Phantom physical events

Devices & Integrations
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I’m using @pranalli’s Double Duty app with a light switch near my bed. At night, I use a redundant off press (that is, the light is already off, and I press off again), to trigger a routine that shuts off all the lights in my house.

Several times last week, my wife and I were sitting on the couch and suddenly all the lights in the house shut off. Some investigation showed in my logs that the switch (GE/Jasco on/off) was reporting PHYSICAL off events. In fact, my log showed several in a row, separated by a few milliseconds each. It happened 3 times in two weeks, so I finally had to stop using the Double Duty app.

Is this something wrong with the ST platform or do you think my switch is actually reporting physical presses that didn’t occur?

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IMO, all bets are off until platform issues get "resolved’ and even then look at it with skepticism.

I’m of the eternal pessimist mindset with ST. Knowing about the systemic problems going on in the cloud, things will have to be solid for awhile (how long, I dunno…) before I have much confidence an issue lies within my control.

3 Likes
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It’s the platform! Here is the audit discovery done by the guy who wrote Double Duty :frowning:

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Ah yes… there you have it.

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Glad @SBDOBRESCU pointed you in the right direction. Believe me, I would love nothing more than to be able to work around this but it just doesn’t seem possible. I got an email from ST support a few weeks ago saying they fixed this issue but there must have been some sort of misunderstanding about what they were replying to, because it certainly isn’t fixed! It isn’t clear to me whether this is being caused by the hardware or by the ST device type.

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I’m seeing the same issue with my door sensor for the past week, I keep getting door open events and the status shows open, the door was never opened AND MOST importantly the “Recent” tab shows that the door was NEVER opened.
YET the status shows opened and I get event messages.

@slagle @jody.albritton ticket no 202070

Getting really pi@@ed off to get these random events middle of the night. I open and close the door and for 24 hours everything’s fine then again phantom events.

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Which device?

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can you also tell me the times of the false alarms

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Ecolink door sensor. Earlier this week all time of the day, every 30 minutes non stop. Then for 24 hours after opening/closing door nothing, yesterday again started at 1am and then stopped around 3am, 30 minutes apart.

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Is only one device thats doing it? Because it really sounds like your device went haywire. Have you tried resetting it? I had an Ecolink motion sensor that did that to me and since I reset it to factory, it’s been working great.

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Yeah but you missed a VERY key point I mentioned, it isn’t the device because there are NO events being sent in the “Recently” tab or Live Logging output. If it was the device I’d see events (which I see when I open/close the door) in the recently tab. Only the internal state of the ST platform is changing, I see it open in the device page, then I click on the Recently tab (no new events), I came back to the Device page and now it’s closed! I come out of the page and reopen it and now it’s Open again!! Replicable 100% of the time.
That’s nothing do with the device, the platform’s messing something up.

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Okay this gives the complete picture, @slagle @jody.albritton you’re going to see exactly as I see on my ST app and phone. I’m not making any changes, just switching from one screen to the next to show you what’s going on with these phantom events:

I get a ST notification (notice they are exactly 30 minutes apart!):

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I open the Things page (door sensor) and it shows OPEN (note I haven’t touched the door) (ignore the timestamp I forgot the take the picture first time but as you’ll see below it can be replicated 100% of the time so I just went back later and captured the screen):

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I open the Device page (door sensor) and it still shows OPEN:

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I go to the Recent tabs - NOTE: No open/close events here, the last time the door was opened was 2 days ago and you’ll noticed only a closed and no open because I open/closed when I getting this random open notifications hoping it would reset the open notification nonsense. The last time I really open/closed it was almost a week ago

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I come back to the Right Now page: IT’S CLOSED!!! I didn’t touch a thing!

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I come back out to the Things page, Now it shows closed, note earlier it showed Open and I haven’t touched a thing!

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I open the device page again, Now is shows OPEN again!

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Open “Recently” tab, still nothing new!

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Come back to “Right Now” tab, and it’s CLOSED now again (haven’t touched a thing!!)

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Repeat Cycle over and over.

So what do you think is going on??

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I had this happen to me once. It happened during the checkin period for the device. Very similar experience to what you’re seeing. How far away is the magnet to the sensor? I had to resituate the magnet to a better position as it was relatively far away. My theory was when the device went to check-in and created just enough interference to disrupt the magnetic field enough to make the sensor think it was open.

Don’t know you setup, but what happens if you take the sensor off the door and attach the magnet directly to it so there isn’t any space between the sensor and the magnet. Does it solve the problem?

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  1. In that case it should show up in the events list
  2. Why would the state change when I click on Right Now and Recent and back again continuously. Sorry @slagle I’ve seen what you’re talking about, it doesn’t add up here, see the screenshots again, it keep changing between open and closed depending upon which tab I’m on - the platform’s screwy