I have the HA18 Light Switch installed in my home which controls my outside light. Vera is the primary controller of HA18 and I have been able to turn it on and off by using the dashboard on Vera. Also, I even set a timer just a couple minutes ahead to see if it would work automatically and it did. But… Now that I have it set to turn the light on at sunset and then off at 3am. It’s not working properly. Is there a bug I’m not aware of? Is there a log file I can look at to see if VERA even sent a command or not?
Any help is much appreciated.
More Details Below:
I have a smaller home. 500 sq ft on the main floor and 500 sq ft on the 2nd floor. I have a basement too, but there aren’t any z-wave products down there.
I have Vera setup in my office on the 2nd floor at the back of the house. At the moment, my z-wave network consists of the following:
[ul][li]4 - Intermatic HomeSettings HA18 3-Way In-Wall Switches
[list][li]all on the main floor[/li][/list][/li]
[li]5 - Intermatic HomeSettings HA02 Appliance Modules
[list][li]one on the 2nd floor and the rest on the main floor[/li][/list][/li]
[li]1 - Intermatic HomeSettings HA04 Outdoor Appliance Module
[list][li]Outside - front of house for holiday lights[/li][/list][/li]
[li]1 - Intermatic HomeSettings HA09 Handy Remote Controller
[list][li]It works perfectly but am looking to upgrade to the Harmony 890 eventually[/li][/list][/li][/ul]
All of the above products work perfectly fine with Vera and each other. I use to have the Intermatic InTouch Wireless PIR Sensor but returned it because it doesn’t function properly with VERA. I am now going to buy the Act ZIR000 Motion Sensor and try that out. I’ve heard good things on this forum about the Act.
The timers and events do work (as the lights turning off on me as I write this testifies) but the ZWave network can be unreliable. If you get the homeseer setup software or the controlthink software you can test the link from the controller to the light. if you used the Intermatic HA09 as your master its earlier firmware may not be able to optimize the network. It may not have told Vera to “hop” so Vera needs to be in direct range for reliability. If you use Vera as your master it has the ability to update the network for best reliability.
However there are some elusive bugs in the underlying Kernel that do cause intermittent crashes. These are obvious when they hit, Vera becomes unresponsive and needs to be power cycled.
Can you turn the light on manually? Have you checked that the Vera box has the right time settings? Currently my vera box does not keep the correct time which is mission critical. I hope the devs figure it out or its going to freeze this product to death.
Duncan, can you go to ‘Location’, and confirm the date/time is ok.
Then go to Advanced, Logs, and check ‘Verbose Logging’. Then, within a couple hours or so of when the timer should have triggered but didn’t go to Advanced, Tech Support and submit a report. Then on micasaverde.com you can click Support and if one of us is online, you can send us an instant message and we’ll look into it right away.
Mark-hc… It should keep the time accurately. It sync’s periodically to an internet-based clock. Assuming you’ve confirmed your location, when the time is off, can you ping me on IM and I’ll take a look?
I too have gotten the timers to work when I first tested it. It just seems to not be working now. Also, I have VERA setup as the primary controller.
To: mark-hc:
I can turn the light on manually and VERA is showing the correct time. I’ll sign up for the wiki and add all my devices once I know they’re all working 100%.
To: micasaverde:
Sunset was at 5:09pm today and my outside light still didn’t turn on. Vera is telling me that it’s on, but it isn’t. I can turn it on/off with Vera’s dashboard manually but not automatically with the sunset event. I’ll send you the log file.
I just installed the latest firmware 1.0.310. I’ve tested out all my modules and they all seem to work just fine like usual along with my remote. I then tested some automated timers and they worked too. I guess I’ll wait till 1am tonight to make sure the timer still works.
As for the sunset event. I’ll wait till tomorrow between 5:00pm and 5:15pm to see if my front light (HA18) turns on. I am still able to control it other ways: Vera Dashboard (5 sec delay), HA09 Remote (instant), Vera Automated Timer (20 sec delay) and of course manually(instant).
I just set up an event for a light to come on for 4 hours then go back to previous setting and hit save. I logged out off Vera came back in and it showed turning it on but leave it on! I don’t think vera is saving it correctly.
FYI - the timers don’t shut off in 1.032. I had several outlets that came on @ 17:00 hours and were scheduled to go off at 21:00 hours. At 22:00 hours they were still on so I shut them off via the dash board. The system time is correct.
Thats what I am thinking..........Because your right in short tests it works but anything a couple hours doesn't seem to work.
I think I know what’s going on… When you create a timer at, say, 10:00, that’s in the database, so everytime the software loads it reads it in. When you create a timer at 6:00 with a “after 4 hours turn off”, the timer in the database is 6:00, and the ‘turn off at 10:00pm’ is an “in-memory” timer that is created in software when the 6:00 timer occurs. Every time you click ‘save’ the software does a reset (aka reload) which clears the memory and re-reads everything in from the database to get your latest changes.
So, if you did a ‘save’ (router reload) at 5:50, the 6:00 timer would execute and so would the 10:00. If you did it at 6:00, the 10:00 would be lost when the reload occurred, and after the reload, the only in memory timer would be for 6:00 the next day. Of course the easy workaround is to just create a timer at 10:00 as well as 6:00. Then it’s in the database, so you know it is always executed. I’ll think about another solution…http://bugs.micasaverde.com/view.php?id=305
yeah, just noticed it tonight it does the same thing on mine. I have the 3 lamps over my center island to turn on at 50% and they are full brightness! :o
[quote=“micasaverde, post:14, topic:164133”]I think I know what’s going on… When you create a timer at, say, 10:00, that’s in the database, so everytime the software loads it reads it in. When you create a timer at 6:00 with a “after 4 hours turn off”, the timer in the database is 6:00, and the ‘turn off at 10:00pm’ is an “in-memory” timer that is created in software when the 6:00 timer occurs. Every time you click ‘save’ the software does a reset (aka reload) which clears the memory and re-reads everything in from the database to get your latest changes.
So, if you did a ‘save’ (router reload) at 5:50, the 6:00 timer would execute and so would the 10:00. If you did it at 6:00, the 10:00 would be lost when the reload occurred, and after the reload, the only in memory timer would be for 6:00 the next day. Of course the easy workaround is to just create a timer at 10:00 as well as 6:00. Then it’s in the database, so you know it is always executed. I’ll think about another solution…http://bugs.micasaverde.com/view.php?id=305[/quote]
It’s just a matter of making the secondary timers persistent. But since unlike the primary timers these are “disposable”, their storage should be light and small, something like a small temporary table, or even a file(s)… Entries could have an expiration time set to when they expected to go off, and a little background process/thread would wake up once in a while to do some cleanup. Small separate storage is the condition for cleanup to be easy on resources…
the only difference that I’m aware of is that I just upgraded to firmware 1.0.320 and activated my holiday light event which is also set to turn on at sunset just like my front light.
