bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
1182
@jdroberts
As an old electronic countermeasures tech… (I jammed radio transmissions for a living) one major factor affected by weather is the data within the transmission.
As the signal is embedded with data it becomes prone to deterioration and interference from outside forces, ie; the environment. This greatly reduced its effective power, range, and usability.
The RF signal within a microwave oven has no data. This type of signal is called a carrier wave signal. It is a clean signal with much more penetration power than a data signal.
Take this for example:
Radar at the airport. It transmits at 50,000 watts. It is sending out a carrier wave signal. The redirected signal has had become a data signal due to the nature of the reflection physics. This signal is much much weaker. By the time the reflected signal reaches back to the radar receiver it can have lost as much as 99.99% of its power. So a 50 kw transmitter may have an effective range of roughly 25 miles. It all depends in the sensitivity of the receiver. The better the receiver, the longer the range.
But, asking comes a bad guy in a plane. He starts transmitting on the same frequency directly at the receiver. He is 100 miles out. Well out of range of the radar station. His carrier wave signal does not lose power like the data signal. His tx reaches the radar receiver at a much higher magnitude of power than the data signal. This creating white noise and blinding the radar.
My point is, while the signal is degraded by the environment, all factors of it, the range is shortened because of the data signal degradation. While it is affected by the rain, it is not due to absorption, but more so from scatter.
The OP comparison of the two, while seemingly true, is way off base. The two signals are very different and are affected by the environment in different ways.
This is also why zigbee is so troubled with our routers. The more powerful signal effectively jams the zigbee signal.
I really hope that makes sense. Oh, and this is more to the OP than JD.
Are you running this on Windows??? The instructions are dismal at best. For instance, it is required that you provide the usb_path… The examples they provide are obviously Linux
# Example configuration.yaml entry
zwave:
usb_path: /dev/ttyUSB0
config_path: /usr/local/share/python-openzwave/config
Its been some time since I have seen any posts about routines/events failing. Has this issue mostly been resolved or are people simply excepting that time based events just do not work anymore in ST???
I have been using EventGhost for all my scheduling which works very well but the ideal still is to have everything in one place.
Mine has been working fine for over a month, I have about six daily Rule Machine or Smart Lighting that are time based, as well as Good Morning, and Good Night routines. There have been delay issues with response to things, but time based has been working very well, at least for me.
Mine, which are extremely simple, like “change mode to Home at 7:00 am” or turn on a light at a specific time still fail 2 to 3 times a month.
Obviously the company still thinks there’s a problem, because they are creating an entirely new scheduler to replace the existing one which is supposed to go into beta in a few weeks based on staff postings in the forums.
Using an external timer like you. I haven’t accepted the scheduling issue, just still working around it. Hopefully someone posts when it is really fixed.
I have every time based event backed up with an IFTTT for redundancy. Don’t look and don’t care if ST works or if it was covered by the IFTTT run. Everything else is managed by SmartRules.
So it looks like I along with most others was nervous about declaring this issue fixed for us as every-time we’ve done that in the past it has bitten us. But I think from my side. my time based issues are gone at least in the UK and have been for about a month. Thank for the hard work guys.
It’s not fixed, my scheduled routine failed again today. It was relatively more stable for the last couple of weeks and just when I thought it might have been fixed, it failed today. Basic lighting automations using the standard SmartThings app, no custom programming or complex conditions.
My scheduled routines were working great for the last two weeks until last night. Now several failed to reschedule and I need to go back and update them manually.
Same problem. Issues with lights that are supposed to switch off after a period of time are not doing so. Woke up last night to see the entry light on. Makes you lose confidence as a platform that you can leave your home on vacation, etc.
I’ve had trouble with SHM being unresponsive since the late February incident. I’m only using this until I find a new security capable hub that will let me use all the sensors I bought for this over the years :(.
At least for now 