Starting last night, my Zigbee water valve controller has been acting very strangely. It would close and open on its own without any triggering. Is there any way that I can diagnose this issue? In the log, it showed that it was triggered physically but no one has touched it.
I'd suspect the power supply to the ZigBee module has an issue. If your voltage supply to the valve is good then you might have a faulty circuit inside the valve itself.
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What motel/manufacturer is your Zigbee valve?
Also, have you recently added any other new Zigbee devices to your network?
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@Bruce123 - in addition to the information @kkossev requested, could you also indicate the driver your valve is using? A screenshot of the data section from the device page would also be useful.
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Guessing before all the requested info comes... but let's say a valve is designed to be "Normally Closed" and the power supply keeps it open. If that DC (presumably) voltage drops and the valve closes would the Zigbee module watching/managing the valve read this as physically triggered?
Of course if it was all on the same power supply then the Zigbee connected device would presumably drop off Hubitat, but maybe when it came back it would say the valve had incurred a physical triggering?
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It's the Tuya Zigbee 3.0.
Yes, I have been adding some new Aqara Zigbee temperature and humidity, water leak sensors, and also the mini button.
Also, is there a way that I can confirm if there's a voltage drop?
This is the log.
This is the driver version I'm currently using.
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This button may be causing the unexpected switching of the valve on and off !
What model/manufacturer is it?
Aqara Wireless Mini Switch that I got from Amazon
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B07D19YXND
Looking at my Zigbee network graph now, it appears that all my Zigbee devices are linking off of the water valve controller. Is this normal?
Which driver do you use with this button?
Observe whether pressing this button also switches the valve on or off.
Using this DC powered valve as a router/repeater is normal.
The driver is OK, but the button itself may not have paired correctly on the first try.
Was the valve turning on/off at the same time when you were adding the new Aqara button?
For now, just don’t use the button.
I will be away from home in the next 4 days, but I will be after this issue when I am back.
I'm not 100% sure but this all started happening when I was adding these new Aqara devices.
Will do.
Thanks.
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Just for further info....I'd be tempted to pull the DC power brick and observe if the resulting behavior & logs look JUST LIKE what you are observing.
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The open [physical] and closed [physical] events are several minutes apart… so it doesn’t look like an initialisation sequence when the power supply is switched off and then on. But it is worth to try, as the different valve models behave differently.
The driver registers a [physical] event if an open/closed message is received without sending an open or close command from the driver a few seconds before.
I can think of two possible reasons for the unexpected open/close events:
- physical button malfunction
- Zigbee Group Messaging - on/off commands broadcasted by another device when it joins the same Zigbee network. Here the questions are what Zigbee Group number are these broadcasts (what’s special with group #0 ?) , why this group is enabled by default and how to prevent this from happening.
There were similar cases registered in GitHub with ZHA or Z2M Zigbee networks, I will try to find the info some later tonight. What I remember is that the workaround was to add the actuators in a random number Zigbee group.
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I believe I have found the culprit of this issue.
Aside from the Aqara mini button that I was testing, I was also playing around with the new Aqara Cube T1 Pro using the Zigbee - Aqara Cube driver from oh-lalabs.com.
As I was testing it near the Hubitat hub which happens to be located near the water valve controller, every time I shake the Cube T1 Pro, the water valve controller will switch on and off.
It appears that the valve controller is reacting to the Cube Pro. The weird thing is that even when I removed the Cube from Hubitat, it was still able to control the valve controller.
Another thing I've noticed is that there are 2 "Unknown" dots which I suspect are the Cube that was added and removed twice. How do I get rid of those dots? Do I need to rebuild the Zigbee network?
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So it is definitely Zigbee Groups broadcasts, sent by the improperly initialised Aqara Cube Pro. This device didn’t exist at the time Markus wrote the driver for the older model Aqara cube, Note, that the Aqara T1 Cube and Aqara T1 Pro cube are two different devices and there is still no Hubitat driver available for the Pro model.
Similar Zigbee Groups On/Off broadcasts can be sent by improperly initialised Aqara Double Rocker switches and from OSRAM mini remotes. Also from Ikea remotes.
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Ah ha! I will stop using the T1pro then.
Btw, do I need to rebuild the network manually or will it heal itself over time?
You can Rebuild the Zigbee network, I have do it several times without any harm.
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Good work gentlemen.
So to me this was beyond the average bear's expected cause & effect, ...and being interested in Hubitat making up for the inadequacies of both new users and new/errant devices....what could be put in place in an ADVISORY capacity to flag the "improperly initialized" (or maybe just not let anything improperly initialize) ....or is it all up to the Custom Driver writer to supervise (and if so is there a 'best practice' section of code to be included in all drivers for such) ? [He naively asks]
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