I feel like i’m beginning to get to the maintenance phase with my install/configuration, but wanted to get some input on best practices to fix a few of my last minor issues.
I have a few automation that work most of the time, but occasionally something stays on that should have turned off, or more recently a garage door stayed opened that should have closed. I had not made any changes to the automation, it just failed to do all the steps. The automation that seems to have the most issues (and its still not that often), is my “goodbye” routine. It turns off all lights, fans, switches, locks doors, closes garage, sets a few input selects.
About 10% of the time, when I check, I find a switch still on, or like I said more recently the garage did not close. I had similiar issues with smart things, and ended up with a complex, for next loop that went through and tried to turn the lights off up to 10 times, but hopefully i wont need to go that route. HA has been much more stable and fast, just not 100%
So I guess the question is, what sorts of things do other people do to make sure this does not happen, or at least notify me right away. Maybe check the state of all of items after the automation runs?
It varies, most of the time everything works fine. Sometimes is a hue light, sometimes is a zwave switch. I rarely leave the garage door open, so I don’t know how successful it would be, I tested it this weekend and it failed, but then worked fine the next time. I probably have around 20ish things that could need to be turned off, locked or closed. But typically its just a couple
I’d guess that you’ve got communication issues with those devices. Possibly your Z-Wave mesh is borderline and your Hue controller/light is also on the edge of range.
Certainly, for most people it’s more reliable than you seem to be experiencing.
Sorry, I think you misunderstood. It is quite reliable. I’m just saying that sometimes, I find that something is still on, that I expected to be off. It not the usual, but it happens. It’s zwave and hue, but not the same item each time.
I’m really just looking for advice, or maybe info on how other turn on and off multiple items. Maybe I could be doing something more efficient.
For example, I have my lights and switches in groups based on room, then I have those groups in another group named - for example “turn off all these when I leave”, then I just call a home assitant_turn_off on that one group. Ultimately its a group in a group, with 20ish items. Maybe that’s too many for a single call? Maybe it will miss an item from time to time? Would you call a home assistant turn off on one group that had other groups that had multiple items? Maybe?
Again its not the same item each time, so I dont think its an issue with a specific device. It’s really the automation with the most items that has the occasional issue.
Why not just have an automation that runs after you leave to check if a light or device is still on or an automation that checks if your garage door is still up?
If everything is working then it comes down to communication or timing, or timing is messing up your communication.
After running your “all off” script you could run another script to check if the group is off and notify you if a device is still on.
You could also try splitting the 20 items out into separate steps in the “all off” scrip to see if running them sequentially is more reliable than switching the group off.
I’ve noticed the same thing on occasion. Just recently as a matter of fact.
I have a “all the lights” group. so when I tell Alexa to “turn all the lights off” it will turn off that group of things - some are switches, some are bulbs, some are zwave, some are zigbee, and some are MQTT. it seems to not work to turn all the lights off at times. like HA thinks it turned it off but never sends the signal to that device. And just like you it’s not always the same device that won’t turn off.
It hasn’t been such a nuisance that i need to deal with it yet but since someone else brought it up I figured i’d throw in my two cents.
Had the same issue today. My goodbye script locked doors, but did not close garage. I manually triggered the script again, and this time the garage closed. I then reordered the lock,off, close actions, to close the garage door first. It seemed to work, then later I noticed one switch did not get turned off. Ran the automation manually and it turned off. I know I can probably play a bit with the order, but really like the idea of getting a notification at completion that would let me know if anything was still open, unlocked or on that I expected to be otherwise.
Just following up on my post. I broke up my lights, switches, fans, etc into different groups and that seems to have helped quite a bit.
So before I had a group called living room lights, (I use that for the front end), not I have a group called Living Room Hue Lights, and Living Room Zwave devices, same thing for other areas of the house. I broke them up by protocol/device.
I only use these extra groups for my goodbye, or goodnight automations, but it seems to have made a difference, and the issue with a leftover device staying on has gone away