Power Outage - Lights Turn on During the Night

Other Devices & Integrations Lighting & Load Control
1

I have two zwave bulbs (GoControl Z-Wave Dimmable LED Light Bulb, LB60Z-1) in two lamps. During the day yesterday the power went out for a minute and then returned. When this happens the bulbs turn on upon the power returning to the house. So far so good, I turn them off using the app or Alexa and everything seems to be back to normal. Here is where it gets weird. Overnight the bulbs both turn back on on their own. I checked the home controller and no scene is running at that time. This behavior is also consistent, every time the power goes out the lights will turn on during the middle of night the night. Anyone know why this is happening and/or how it can be fixed?

Thanks!

2

Possibly this is happening when Vera runs its nightly heal? Does this happen at a consistent time during the night after the power outage? Just a guess.

3

I’m normally asleep when this happens so I can’t say for sure. But let’s assume you’re correct (it sounds very feasible). Why is this happening and can I stop it in the future?

4

Or this could quite possible be Parameter 1 setting on the bulb.

http://www.nortekcontrol.com/pdf/manuals/LB60Z_install.pdf

5

You could do a hack workaround where you have a scene that runs every night a short time after the heal to turn them off. I recall that someone else in the forum was doing this but I can’t remember the reason. As to the cause of it, perhaps it is worth contacting GoControl directly. Maybe they would have a clue.

6

Thanks for the replies. I think I’ll reach out to gocontrol first and see if they have any ideas.

7

This is from Vera:

[i]Hi,

We are aware of this issue with the GoControl LBS0Z-1 lights turning on randomly at night around 2:00am. What happens is that these devices do not respond to ‘update neighbor nodes’ , which is where you tell a zwave node to see what other nodes are in vicinity in order to keep the mesh network strong and make sure that we can keep communicating with the light bulb.

In fact, zwave specs require controllers to do this periodically since, without this, the mesh will breakdown and devices will lose communication.

What you could try is to contact the manufacturer and ask them if they have a newer version of these bulbs and if they do to ask for a replacement.

Thank you![/i]

8

Dear Vera Ltd.:

Since the GoControl LB60Z-1 is manufactured and sold by Nortek, a 25% stake holder in your own company, it might behoove you and Nortek to work together and improve the interoperability of your products.

A company should not advertize that they “guarantee that Vera will work with every Certified Partner Product!” on their web site’s front page and also have a page certifying and explicitly stating that the bulb is compatible with “no known issues” when there are issues both known and outstanding for months!

9

mic drop

10

@fossilnews

We will look this up and find a solution ASAP,

Please check your email from us.

11

Just replied to your email. Thanks John and Z-Waver!

12

I’m curious how the bulb would know that a power outage and restore is different than someone flicking the switch. Both cut and restore power to the bulb and if Parameter 1 is set to the default 100% on power on then that is a recipe for a bulb on in the middle of the night.

Perhaps there is another issue but if the original problem was due to a power outage then no matter how much software is changed the behavior is still the same.

13

Update: So Vera tried several times to update the firmware on my bulbs, but they did not succeed. Here is their last email to me:

I guess the only available option is to create 2 scenes for both lights with a trigger for light on , then restrict the triggers between certain hours (i.e 2 AM and 5 AM) and add an action for Light Off with a certain delay (i.e 5 minutes). (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnhJ_zUsKlM)

I have submitted a request to our development team to improve the firmware upgrade process but it might take some time until this will be implemented.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

14

This issue had me going crazy for a week, my workaround is at the bottom.

Hello, I also own 2 GoControl LB60Z-1 bulbs. One is installed in a living room lamp, the other I recently installed in my bedroom lamp. Before purchasing the bedroom bulb I noticed that the living room lamp bulb would turn on during the night if I had accidentally turned the lamp’s knob to turn-off the bulb. I would quickly turn the knob back on realizing what I had done (which would turn the light on), then I would turn off the lamp with the mobile app. I would then go to sleep. After waking up in the morning, I would come downstairs and notice the bulb was on. It was very creepy until I picked up on the pattern.

I liked the functionality of the bulb so much that I decided to purchase another for my bedroom lamp. I have an Amazon Dot in my bedroom which I can use to control all my Z-Wave devices. It was great being able to shut the lamp with voice commands from bed. It was great until the bedroom lamp turned on by itself EVERY SINGLE NIGHT AT 2 AM. I realized that it must be due to me or my wife accidentally using the wall switch by the door to turn the lamp on and off as we had done for 3 years prior. So we told ourselves, NEVER TOUCH THE SWITCH. But somehow, someway, the switch accidentally gets used and then we wake up at 2am yelling at Alexa (Amazon Dot). Yes, I know the bulb came with a wall switch guard that prevents you from switching, but I thought, hmm I actually might want to use the switch once in a while. What harm could that do?

So here are the scenarios that may cause the bedroom bulb to lose power causing us to wake up at 2am.

  1. Wall switch was used.
  2. Lamp twist knob was accidentally used.
  3. Lamp plug was temporarily removed from the wall outlet to plug-in another device - hair dryer, fan, radio, etc.
  4. Power loss at the house

The suggested scenarios to create a scene or trigger to turn off the bulb nightly at 2:01am or to turn off the bulb when an on-state is detected will not work for me. It will not work because as soon as the bulb turns on for 1 second, the wife starts screaming. :cry:

So the nightly heal happens around 2am triggering the light to turn on if it had lost power since the last heal. There used to be a way to manually heal but that does not exist in the current UI. I found a forum that describes a URL you can use to manually heal but one user reported a very negative experience.

So here’s how I found to “manually heal”, preventing the 2 AM nightmare.
-Restore power to the bulb (the bulb will turn on).
-Turn the bulb OFF with the Vera app.
-Using a browser, not the mobile app, log into your dashboard (either by going to home.getvera.com or by using the IP address of the Vera)
-Go to devices and select the bulb that had lost power.
-Scroll down (if needed) and click on “Device Options”.
-Click “Update Neighbor Nodes”, then click OK when the window pops-up.
-Your bulb should blink then stay on.
-You can now turn your bulb OFF with via Vera.
-Sleep through the night without an angry wife.

In the end, here is my workaround:
-Buy a wall switch guard (I threw away the one that came with the bulb).
-Be aware of any power loss described in the scenarios above.
-If power loss is detected, update the neighbor nodes.

Sooo does anybody know of a bulb that does not have these problems??

15

Hi there,

I’m just pinging in, as in the meantime we got in contact with the manufacturer of these bulbs, which has provided us with the tools to OTA upgrade them, and on request we can manually upgrade these bulbs so they won’t turn ON on nightly heal anymore.

Please contact our Customer Care team over the email, and we will sort this out. Make sure Customer Care remote access will be already enabled to make things faster.

16

Thank you. I will contact support ASAP and report back.