Random errors with lighting (March 2019)

Hi,
Have been building my smart home for some time now I’m using v2 hub. Phillips hue and ikea lighting along with the newer ST App, and a Google Hub. i have several programmes running with the lighting working with motion, door and presence sensors.
The problem i have is that lights are coming on during the night randomly, lights that are not included in my motion sensors routines are coming on and staying on.
I’m thinking that maybe it’s something to do with the fact that all my automations disappeared a few days after the new App launched and I had to 're do them all again, and since that I have had conflictions in the system,
Has anyone else had a similar issue recently?

Login to IDE and check to see if there are two home locations. There was an issue a few weeks back where an extra location was created and devices/automations were split between those locations. It is listed on the ST status page.

Thanks for the reply, note I’m a newbie, so I logged in, hit the 3 lines top right clicked locations and it lists just 1 line of information, I’m not that fluid navigating this, it lists everything I have correctly, i got no smart apps or device handlers, my set up is simplified whereas I buy listed compatable stuff.

You might have a look at the FAQ on false motion events here:

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Lights coming on at random happens when bulbs get disconnected and reconnect. Just like the first time you installed the bulbs.

I have such kind of issues when I have outage from the grid and it recovers. You might want to check if your grid is stable using devices like UPC that beep when power is lost.

Regading the bulbs themselves, if they have bad signals to the hub or repeaters they are connected to, then anything perturbing enough to have them leaving the mesh and come back will trigger them on. Improving the signal is a matter of having repeaters in your house (mainly smart plugs) in a well distributed manner for your house configuration.

You can also use a zigbee mesh analyzer tool like this one FAQ: Mapping your ZigBee network with Digi's XCTU if you really want to understand more about your signal quality.

Thanks, i have been experiencing low battery alerts very recently this last week and hopefully replacing the batteries will solve it, no spider webs found yet but great info thanks
Regards Julian

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Hi and thanks for your reply, i live in the uk therefore we tend to live in very small rabbit hutches lol, there’s not more than 6/7 meters between hubs and furthest light, but even so I’m going to see if I can find an app to look at the zigbee and zwave mesh, i have a good analyser for the Wi-Fi which I initially thought maybe an issue as our houses are in a terrace I can see about 14 Wi-Fi networks from my living room thankfully I moved to channel 11 where nobody else is. Thanks Julian

Size of house is maybe not the key criteria: my experience is that wood houses have a great capability in absorbing radio signals compared to non wood ones. Within 15m in my house I was losing 90% of my wifi speed due to the signal quality (now solved with an Orbi set).

It’s typically the other way around: wood is much more permeable to radio transmission than, say, adobe, concrete, or brick.

There can be problems with metallic paint or wallpaper, or if there is a wire grid inside the wall, water pipes inside the wall, or some kinds of insulation.

But wood itself should not disburse more than about 15% of the signal.

IMG_5910

Yes I was under this impression too but experience shows otherwise. I never had signal dropping in such a way with the previois houses I lived in.

It’s not just an impression, it’s a measurable and repeatable fact.

Most likely, there is something in the new house which is different besides just wood. It could just be the paint that they used, it could be something inside the walls in the construction. But it’s not the wood itself. That’s just physics. :sunglasses:

lead paint! I knew it

Interesting comments, i have a honeywell lyric smart stat and the hub is wired to my boiler which is located in my conservatory which is separated with double glazed french doors and I have no signal problems, how does that work ? Baffles me lol.

I have a porch ceiling that is completely lined with thick insulation, the insulation has an aluminium ( aluminum) foil backing, the windows that side of the house have lead criss cross strips, the walls are brick and the hub is 10 mtrs (32.8 ft) from a Fibaro rgbw controller which is installed in the middle of the porch ceiling… works without fault :hushed: even when i was installing the fib i was expecting issues, i kept thinking i was constructing my own faraday cage !.. never had a single issue with it… go figure