Learning from your mistakes

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Just interested in some other peoples experiences where something went wrong which made you think, “yeahhhh, I should of had logic for that”. Just quick summary of what went wrong and how you fixed it.

Couple of mine…

  1. Turned backyard soakers on (via smart valve), intending to turn off before we left for 3 day vacation. Came home 3 days later to absolutely soaked soil. Now I monitor it and if its on for more then X minutes, it turns off automatically and alerts phones.

  2. This just happened this morning; I woke up after quick power outtage the night before to my AC unit on and fireplace on in a duel for room temperature supremacy. While I am not sure how the fireplace turned on (Im thinking maybe when Shelly lost power and then regained it, it switched on for some unknown reason), I now have logic that checks the fireplace to see if its on and based on various scenarios, we are both sensed in bed, night mode is on, its between 1am and 4am, it automatically turns it off.

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I once wrote an automation to send system log messages with error or higher severity to my System Telegram chat.

Unfortunately there was a problem with the automation that generated logged errors. Which ran the automation, which generated logged errors, which… you get the idea.

Crashed the system in minutes.

I should have known to put rate limiting in as a few years prior I was part of a team developing a simple remote monitor that alerted people by SMS. This was in conjunction with one of the country’s major cellular carriers. We accidentally sent something like 25,000 SMS messages over one weekend due to a bug. The carrier wouldn’t refund it. All we got was taken out to lunch. That was an expensive lunch.

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