Lights randomly turning on !!!!

[alex88 71]

Today's problem is that lights have started turning on randomly throughout my house. I have changed very little in my system for the past 3 months so it's not down to something I could have done.

 

I am literally sitting at the HC2 web interface turning a light circuit off in my bedroom only to see it automatically turn itself back on again. I have removed 5 bulbs from my sons bedroom (who now won't go back to sleep, thank you very much for that little weekend gift Fibaro) and will have to remove 10 or so bulbs from my bedroom before I go to bed tonight.

 

Maybe Fibaro have released a hot fix for away from home presence simulation .. haha!

 

On top of all of the other daily trauma that we have to put up with by supporting this company, has anyone else experienced this?

 

I am running 3.590 beta.

 

EDIT: 3 hours later, another Saturday night wasted and still lights are turning on in the house in 4 rooms. Reverted to  2 older backups, spent ages turning off scenes and even did a complete mesh rebuild. Now I have to get back on a ladder to remove bulbs. Thank you Fibaro!

[alex88 71]

Is the light flashing? Or just coming on!

 

Both. Some lights just turn on, some light seem to increase and decrease in brightness. I tracked one light and it jumped around 10% between mid 40% to mid 50%. It jumped every minute or so. The same light would just turn on previously. Then it got worse. I was sitting writing an email to Fibaro tech support and it kept changing brightness and this was AFTER I turned the HC2 off!

 

It has nothing to do with an alarm. I turned the alarm options off. I have checked and it doesn't matter if the react to alarm settings are activated or disabled. I have also disconnected my Satel alarm system which had not impact.

 

Also, be clear that this is not limited to lights. It touches seemingly every module I have:

 

- Fibaro Relays (used for windows, skylight, heating)

- Fibaro RGBW modules 

- Fibaro Wall Plugs (used for various electrical devices)

- Fibaro Blind modules (used for blinds and windows)

 

And the clincher is that the events keep taking place even when the HC2 is disconnected from the mains!

[rajp 14]

This sounds like what I saw in the movie yesterday called Ghostbusters.. may be you need to hire those guys..

 

Joking aside, it does concern me that the activity continues even after the HC2 has been switched off. One thing I did notice on my install is when we installed a FGS221 to control the heating and HW, suddenly, I started seeing disturbance on the TV which was broadcast from the SKY box using RF output. I had set the output to be on channel 48. Changing it to 58 resolved it. Though why it is affecting the RF signal, I am not sure as the FGS221, HC2 are both far away from Sky box and TV.

[deanrparry 19]

And fibaro have not seen huge traffic anywhere on your network?

[alex88 71]

Every time Fibaro support log into to my machine they say that there is a tonne of traffic on my box. Having around 125 physical devices plus 20 Satel alarm sensors will do that 

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[cford67 0]

Its got to be interference of some kind, can it be analysed to see what is operating around you, walkie talkies, taxi firm, other monitors?

[alex88 71]

There was talk of a zwave sniffer being sent over from Poland but it's just talk at the moment. For some reason they don't want to send it over. They are trying to eliminate other options first.

 

I get the interference argument, but it's a pretty p*ss zwave standard if interference can be used to turn devices on remotely, and not off I might add, only on.

 

I'm personally tired of it all. I've literally spent weeks of my time on this.

 

I recently read a post on the Polish forum of some guy whose Relay just burnt out. He complained about how it spoiled his Easter weekend BBQ. Well multiply that by about 100 and you'll be close to how I feel.

[deanrparry 19]

* me! CURSED!

 

i let the oddity slip the other day when my landing light flashed until i tripped the fuse for the lighting circuit and powered back up!

 

BUT!

 

within the past 5 mins EXACTLY the same has happened again but different light... i physically could not switch it off... dim down or up yes but the light flashed on/off/on/off constantly like alarm signal was being broadcast!

 

fibaro if you see this please consider looking at my box as this is unacceptable if its happening to more than just me! if it happens again after 9 days of run time i will have to conclude that the fibaro dimmers are the issue?

[deanrparry 19]

anyone suffering from this can they tell me if they have zwave.me wall controllers included in there mesh? as far as i am aware this is the ONLY dicey bit of hardware i have?

[deanrparry 19]

i also use sonos plugin x 3 which is another relationship i can see according to your signature? but i would cry if that was the issue! not even part of the mesh! but i wonder what traffic gets transmitted through the box? also my ram had increased to 80% but when i did a backup prior to deleting unused vd's it had dropped 19% again... back to 61%

[alex88 71]

Deanparry,

 

I have only Fibaro modules barring a bunch of Aeotec multi-sensors.

 

In my new rebuild I have nothing but bare Fibaro modules (and 2x bare Aeotec multi-sensors) and nearly none of them have been configured (modified) in any way. Straight out of the box. Factory default settings.

 

I still have the issue.

 

My issue has nothing to do with other company modules (unless you want to point a finger at Aeotec - which would be a long stretch in my opinion).

 

If there is anyone else out there that has had random events where devices turn on by themselves (never OFF) then please share. The more people that have this issue the more attention Fibaro will put on it. That said I think they are already very committed to fixing my issue, however to date we still aren't there.

[SirMaggot 12]

I had 2 Aeon multisensors in my setup, they killed my box, eating RAM and caused big delays, probably by "talking" to much to my HC2.

I removed them and now my box works very good with no delay at all.

 

They did work good with v4.035 and below.

[alex88 71]

Well it's not a RAM or CPU issue. If you read my earlier posts .... the problem still happened when I turned the HC2 off.

 

Both my boxes sit well under 10% most of the time and the highest ram consumption is 13% used on one box and 32% on the other after a couple of days of up time.

[SirMaggot 12]

Well it's not a RAM or CPU issue. If you read my earlier posts .... the problem still happened when I turned the HC2 off.

 

Both my boxes sit well under 10% most of the time and the highest ram consumption is 13% used on one box and 32% on the other after a couple of days of up time.

Yea, i read your earlier post and i think it's very strange.

Home automation should be fun, not what you are experiencing.

 

I really hope that you'll find out whats doing this really quick.

[alex88 71]

Unfortunately fun left the building a long time ago 

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[robmac 173]

Hi Aleks,

Sorry so busy these days with real work only just found this.

I had similar problems just after the FIBARO plugs came out. It was caused by a plug controlling my PID controlled coffee machine. The rapid pulsing of power from the machine was causing many power reports from the plug. This caused lots of traffic and some corupt ( or due to volume misinterpreted) messages. This caused lights to flash like alarm situation and also to randomly switch on and off. I fixed by simply configuring the reporting parameters to less sensitive and regular.

Could you have something configured that is shouting a lot on your network like my plug. For me it was easy to track as it only happened when I turned on my coffee machine. Something configured to report too often or on too small change? Defaults may need changing.

The sniffer sounds a really good idea to track down. Or they could tell you which device is causing all of the traffic from the log?

[alex88 71]

Rob,

 

Well it's been about two months now since this really kicked off. Knowing what I know now this has been a problem for at least a year now, probably longer – just on a very small scale.

 

Unfortunately as of this morning I can't say it's over yet. 

 

My system is in a less than half built state; about 80% of the devices are added. I now need to remove a bunch of devices and then add them all back. Then start the remaining tasks of config, scenes, vd's, panels (satel alarm, heating etc etc). I guesstimate one week of work, maybe less.

 

 

In the end I still do not know for sure if the problem will go away. Only time will tell. What I do know is:

 

- my OLD HC2 was causing part of the problem; lots of testing and upgrading from v3.590 to v4.040 has proven this to be the case. When it is on devices go mad, when it is off (in v4.040) they stop misbehaving

 

- there may be some faulty modules out there yet; until I complete the rebuild all on v4.040 I won't know. UK Support and I started testing modules last week to see if they were faulty but didn't uncover anything. We did only test a handful of devices though.

 

- there are a few bugs in v4.040 that confused me early on into thinking that the bug was still present on a brand new machine with a clean install of v4.040, but i have since seen that it is just bugs in the code, namely - RGBWs are stuffed (they appear as turned on in the interface when not actually on, they do this randomly and when first booting up the HC2. This was all very confusing for me when I was at my wits end in testing. 

 

- there is still no explanation as to why the behaviour continued happening when the hc2 was off; this was when I was back in v3.590. Maybe removing and re-adding the devices to v4.040 fixed an old bug, maybe part of the problem is yet to rear its head fully again.

 

Yes, a sniffer sounds like a great idea. Even better, if you could see in the event panel where the command came from life would be infinitely easier. I would like this for general use really. If a light is turned on from a scene, light switch, phone app, web interface etc it would help immensely to know that. If a problem like mine happens again then it would be even more helpful to know which devices is causing havoc or whether it's the HC2 causing it. As a matter of fact I am going to raise a bugzilla for this:

 

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I hope to report in a few days that it’s all over and that I can go back to living life the way it was before the “event”. I can then embark on an exercise of drinking lots and forgetting how bad it really was, so that one day it will just be a hazy unfortunate blip in my memory. One can dream. 

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[robmac 173]

Good points. Was one of my suggestions on Steven's user survey. Hopefully it will come soon.

[cford67 0]

any news

[alex88 71]

After a complete rebuild on a brand NEW HC2 to v4.040 (I was on 3.590) and the problem has gone away, so it looks like it was a combination of a busted HC2 and something to do with v3.590.

 

Not much more to report other than that it has finally gone away.

[MalvinYNJ 4]

Any chance of hardware association?