Tuya Single Channel Dimmer having intermittent issues

⚙️ Custom Apps and Drivers Custom Drivers
1

I'm using @kkossev Tuya driver v0.6.3 with my TS0601 single channel dimmer. I've identified two issues.

  1. This dimmer does not work in a Hubitat Scene. At least it didn't work for me. I didn't do any troubleshooting for this issue, I just changed the RM code to treat the Tuya as separate device.

  2. It doesn't seem to want to come on all the time.

Currently logs only show "scheduling health check every 10 minutes".
I went into the code to see if the logs were being shut off...... big mistake because it was more complex than I could comprehend.

Has anyone else experienced such and issue? Is there a simpler version of the driver that covers fewer Tuya models?

Thanks
John

Info:

C8 2.3.8.18

Tuya driver v0.6.3

  • endpointId: 01
  • application: 44
  • inClusters: 0000,0004,0005,EF00
  • manufacturer: _TZE200_la2c2uo9
  • model: TS0601
  • outClusters: 0019,000A
  • softwareBuild:
2

Hi JohnRob,
We should be able to troubleshoot the issues, one by one...

Can you clarify what you mean by "...It doesn't seem to want to come on all the time"?

BR

3

I'm controlling it 100% of the time by an RM rule. The only time I operate it with the interface is if it doesn't go on via this RM rule. The "Scene" has been working correctly for years. The Tuya was recently added to make the wiring less visible.

The dimmer is named "Accent Light Console"

image
image863×824 47.9 KB

I have not started a log of failures to go on yet as I was hoping to get more log data, but it seems to not work once a week or so. It didn't turn on last night and there nothing related to the Hub or light happened. I have a UPS on the Hub. We had no power outages (or even flickers). No changes to the Hub software etc.

I was going to try Mark Hammond's original driver as this light has only two states, On at 30% or off. Nothing else. All the other "fancy" capabilities go unused.

If it helps trouble shooting, I could separate the Tuya device from the RM and create another simpler rule just for it.

I also have two questions if you don't mind.

  • It seems there are many variations of the same/similar dimmer. Are there really significant enough changes to warrant modifying the code for each?
  • It seems Tuya doesn't want to release detailed interfacing information. Is this the case or am I missing somthing?

Thanks
John

4

Hi @JohnRob , sorry for the late reply.
Your device TS0601 _TZE200_la2c2uo9 is very different from the dimmers that are supported in the Mark Hammond's original driver. All these devices are not made by Tuya, but by different OEMs, then sold by others under different white labels. Tuya just provides the development environment and the Cloud infrastructure.

5

Thanks for the reply.

Is there a way to get the information to understand how the driver must work? Tuya web site is less than helpful. I'm not interested in signing up for the development offering.

I'd toss it in the trash but its the only small dimmer I have found at a modest price.

John

6

Information about a particular Tuya device is sometimes obtained by reverse-engineering the communication of that device with a Tuya Zigbee gateway. In most cases, the basic information (which Tuya 'data point' does what) is available from the development account - Find Tuya Data Points.

Actually, I am not quite sure what the problem is. Is there any function (on/off, dimming..) not working at all?

If something is not working once a week, usually the problem is somewhere else... Typically an unstable Zigbee network connection to this particular device.

7

The issue I had was the dimmer would:

  1. Periodically not go on, as part of a RM rule.
  2. Did not like being part of a Hubitat "Scene". i.e. didn't work, however I could have mistaken this for the same issue as #1.

My Zigbee is pretty robust with no issues for literally years. But one never knows. I guess I'll just throw it into a drawer and chalk it up to a learning experience.

Thanks for you effort.

John

8

The driver has a ping() command - it measures the time between sending simple Zigbee command and receiving the answer.

You can test the connectivity quality by periodically sending a ping command from a RM rule :

image
image1009×791 40.5 KB

I've been pinging the outlet every 15 seconds for several months without any issues with the other Zigbee devices (more than 60) in the same Zigbee network,

Here are the stats for my Zigbee outlet mounted at the most distant place from my C-8 hub :

image
image829×230 19.1 KB

There were 513477 pings, 1310 of which failed (no response received in 10 seconds).
1310 is 0.255123% of 513 477

The average response time is quite good - 109 milliseconds.
0.25% failures rate means that one of 400 commands has failed - this is not so good.

Update: I looked at the code now and found that the ping() command in the "Tuya Zigbee dimmer module" driver actually does not have the advanced statistics, the screenshot above was from another driver. If you have the time and are willing to experiment, I can find a driver with ping() statistics that will work with this model of Tuya dimmer - only simple on and off commands will be supported.

1 Like
9

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.