wake up interval madness

[goran 9]

In another recent thread I asked about strange battery reports from Fibaro smoke sensors. When I looked into that I happened to notice that another Fibaro smoke sensor had the wake up interval set to 0, even though I had never set it to 0. I write down all values that I set when installing new devices, which means I know exactly what parameters and configuration I set and when.

Now, the issue with the smoke sensor got me to look more closely into the wake up interval values. If one smoke sensor had this value changed without me having asked for it, what other devices had done the same? So I wrote a script that prints the wakeUpTime property for all my devices. The result was surprising to say the least. I usually keep the default wake up interval if I find it reasonable. If i change it, I adjust it by mostly a few hours. This means that all values should be between about 3600 (1 hour) and 21600 (6 hours).

So let's see what I got:

* 8 devices have a wake up interval of 0
* One of my Fibaro motion sensors has a wake up interval of 4133376 (that's 1148 hours)
* One of my Fibaro flood sensors has a wake up interval of 5448192 (that's 1500 hours)
* One of my Aeon Labs multi sensors has a wake up interval of 2678400 (that's 744 hours)
* One of my Everspring multi sensors has a wake up interval of 6492672 (that's 1800 hours)

And the list just goes on like this. A total of 34 devices has a non-default, very weird apparently random value as wake up interval.

Is it really supposed to be like this?

Of course, in HC2 when I change the wake up interval and press save, nothing happens, probably because the devices never wakes up. I changed the value in HC2 for all 34 devices yesterday. Only 2 of them have managed to update this value by now. For some devices HC2 will show "Waiting for wake up" after trying to reconfigure the device, but for some devices nothing is shown and nothing ever happens. I guess I have to manually wake up the remaining 32 devices and hope for the best. But how do I know that HC2 doesn't mess things up again?

 

What is going on here?

[petergebruers 1,268]

You have to manually wake up those devices, indeed... The one and only true, real, definitive wake up interval is stored IN the device. The HC2 will try to set it whenever you change something. So it is possible that the device has a good, sensible value while the HC2 displays something odd, due to some bug. The fact that 2 devices changed their display in HC2 probably means the device woke up (so it had a sensible interval stored, while the HC2 thought it was several days).

That said, you shouldn't have it... But I have it too! Only on one sensor: a Fibaro Door/Window sensor shows about 15 million seconds.

I don't know the reason... But this sensor is in a garden shed end it is at the edge of the "direct communication range". There are a few modules that can act as repeater, so I haven't had other issues with it.

[j.nowacki 5]

Wake up devices manually and see if this strangely long intervals are still there after refreshing page.

[petergebruers 1,268]

Wake up devices manually and see if this strangely long intervals are still there after refreshing page.

I'm sorry I didn't come up with that advice myself... As I said originally, I understand the "real" wake-up is in the device. There are probably some good reasons as to why the HC2 can display bogus data. It makes me think of that occasional "potential fire alert" showing one million degrees. This can give the impression that the device is wrong, but it actually isn't.

So to be 100% sure: if I wake up the device (using the button), the HC2 should read the interval from the device and adjust the display? For my door sensor it didn't work, but I'll keep an eye on it.

[goran 9]

So In theory I should be able to just wake the devices up manually and they will be reconfigured with the new values and everything will be good.

Not a funny job for 30 devices that sits in all kinds of weird places but I can live with that.

 

But that's the theory. Here is reality.

Change the parameters in HC2, it says it waits for device to wake up, I wake it up manually, and.... fail. Weird wake up interval not updated in device.

Tried another device, nothing. Another device, nothing.

 

So I unmounted a few devices and put them next to the HC2 during the process to be sure that there is no communication problem.

Let's look more closely what happens. Enter new wake up value in HC2 and save, wake the device up manually, HC2 shows in the log that it starts to communicate with the device's Main_Zwave_Device. Since the log window only shows the last 10 entries (wtf?) I can't really see what's going on. The last 10 messages doesn't tell much.

Anyway, I press "reload pameters" after the reconfigure is done. Look, there is the new value I entered! I'll just reload the web page to make sure.

And there is... the old value.

 

Let's do the whole process again while I have a script in the background that fetch

Please login or register to see this link.

and every second and display the wake up interval for the device.

Save new interval in HC2, reload parameters which shows updated value, reload web page which shows old value. The script confirms that the value was never changed at all, even though "reload parameters" says so.

 

This was a Fibaro flood sensor. Let's try a few devices from other vendors. Exact same result, time after time.

Ok I give up. I'll just delete and include the device from scratch (and then try to fix all scenes that will effectively break completely).

Such a basic task could not go wrong, could it?

 

I press Add device -> I wake up the device, and here is what I get in the log:

[21:05:10] Home center in learning mode
[21:05:32] Device added
[21:05:39] Adding devices complete

 

Reload HC2 web page and then I get... a brown box showing Configuration error.

Delete it, try again, same result.

Delete it, try again, now it worked.

 

Time to delete and include the next device. In HC2, click Add device. Nothing happens. Click click click, nothing.

Reload web page, click again, and log window shows "Learning mode error. Try again."

Click again, nothing happens. Reload web page, now dialog pops up and I can continue.

HC2 enters learning mode, finds device, and shows... a brown box with label "not configured". I wake it up manually and

wait for a while, and the device turns into... an unusable generic com.fibaro.multilevelSensor with all values set to 0.

Delete it and try again... and again, and again. Repeat until the correct device finally shows up normally.

 

And as usual, directly after having a new device HC2 will immediately start to show the Low battery warning even though the battery is perfectly fine.

It seems that it assumes that if it hasn't yet read the battery status, the battery level is 0.

 

Anyway, in just 2 hours I managed to get 3 devices up and running with a correct wake up interval (who knows if it's going to stay good this time?)

So in about... 50 hours I should have been able to fix this issue in the rest of my devices.

 

I explained all of this because it illustrates what we users experience every time there is a simple tiny issue we need to fix, like changing a simple parameter in a device.

Hence the frustration.

[rdhd 0]

it seems it has something to do with the time you wait between clicking the reload parameters button and waking up the device.

I have a Zwave.me WallCS (battery operated) which displayed the same behavior as Goran describes.

Now, If I hit "reload Parameters" and wait for let's say 1 minute and then wake up the device, it works fine.

My assumption is that the HC2 needs time to fill the mailbox for the WallCS with all the parameters. If I wake up the device too soon, the new parameters are not set, and not preserved by the HC2.

[rdhd 0]

manual wake up does not work.

I made the following observation with a HC2 and a Zwave.me WallCS while changing the parameters:

set the new values and click Save. (so not reload parameters or anything)

then I woke up the device more than once.

Press all 4 buttons simultaneously for more than 4 secs, press button 2 (green LED is flashing rapidly)

everytime the parameters were not changed.

 

then I set the new parameter values and clicked Save

and I waited. I waited for the wake up interval period.

Out of the blue the new parameter settings appeared in the Log screen at the top of the HC2 page

and then the parameters were changed in the WallCS.

 

apparently manual waking up the device does not trigger the mailbox for the device to be collected.

and also apparently is the mailbox collected if the device wakes up by the wake up interval period.

[petergebruers 1,268]

manual wake up does not work.

apparently manual waking up the device does not trigger the mailbox for the device to be collected.

and also apparently is the mailbox collected if the device wakes up by the wake up interval period.

Is it possible that you got confused about the numbering of the buttons? Button 2 is top right. So to wake up the device: press and hold 4 buttons until LED flashes green (5 seconds). Click button top right. Works for me.