Sorry about the trouble in regards to Rule Machine - you’re not the only one seeing this. Unfortunately, because Rule Machine is a 3rd party SmartApp and not officially supported, there’s not much I can do in the way of troubleshooting it.
I will, however, bring this up to the developers so they are aware, and can figure out what’s going on on the back end.
So far, Rule Machine is the only 3rd party app I’ve seen this happen to, so I might try rebuilding your rules with officially supported SmartApps and see if you have a more consistent experience.
What a load of crap. This is NOT a Rule Machine issue. It’s an ST data corruption issue that’s hitting many areas.
Yesterday I lost four rules to the Zombie/headless issue. It was fixed by rewriting the rules and saving. Today, a simulated switch lost it’s state (i.e., it didn’t know if it was off or on) and it caused one rule and two lights to act incorrectly. It was fixed by hitting the switch twice so that it would reestablish its state and save it. Also today, I lost two ZigBee lights that were fixed by changing and saving the name and then resaved with the original name.
This is only the last two days (so far) but it’s been repeated daily for several weeks now. In each case, SmartThings data was corrupted on their end necessitating that it be rewritten and saved in order to regain functionality.
Hey SmartThings Team! The issue is on your system! It’s so mucked up it’s corrupting all kinds of data. Stop saying that it’s anything but that, find it and fix it!
Hey, chill a bit. They know about the issue and are working on it. Support is very limited in their knowledge and understanding. So don’t worry about what they say. ST will fix this, probably not too quickly, but it will be fixed. Thanks for writing to support, it helps at times.
Oh No! Bruce regained his optimism…@bravenel , please tell me that Rule 10 is ready, because I know you’re extra productive when you’re, well, less optimistic…lol
No, no optimism here. Just realism. It doesn’t help to continue to cry for help after it’s been heard. That’s all.
I’m still struggling with the reality of a broken HA system, and what to do about it. And, I do think there are problems with this company; in a way, the broken platform represents the company, doesn’t it?
I too am a big fan of reality. The reality is probably that most of their customers have simple needs, and simple setups, and they are working fine. This community is a collection of a certain demographic of theirs, that drives the platform harder than others. I have seen this in many other communities. Think of the other things you do/own or are a part of in your life, where there are huge communities of users, but you don’t visit them regularly because you are not as deep in it as they. I can think of my camera, my truck, etc etc…
I, unlike many, do think they will get this under control, but the reality is that it hasn’t happened yet. Yet, as I always say, I still wouldn’t trade my hub for anything I came from, or have heard of lately. It’s still the best at the moment. It might help that I have had only two failures in the past month, one SHM for a week, and one motion dimmer switch that has gone totally offline. Debating the easiest way to get it back, but it’s not critical…
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tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
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I find it interesting that most of their own apps don’t use state or atomicState - perhaps they knew it was not working all along?
It would go a long way to explain the threading model a little bit. I had yesterday 6 polls hit a device at the same time (from logs), and a single smartapp timeout 3 times at the same time.
This level of threading makes the likelihood of losing state variables extremely high.
That’s is becoming a myth. It used to be a place where developers pushed the limits. That was the begining of SmartThings. But since v2 came around, the most posts you see are complains about ‘basic’ functionality. Modes not changing, routines not firing, SHM not disarming. Basic functions are not “working fine” by any stretch of imagination. I wish we could go back to topics like ‘I created this app, can someone tell me why is not running’. Maybe soon? But soon doesn’t come fast enough. I know that the more these ‘basic’ functions fail, the less I am inclined to build up my system, because I don’t have the confidence that is stable enough to be worth my time. As @tgauchat and @geko said, it is not the cost, it is the effort!
In my case, as well as a great many others, based on the complaints I read here, it is the really simple things that are failing as well. You don’t get any simpler than the ability to turn a light on/off, and even that has not been immune to chronic failure.
Here’s how I set up my garage door Rule machine. First I set it up so it will only open. I didn’t want it to closing when I got home if it was open. I have a virtual switch set up in a routine that turns off when I leave. In the garage door opening rule I have that virtual switch turn on 30 seconds after the rule opens the door. The rule is set up to not open the door when the virtual switch is on. All of this prevents the door from closing after I get home. I also have a separate rule to turn the switch on when I get home if the garage door is already open. Before I added a virtual switch it would open after I shut it.
Just checked my RM rules. One of them went headless this morning. Ironically it was a rule to update other rules and ensure schedules are updated when I press a virtual switch. Even my efforts to manually keep things in check are breaking…sigh.
I am now getting where my rules look okay but they don’t do what they are supposed to do. When I go into check on the rule and click done, I get the red banner “Failed to save page: mainPage”. This rule is supposed to turned the lights off after a no motion is detected but it doesn’t do it.
@Jimxenus most likely RuleMachine itself lost its state - try selecting RuleMachine in your SmartApps list and hit done. The same thing happened to me earlier this week and doing so restored RM’s state and made saving individual rules (which access part of RM’s state) work again.
