Has anybody else had spurious operation of a self protection scheme on a smart plug?
I've gotten blinking red lights on two Zen04's that I have a wall wart (transformer), for a water softener, plugged into. They seem to shut themselves down on high current. The last one supposedly was 25 amps according to the log. This of course is crazy. Cycling power reset the light and resumption of normal service.
It wouldn't be too much of a big deal, but the softener initiates a regen after a power loss of 3 hours. I'm doing automation on it with the aim of limiting excessive regen'ing during an outage situation where backup generators start and stop and rest, no well pump, etc. etc. Just one regen, after the outage is over and the transfer switch is back to utility.
I relocated the plug farther from the wall wart, rather than having it plugged in directly, thinking maybe fields from the transformer might have affected the plug. Maybe that'll help. I also set up a notification so hopefully I'll be able get to it within 3 hours.
It looks like Zen04 doesn't like inductive loads.
I have two of these plugs. They are fine with resistive even high loads.
But absolutely terrible with motors and transformers.
From the other side, Zigbee Sengled plugs with power metering
are woking perfectly fine.
The reading was bogus. I haven't got a bad reading since I plugged the smart switch into the wall, and an extension cord into the switch, with the transformer on the end.
Until that case, where the relatively large wall wart was plugged into the outlet, I've had good luck with the Zen04's and motors and transformers.
The wall-warts for water softeners are typically 12V, so 25A at 12V is only 2.5A at 120V - definitely not a high-current issue.
I'd recommend replacing the Zen04 with a smart plug that works well with inductive loads. @vitaliy_kh made one suggestion (Sengled Power Monitoring plugs). Here's another that works - Samsung SmartThings outlets.
Happened again, on the end of an extension cord.
Had a notification set up, so knew when it was off line.
Flashing red light, had to unplug unit to get it back on line.
This thing typically runs at .1 amp @120v when not regenning, which it wasn't at the time.
BTW, I'm having other occasional spurious readings from an Zen04. How about the beauty below? Still low amps, so I'm assuming no trip.
I'm on the lookout for any future spurious data; have notifications set up. @jtp10181 is on the case. He's thinking corrupt data transmission. Perhaps the water softener plug shut itself down on overcurrent all by itself due to the wall wart and another plug behaving similarly. Suggests setting up a trace log, but that it consumes bandwidth.
I've got 13 of these in service now, perhaps foolishly, lol.
The trace logging wont use zwave bandwidth, it will just create a lot of log entries especially with 13 devices going. Could install a second copy of the driver and edit the name of it, then enable the trace logging on that one, its the very bottom of the code you just uncomment the log.trace command. Then use that driver on only select devices to try and capture more logs.
I went out to the garage. The switch was still powered up: blue light, not blinking red.
So, the outlandish reading did not trip the switch. That's something.
Also, I didn't really have communication with it through the interface, although it had been reporting for weeks normally, and I have boocoo hard-wired z-wave switches, other outlets, and the like.
I did put in a modified driver, that I had not yet initialized, so it could be a factor, I suppose.
I brought the switch inside, got it running and put it back out in the garage.
It seems to be working as it should now.
I happened to pick up on another spurious reading on a Zen04 plug.
The plug is 10 feet from the hub.
A fireplace wood burning insert fan is plugged into it.
It usually consumes between 30 and 60W.
It shows 1079.7Watts for a high reading.
This would be do-able for this plug, but hardly likely, since the motor is still running fine, and at 5:30AM yesterday, I don't believe the fan would've been running.
I found this reading in "Events" on the device page from yesterday morning. "Logs", info, didn't quite go back that far.
I find it interesting that there was no "Power set to" in that timeframe, just a bunch of PowerHighs and CurrentHighs, but "Events" are a mystery to me.
I'm using @jtp10181 's advanced driver. I think he's put in filtering for outlandish numbers, but this is within the Zen04's believability range. It wasn't high enough for a potential self trip on overcurrent either, if that were the case. As I said, the device is 10' from the hub, so comms should be good.
I have notifications set to try to catch outlandish numbers, and put a dashboard together to look at highs and lows, which is how I found this one. I also put a notification app together to notify me if any uncontrolled outlets should switch open and have a dashboard for that as well.
Again, this was possible for the Zen04, but totally not possible in fact. Plus, it might not be a good thing for the fan to shut down with a fire going, which it didn't.
edit: Let me add that watts was the problem, not amps, so would it have tripped? Probably not.
The reading was spurious, see title of thread.
Oh, and thanks to you and @danabw for the excellent writeup on using a z-stick to remove ghosts and S0 security!
I hear ya! If the Zen04 starts to flake out more then consider changing.
I use the Zen15 for a small pump for an stairwell drain that turned out to be fake (thanks previous homeowner!) - discovered the horrible truth during a big rainstorm a few years ago.
A fake drain! Now I've heard it all.
I have boo coo Zen04's now though.
I like the auto turn on and power outage return options.
I suppose I neglected to think of what would happen if things don't work-not improving things for sure.
In the logs there was a global setting that will overwrite all devices but I cannot find it at the moment. Or you can change it per device on the device page. I am not totally sure the difference between the two because the first one is about events (which are directly related to attributes) and the second one is specifically about attributes. Make the numbers bigger if you want to keep more events in the history.
Well, the Zen04 smart plug on the water softener turned itself off again today at 3:39PM when I wasn't home.
Flashing orange light.
When I tried to restart it, a couple of times, from the device page, it would start and then shut itself down immediately.
It had to be reset by unplugged it from the outlet and then plugging it back in.
(Bear in mind this is the second Zen04 that's behaved like this.)
Naturally the regen process started since the stupid Culligan memory is only good for a couple hours and after that it regens when power is restored.
I got to it before it ran out of log space (I haven't messed with the log settings yet.) Hopefully, this will tell @jtp10181 something. To me, this trip is internal to the switch.
