I observer two things:
If there is not motion on the configured motion sensor OUTSIDE the configured time range the lights stay on.
If the motion sensor detects motion OUTSIDE the configured time the light turns off.
This is happening for all of my Motion Lighting Apps. The removal/reconfigure is repeatable and consistent. It is interesting that the light does not turn ON outside the range and the child apps work correctly.
Do not turn off from what? Please show logs wrt all of the things you are describing. Turn on logging in the ML instance. Do this with the simplest case possible.
Typo. Should be "The lights for each rule turn off."
Here are logs for my "Hue color candle 2 ". A Hue light bulb that my Motion Lighting App is set to to turn on to Red at level 1 between 10:00pm and 5:45am.
I manually turned on the Hue color candle 2 at 12:23:51 pm. I took no action to show that time can pass without the light turning off.
You can see the Upstairs Hallway Motion/Light Sensor goes active at 12:37.11 pm. Triggered this by walking by.
Upstairs Hallway Motion/Light Sensor goes INACTIVE at 12:37.27 pm.
Hue Color Candle 2 is turned off at 12:38.28 pm.
What I hope to show here is that the Motion Lighting App seems to be turning off the Hue Color Candle 2 OUTSIDE of the configured Motion Lighting time. Removing the child app stops this behavior. Recreating the child app causes the behavior to return.
I can reproduce this will all motion lightning apps. I can reproduce this with non-Hue lights. App settings are shown in an early post.
Turned on the logs for Motion Lighting. Below is the recent logs from the Upstairs Hallway Motion/Light Sensor.
As you can see Motion Lighting ignores the configured time. This should only be active from 10:00pm to 5:45am. However it does detect that it should NOT turn the light on. So the bug seems to be that it recognizes the time to turn it ON. But it does not recognize that Motion Lighting should not turn the light off.
I don’t follow. I specifically tell the app to only act with certain hours.
It sure seems like a bug to require I say to also, in addition to the hours I say to work DONT WORK during the other hours. This worked fine for months. So I disagree that I missed a setting.
With 21 rules active I don’t see how I am missing the logic here.
This seems to me to be a bug. I will of course take the work around and further define the times the Motion Lighting app should not act as well as when it should.
No you didn't. You tell the app to only turn ON the lights within certain hours.
As Bruce keeps explaining there are separate time restriction options for the turning ON and turning OFF the lights in the app. You need both set correctly for it to do what you want.
I made the same mistake when I first started using Motion Lighting. At first i struggled to see the logic of it, but as you use it more you will find use cases where different time restrictions for on and off are useful.
Ok. Fair enough. I guess I see opportunities for improvement here of the set up of Motion Lighting.
Don’t turn off during certain times should should not be required IMO. This was the previous app default. Only when my apps broke did I find out here that a new option is required.
Thank all who assisted with this solution. I’m glad my lights aren’t turning off anymore.
Yes, it was. But that changed because users wanted the feature of lights turning off during the period when turning on was restricted. Can't have it both ways. If that feature is to exist, then there have to be separate restrictions for on and off.
Just discovered that my setting to NOT turn lights off between sunset and 20:25 doesn’t work as I intended if sunset is after 20:25. I get the phrase “ Not turning off: not in time window “ in the logs. Makes logical sense once I read this thread, but slightly annoying. I’ve simply removed the restriction for the moment.
These two-time periods are always going to mean from the first time to the second time. So if sunset is after 20:25, then it would mean from sunset until 20:25 the next day.
There has to be a fixed definition of what these things mean. Dealing with boundary conditions of times that involve sunrise or sunset changing during the year can be challenging.
What do you think it should mean? What do you want to have happen?
What I’d like to happen is that the lights, if on, should not turn off between sunset and 8:25pm, however, if sunset is after 8:25pm the condition should be ignored. Perhaps a ‘same day only’ configuration option would help.
I understand what you’re saying though. The app is doing exactly what I told it to do, as opposed to what I expected it to do
