Strange behaviour in motion lighting app since fw upgrade

a4refillpad · November 27, 2020, 1:09am

I've noticed that some of my lights were no longer switching on occasionally using the motion lighting app. I switched on logging and it showed this:

So it clearly thinks the lights are already on...

However both dashboard and device say otherwise:

I can temporarily fix this by switching the device on and off and service is resumed until the next time it happens...

Is there a way to switch off the optimisation and for the app to always send an on or off request regardless of what state it thinks the light switch is on to prevent this issue occurring?

velvetfoot · November 27, 2020, 1:26am

Welcome to the club.

gopher.ny · November 27, 2020, 1:46pm

This looks like a systemic (albeit hard-to-reproduce) issue, and I'm looking into it.

velvetfoot · November 27, 2020, 2:25pm

@bravenel has said he's taking care of this.

a4refillpad · November 27, 2020, 3:13pm

Seems the app checks another source for state that's different to dashboard. Whatever that is, is getting out of sync.

tray_e · November 27, 2020, 4:49pm

Just out of curiosity, is that a wall switch? Individual bulb? Or Light group? (If it's a group, you might have the work around of turning off optimization for the group. I know I have had some issues with group optimization on even the prior builds due to a few switches that talk directly to the bulbs and do not update the hub on changed status. )

a4refillpad · November 27, 2020, 8:30pm

It's a light switch. Seems to happen randomly to various light switches around the house. Fix is to simply switch it on and off again either via dashboard or physically. Doesn't happen often, but when it happens you're standing in darkness waving your arms about in a desperate attempt to switch the lights on! LOL

Feels similar to using smartthings again.... hahaha

a4refillpad · November 29, 2020, 2:18am

In order to shed some light onto this bug. It's definitely a motion lighting app issue. While I had this same problem today, I enabled an RM rule and that switched on the same lights without issue.

a4refillpad · November 29, 2020, 6:30pm

One more clue as to where the problem lies....
I noticed that the Alexa skill similarly is unable to control the same lights when the fault occurs. Dashboard or RM has no issues.
Alexa skill and motion lighting share a similar way of optimising switch state?

bravenel · November 29, 2020, 8:51pm

Actually, it is a platform issue, It shows up in Motion Lighting because ML uses the platform in a different way than RM.

a4refillpad · November 29, 2020, 9:16pm

Sounds like you're very close to nailing the root cause? This would explain why the Alexa plugin behaving the same way....

danabw · November 29, 2020, 10:01pm

Does this platform issue explain why I've had trouble using the Zone Motion Controller w/the Motion Lighting app in 2.2.4? I get no response w/montion zones created with Zone Motion Controller app, but using the same motion sensors normally in the app works.

bravenel · November 29, 2020, 10:03pm

I don't know. Ask @mike.maxwell

a4refillpad · December 7, 2020, 5:34pm

This problem seems to have disappeared, at least for now. @gopher.ny are you able to confirm which release this bug was addressed in? If so I will start reverting back to using the motion app for lighting automations rather than RM.

a4refillpad · December 21, 2020, 11:21pm

Just want to confirm this issue was not fixed and returns every so often. I won best of there is any plan to fix this as we seemed clear it was a platform issue rather than an app problem.

bravenel · December 21, 2020, 11:22pm

To the best of my knowledge the platform issue described before was resolved. Are you on the latest build? 2.2.4.158

a4refillpad · December 21, 2020, 11:25pm

Yes, I've been installing the latest builds as soon as they are available. I just experienced this same issue this afternoon where the he motion lighting logs said it thought the lights were already on when they weren't. Again temporarily fixed by switching on directly through dashboard.