I have a couple of RM rules which act as a virtual thermostat by monitoring a temperature sensor and turning on/off a space heater based on whether the reported temperature is above or below the threshold temperature.
It works fine in general, but during the two nights this has been active, I have noticed that around 2-2:30am EST the "turn heater on" or "turn heater off" rule (depending on which one should be triggered in that time interval) doesn't fire - which is bad, because it will let the temperature jump very high or drop very low without further control.
I have workarounded the issue by adding a couple of "safety rules" (it's "very" hot, turn heater of, and it's "very" cold, turn heater on") set to a few degrees higher/lower than the desired threshold.
Hence the question: is this just the occasional z-wave command to the switch getting lost, and just randomly happening during the night for a couple of times? Or is there some "home cleaning" that RM performs once a day during the night which may affect the handling of rules which happen to fire during that time interval?
Also, why doesn't RM try to perform the action again when the temperature keeps changing? For example, if my threshold is set to 65F, and temperature is reported at 64F, RM will try to turn on the heater; but why does it nothing if the temperature keeps dropping (say, 63F), and the switch which is supposed to be on is still off?
Good point; I checked, and backups are at 3am for me too. There is about one hour difference with the missing rule action; so, I would rule the nightly backup as not the problem.
Hm, OK. I guess I'll keep monitoring how things go in the coming nights.
I keep wondering why RM doesn't resend the on/off command when a new temperature event comes in and the switch is not in the desired state yet. I'll give the current RM-based setup a couple more days - mostly to collect some more data about the reported behavior; but then I'll likely switch to a custom app where I can control things better.
Yep, indeed; I switched to a trigger, and I do see the switch command (on or off) being sent each time a temperature report is received; that will definitely take care of my problem, as skipping one of these events won't cause any harm.
Thanks again.