Help with random (simulated) switch turn-on debug

Devices & Integrations
1

Near my wits end trying to debug the occasional random turn-on of a simulated (type = virtual switch) switch, so any suggestions would be appreciated. The latest occurrence info from the IDE log is below, there are only “Source=DEVICE” type of events shown in the log when I select the “all” option.

Is there any way to determine it was NOT caused by another device/program/Alexa event?
I see no other devices in my system corresponding to the reported “deviceID” or “ID” in the log entry.

While I have both Webcore pistons and Alexa routines that can turn on this particular virtual switch, none of them seem to have been active at the time of the event (based on their respective logs/history).

I’ve read other posts regarding random turn on events for devices (what a system;-), but don’t think I’ve ever seen reports of virtual devices going bump in the night.

(Longer version/background): This virtual switch was an attempt to w/a the random turn-on of a physical switch, allowing me to separate WC piston turn-on stuff from other types of turn-on for that switch. Since it still was happening I recently replaced the switch with an entirely different device (thinking the switch itself was the cause), but I still experienced the random on event. This led me to look closer at the logs after which I noticed the very first “on” event triggered the virtual switch (which in turn caused the physical switch to turn-on courtesy of a piston I had created to sync the virtual and physical switch states). So at this point I do not think the physical switch is the root of the problem, but suspect the virtual switch… how that can get turned on is beyond me (rechecked the pistons that touch it and logs showed they were not involved). Sorry if this is confusing, but its only informational background.

archivable true
data { }
date 2021-12-28 10:13:07.000 PM PST (2021-12-29T06:13:07.000Z)
description
deviceId 28e4cfd0-2f56-4b2d-9e70-9535fc467b87
displayed true
eventSource DEVICE
hubId cf3e8227-fd7a-46f9-bcd0-90a66db300e8
id 63f0816f-686e-11ec-ad3c-bf922349975a
isStateChange true
isVirtualHub false
linkText
locationId 8d34ec44-11c4-46d9-b040-52c53ce212b8
name switch
rawDescription
translatable false
unixTime 1640758387000
value on
viewed false
2

Third-party integrations like the voice assistants and Ifttt can’t see any difference between a physical and a virtual device, so if they are randomly turning one on, you can get the same issue with a virtual device.

Since you have it in Alexa routines, The first thing to check would be hunches in that app. This has bitten quite a few people. The following thread has a lot of details about how this can happen and how you can figure out if it did.

Help! My smart switches all turn off at 1AM!

3

Was unaware of Alexa Hunches before, but I did not see any “automatic actions” listed for my
setup, and the hunches shown on that page don’t seem to be setup. Also did not see any “history” tab related to hunches… but I think I disabled them (or at least the “suggestions” knob on the settings page).

The turn-on event did happen around the time I said something to Alexa that was not understood, but since what she “heard” (per the log) was nothing like “turn on the BigAssFan” (my simulated switch;-), I assumed that did not cause it.

The problem occurs infrequently, so is hard to confirm a “fix”. IIRC it has happened even when no one was home at the time. At least I have ruled out the physical switch as the cause :smiley:

Thanks for the suggestion!

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