Using basic rules with lighting... LONG delays

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1

I am using basic rules to control a few outdoor lights. One is a dimmer and two are only switches. The control is a button controller.

What I have created is push button 1 / set level to 40% and turn on the two switches.

Hold button 1 / turn off all switches and dimmer.
When I trigger the 1 push, they pretty much come on together

BUT

When I hold button 1, sometimes they all turn off but mostly one turns off right away, the other switch and dimmer can take up to 30+ seconds to turn off.

I have removed all ghost devices (Z-wave) thinking these were causing the delays.

The button controller is an Aeotec (Aeon) and when I hold button 1 and things fail to turn off, I get two blue flashes and a final red flash from the controller.

If I control all the devices with a dashboard button (individual device), they also can be flaky.. dimmer not responding, switch not responding, or delay operation.

I have even setup the two buttons that I use on the Aeon (button 1 push=turn on lights / button 1 hold=turn off lights) trying to "rule" out (see what I did there?!?!?) the basic rule, and it is still flaky.

SO I setup a different trigger (a contact sensor) to trigger the same rules, and STILL get the random delays.

It usually happens more than not, so very annoying.

Any ideas as to where I should start looking?

The dimmer is a Evalogic ZW31 Z-wave using the generic smart dimmer driver, and the switches are Honeywell ZW4008 Z-wave+

I guess next I will move the hub close to all the switches and dimmer, but since I have repeaters between the hub and switches now, it might take a couple of days to rebuild the mesh.

Ideas???

I just had this happen... another light completely different just came on when I tried button 1 hold!!! I looked in the log and found this:

2021-05-12 20:28:02.568 infoevt: Pomona hubitat mode Evening 1900

The hub took 1.5 HOURS to change it's mode?????

2

Anybody have any ideas?

3

It sounds like an issue with your Zwave mesh. Either not enough devices, not enough repeating devices, or similar. Maybe post a screenshot of your Zwave Details page, and someone can spot a problem.

Can you confirm that the delay is still there if you go to the device's settings page, and try on/off/dim from there? If it doesn't work there, and the "Current States" is not accurate on that page, there is no way to make a rule work consistently.

4

Thanks neonturbo for responding.

I have been thinking about the problem, and realized that the dimmer and the light switches that I am trying to control are in metal boxes!
What I am going to do is temporarily "hang" them outside the boxes and see if things improve.
It might be that the boxes are shielding the receiver in the switch and messing up the signal to/from the switches.

I do have several plug in switches that are repeaters and have positioned them among other things, to repeat the signals, but a shielded radio will have a very difficult time hearing/responding if the signal can't get through.

I will try this first before anything else.

1 Like
5

Well that didn't seem to make a whole lotta difference.
Here is the log from one button press of the Aeotech 4 button keypad with a basic rule to set the dimmer to 40% and turn on two switches:

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What's up with the 9 "dimmer on" and "is 40%" though???
I have seen this several times. Is it due to the ramp rate in the dimmer or the Evalogic dimmers aren't all that good?
Here is a screenshot of Z-wave mesh details app:

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The switches of note are 1) Back Yard dimmer <68> 2) Back door light <13> 3) Soffit light <60>

Also note that when the lights don't respond, the keypad flashes blue twice, then red.
I thought it was the keypad at first, but I used a different trigger (a contact sensor), and the lights responded the same.

6

Here is a partial screen capture so you can read it.

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7

Looks like weak mesh of some type to me. Maybe someone else has an idea, but between RSSI, RTT, and Route Changes it appears these are barely on the network. Maybe you need a good strong dedicated repeater somewhere, or simply more devices near these misbehaving devices.