I have a bunch of z wave plugs I use for Christmas lights. I use them every year and I have them turn on and off using the rule engine (5.1) - on at sunset, off at 12am. They turn on just fine. But they do not turn off at midnight. In the morning, I go into the rule engine and open the rule to turn the lights off, and then I click run actions, and they all turn off. So not sure why they are not turning off at midnight. I checked the logs, and I can see the rule executed and triggered the action, but none of the devices logged turning off. However, when I manually run the actions in the rule, I see the devices turn off on the logs.
The only thing that has changed since I last used these z-wave plugs in that I had upgraded the hub to the latest version.
Here is a screenshot of the rule and the rule logs. Note that the rule name in the log is the old name (I renamed the other day). Not sure why the log shows the old name - I don't see the new name in the log. You can also see in the logs for the past two days, it sent the action to turn it off at 12am (which didn't work). And then you can see that around 6:30-7am, I clicked "Run Actions" again manually in the rule (when I woke up), which did work. The last screenshot is one of the devices designated in the rule to turn off ("Christmas Tree Houses"), which does not show the device turning off at midnight (only at the times I did "Run Actions" manually).
I don't see anything in particular that looks out of order, and I do see the Action recorded in your Log which adds to the mystery.
I can tell you from my own experiences that I have gotten somewhat variable success from these sorts of actions on multiple devices -- sometimes it seems like a random device just doesn't respond, or the rule doesn't act properly for whatever reason... so my general solution which has proved to be reasonably reliable with covering potential issues currently looks something like this:
I use a loop with a slight delay to allow the actions to repeat (seems to help with devices that don't respond the first time around) and I assign each individual device its own command. Yes, it feels more complicated and burdensome than it perhaps ought to be, but I do think it is giving me more reliably successful executions.
I've had the same issue with a bunch of Ikea blinds. They're zigbee but I've found if I try to send them commands all at once they don't all respond. So I built a delay in along with some logic that confirms they all did what I thought they would do. Kind of my version of metering in a scene.
Very strange. I haven’t had a chance to make any changes. Yet the last few nights, everything worked perfectly. Perhaps it’s because the zwave switches were off all year and they needed a few days to establish on the z-wave network? I cannot explain why it’s now working without issue. Could it be related to these devices being unplugged since last Christmas?
I'm glad you have a workaround. I don't mean to offend you, but the real solution is to figure out the weakness(es) in your z-wave mesh and fix them.
This is not an "impossible" dream. It took me a while (like a month) to fix my mesh, but since then everything has been tickety-boo, and I don't need to use metering while controlling multiple z-wave devices at the same time.
No offense taken. However, I have no idea how to do this. Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot/fix? As I mentioned earlier, I never had this problem before. Used the same switches every year for the past 7 years. So not sure why all the sudden now have a problem.
I've experienced this as well intermittently...it's a bit mysterious and difficult to troubleshoot, since you're running the same actions in the rule when you use "run actions" that run when the rule runs on its own at the scheduled time. The only difference is the time of day when the actions are run, and you'd expect things to be relatively quiet on your mesh at 12am. Couple things:
Do you have other automations running at 12am?
Have you tried adjusting the time slightly to 12:03am or similar - maybe not sitting on the time/date change could help?
I would not remove multiple Z-Wave switches from my mesh each year, that is definitely risking causing Z-Wave mesh issues. I have a "Christmas" plug and remove and re-add it each year so I don't have any Z-Wave devices going missing. I'd rather be a little "too careful" than bounce things in and out of my Z-Wave mesh.
I have recently encountered a case where a rule is supposed to turn off all my lights at 11:30 PM each evening. In times past it has worked well. However, perhaps related to updating to 2.3.4.119, I now see something strange with the reported status of my Family light. The light is indeed off in the morning when I check. However, the command that requests this action never seems to show as having taken place as seen in the events table below.
As seen above, the command was issued at 11:30 PM, but didn't report any action. When viewing status via the dashboard in the morning, it still shows as being on.
If I click on the dimmer on the dashboard to manually turn it off, as I did at 5:06 AM, it indeed responds, as seen above, and the dimmer on the dashboard goes dark. All is well when done manually.
Any idea why the light responds correctly to the 11:30 PM rule but doesn't reflect the action on the log or the dashboard?
