Some Time-Based Restrictions Suddenly Being Ignored (After Working Fine For Years)

[NOTE: I posted about this over on the webCoRE forum first, but it doesn’t seem related to that.
Also, I’ve been a bit out-of-the-loop for a while and may have missed something.
So, I’m trying here…]

TL;DR:
The time-based restrictions I’m talking about are like this…

only happens between sunset and xx:xx,
or
only happens between xx:xx and sunrise

They were working properly for years.
I have made no changes on my end.
Suddenly these time-based restrictions are being ignored, and the automations are allowed to run regardless of timing.


TMI:
I’ve had some automations (pistons in webCoRE) running along just fine for years, and just about a week or two ago, they started misbehaving.

In particular, these automations manage motion-triggered evening lights, and night lights.

For some reason, they suddenly started ignoring time-based restrictions (e.g. only happens between sunset and xx:xx, or only happens between xx:xx and sunrise, etc).

This problem started with one particular automation first (the one I have managing my ‘evening lights’), and then, maybe a few days later, it started happening to the automation managing my ‘night lights’.

With how it has been working for years, the ‘evening lights’ come on when motion is sensed, but only during what I’m calling ‘evening’. Likewise, with the ‘night lights’ for their respective period.

When this problem first popped up with the ‘evening lights’, I decided to add another layer of restriction to the automation, by limiting it to certain ‘Location Modes’ (I have many of these that, and they all relate to ‘time of day’ for the most part). Now that that is in place as a temporary work-around, it’s limiting the times when the ‘evening lights’ come on outside of the specific time-based restriction, but still not optimal (Though, livable for now, because I know this stuff is never perfect, and will always be subject to change over time, blah-blah-blah).

Now though, since I haven’t done that work-around yet for the ‘night lights’, in the middle of the day, if I move around in the relevant room, the ‘night lights’ will just come on.

As a side note, the automation that manages the ‘night lights’ also has other restrictions in place that are also being ignored. e.g. Don’t turn on if %SomeOtherLight% is already on.

So, for now, I am just using my ‘Lighting Automation Preventer’ simulated switch to stop it from happening. Once it gets late enough at night and I actually don’t mind anymore (because I’m no longer using the ceiling light or whatever), I just turn the preventer off, and let the night lights go as they wish.

Is this related to a known change at SmartThings, or anything else that you guys know of?

So…it’s just me?

If so, can any of you think of any potential causes?

I’ve rather lost track of time, but I don’t think I’ve noticed any particular problems with SmartThings for at least a couple of weeks or so. However, prior to that things weren’t great with timer events going missing (mostly in the late evening and overnight for me in the UK). Unlike others, who found their automations and pistons getting clobbered left, right and centre, it mostly hit my motion sensors as the device handlers use a timer to reset the motion to inactive. So I had motion sensors getting stuck on all night and had to add a setter to the handler so I could reset them manually.

Time events do seem to be a recurrent theme for niggles over the last couple of months, but you do seem to be having a worse time of it than many.

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Are your sunset/sunrise times updating properly? If you look at the Weather Station SmartApp do you see scheduled jobs?

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I’m not sure.
I don’t recall if I know where to look for that. Would that be in the IDE?

Yep. In the IDE under Installed SmartApps. Then either under Hello Home or Smart Lighting (only for recent installs of Weather Station).