Events firing in the wrong modes

SmartApps & Automations
1

For the past 2 days I’m seeing my Alarm going off suddenly when I walk past my motion sensors. It’s really random! 1 in 50 times it’ll set off the alarm while I’m in Home mode.
I’ve double, triple checked, quadruple checked and all my smart apps which set off the Alarm are set to operate while NOT in home mode (night/away etc).

This just started a few days ago. I’m guessing it’s something to do with the platform update. Support has no frigging clue! And the worst part it’s random! I can walk past it 20 times and nothing, suddenly one time it’ll set off the alarm.

I’m fedup with this platform. Fix one break two!

Has anyone else seen this issue recently?

2

Yes, I have been seeing random events. Also I have a motion sensor that didn’t update. It was showing there was motion still 2 hours after I left the house with the motion trigger being from when I left the house.

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3

Can this be replicated with a very simple case?

Make it super easy to created repeatable scenario(s) for Tech Support and engineering (and even automated reliability reporting if it can be determined internally)…

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4

Couple of days back two of my ST first gen sent me false motion events. Luckily the alarms were off. I was informed by support that it may be a fly buzzing around the sensors. And I am not kidding. So, for me it is literally a “bug” which may have caused it. It’s a different matter till date I have not seen a fly, pest or bug in my house except of course the bugs in ST. :wink:

5

:))) good one!

Interesting, last week I had some random “motion” events from my sensor. No one was around! ST support assured me that the events came from the device and that the platform cannot “generate” events. After listening to the folks here I’m beginning to rethink that incident.

@bflorian @April - how does on get the attention of the team who’s responsible for the platform?

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Do a search on mosquito in the community and you will get the funniest Support response that I got. Not a typo…

7

You scream :scream: :scream: :scream:

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8

thanks alex. no you don’t.

you have our attention already. we’re on it.

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9

That why I called it worst problem :smile: it’s not consistent which is why we get comments from ST support like “mosquito” issues. :wink:

10

The timing of this issue you’re encountering doesn’t coincide with any changes on our end. The platform is not “broken” in such a way that is causing issues with your alarm. I’ll poke Support about this.

I’m changing the title of this thread to avoid confusion with other issues that may in fact be platform wide. If new information comes up we can certainly change it back.

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@Tyler I had first reported this on June 1st 2015 (the phantom event as I called it fired at 3am EST).

Now you can decide whether the “timing” coincides with your platform changes/updates. :smile:

12

And again and Again - 2 more motion sensor events in the last 3 hours from the Alert on Motion app which is set to notify when in Away more and I’m currently in Home mode.

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This is a real piece of sh** the platform. Events did not fire on time, the lights didn’t come on when they supposed to, again the events didn’t reach the smart app to turn on teh light. Because to switch was off it send the house into night mode after a certain time. When my wife returned home the ST app didn’t detect her come home (supposed to do a I’m back) and it ended up setting off the alarm waking up my toddlers!!

Am really frustrated with ST and this ridiculous platform. Stop upgrading stuff if it’s going to break things.

14

Root cause! 5.33pm EST the Weather Updates events stopped firing which didn’t update the weather tile which didn’t update the light to come on at dark and so on and so on.

@Tyler you still think it has nothing do with your platform upgrade? I never had any of these issues till today!

15

Having a setup that depends on a chain of Events is inherently and multiple risky. Weakest link, etc…

Yes… Scheduling is a confirmed weak link in ST, but the sunrise, sunset Events can be subscribed to directly, so reducing risk and simplifying failure analysis…

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I did note that my Weather Tile stopped updating as well…

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Another motion sensor event while in home mode. Just tracking how many times it happens in a day

18

Once you have a failure of a mode restriction on an app, you really have to remove the mode restriction and re-enter it. Same things with broken schedules. The platform becomes corrupted, and failures will continue. The only way to clear it is to take down the broken thing, and put it back in fresh.

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A. Wow you’ve got to be kidding. That’s like 2 hours of work! No offense but this is for ST on behalf of all users impacted. Now I’m rethinking about adding more apps and scenes.

B. that doesn’t sound partly right. Reason being like I said it’s not every time. It’s once in a while. in the morning I walked past that sensor 10 times and nothing. The 11 time it send a notification. 12 time back to normal and no notification. it’s working but just not consistently. my wife is “afraid” to walk around and telling me to just disable ST. She can’t bear to hear the alarm going off :frowning:

The schedule timer I understand, once a schedule is missed it won’t schedule the next timer because the handler isn’t called and hence it needs to be reinitialized. I’m not sure the same logic applies to modes.

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There are multiple ways that things can break.

What I’m referring to with mode restrictions is when a particular and specific mode restriction fails, and continues to fail. Simply re-entering it usually clears up that kind of failure. Random and intermittent failures: who knows?

As for schedules, I’m not talking about chained runIn() logic (which are inherently weak), but built-in apps that are scheduled to run at a specific time. Sometimes those schedules become corrupted, and removing / re-entering them usually clears it up.

These things only describe a small portion of ST failures that I’ve seen. Sometimes the entire platform gets flaky, and in that case, you’re right, re-entering everything would make no sense and wouldn’t fix anything. In my experience, these flaky periods come and go, and have been less common than 6 months ago.

Complex automations that chain things together for proper functioning are very susceptible to a weak-link failure. I’ve never even considered using ST for an alarm because the failures are ridiculous. KISS should apply (for now) to using ST. On paper ST should be capable of more complex automations, but the reality falls short. I also won’t automate my garage door for the same reason: a single failure isn’t really acceptable. There are lots of complex automations floating around, and when the platform gets flaky, users with complex automations are the ones who get hammered. I’m using nothing but simple automations, and they work pretty reliably.

Not what anyone wants, but it is what it is.

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