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HCL freezing continuously


LMR

Question

I am running a fairly simple setup with some 20 switches/dimmers and about 20 scenes, really nothing fancy. All hardware is Fibaro. The system is freezing or crashing continuously, works fine for a few hours and then stops. I have not been able to find the root cause. Not an expert, but worked professionally with software for 20 years...

 

Have read about poor quality releases and many bugs, but is what I experience specific for me or rather normal?

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Hello,

 

Are the scenes complicated? Do they use many devices at once?

What's the CPU and RAM usage?

When did this start to happen? After adding a device? After creating and running a scene?

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  • Thanks for helping out!

     

    I only use block scenes, and I would not characterize any of them as complicated. Typically using a timer combined with a variable to trigger the scene, and then setting one to make three devices and maybe one or two variables.

     

    CPU typically about 10%, now and then going to 90% for maybe 5 seconds. RAM usage 80-85%.

     

    Can't really say what triggered the issues.  I thought earlier that using weather conditions in scene logic was the problem, seems like YR app is not updating properly. Could also be location data. Have also seen that time format is changing randomly. 

     

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    I encourage you to check other topics on the forum regarding the freezing HCL.

    Here you have some of them:

     

     

     

    A timer based scenes may be tricky for HCL, but honestly, they shouldn't.

    Weather conditions are more tricky, as the scene depends on the plugin - if the plugin fails the scene fails.

    If you think that there is an issue with your location and time, try overwriting it. Change the current location and time and then change it back to the correct one.

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  • Thanks for the response! I am not sure what to conclude from reading the recommended threads. Memory leakage is typically the result of poor software design and/or implementation.

     

    Is the advice to get rid of my HCL and buy an HC2?

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    @LMR: unfortunately you have to live with these crashes. Seems to be (unfortunately) normal behavior of the HCL and it seems also for HC2. I still hope for an improvement of the software (stablity, regression test, ....) but I am already setting up an openhab system in parallel, as the situation has not improved over the last versions and betas. HCL is nice, small, easy to configure and 'program', has very low power consumption but without a drastically improved stability it is sort of useless for what it is intended to be used. Security I would definitely not rely on it.

    I have already rewritten all scenes were a delayed on or off was used, this reduced the amount of crashes from several a day to now maybe one or two. I have my HCL 'hard-reset' (Power off - wait 3 min - power on) twice a day now, using a programmable DECT wall outlet switch.

    Edited by kunoch
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  • Once again, it is good to see some response on issues that I have with my Fibaro system.

     

    The same rules apply in business, sports as well as in life. Make sure you master the basics before trying out the fancy stuff. I think it applies also in this case. I hope  the Fibaro team can sort out the basics, because there are some fancy things in there that would bring great value it it just stopped crashing all the time.  

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    hi @LMR

    I own HCL and worked with it for about a year. Recently I switched to HC2. I migrated (re-developed) all my scenes from HCL to HC2 (lua scene's).
    HCL is still having all devices.
    Both are stable.
    What I have learned from the period only running HCL with about 20 devices and 50 or more scene's?
    - limit the number of time based scene's. I only had two. One for sunrise lights and one main triggered by several variables in order to monitor some other timebased scenes's.

    - first time right. Certainly with timebased scene's. If you needed to change your timebased scene several times, delete it and create it again.

    - create several small scene's instead of 1 big one.

    - don't use long sleep timers in your scene's. Limit the number of scenes with sleep timers anyway. Limit the sleep time to some minutes maximum. In case you need several of those, work the general timer (see above).

    - my opinion? In most cases, you'll find human errors in the logic of a scene or in scene dependencies. Loop through the scene's again and document your scene's in a flow.

    - in case you changed scene's frequenly and added or deleted triggers. Delete the scene and create it again (first time right). This is anyway an issue I have on HC2 as well. Advantage of HC2 is that you can see what's happening in the debug log.
      for example, I've added a 5 minute timebased trigger in the scene as a test but wanted an hourly trigger. Once removing the 5 minute trigger, scene is still triggered by minute timer after saving. I guess HCL has the same problem, but there you don't see it.

     

    I hope that above recomendatios may help you.

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  • @wpeeters,

    Great advice, much helpful. I will make a complete re-build and see what happens. Would be painful to discover human errors = my screw ups ... have checked the logic systematically but never say never. 

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    @LMR, can you check the temperature on/near the HCL?

    I had problems with the temperature causing a HCL freeze.

     

    The operating temperature of HCL is 10 – 40°C

       
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    On 7/19/2017 at 4:54 PM, LMR said:

    Thanks for the response! I am not sure what to conclude from reading the recommended threads. Memory leakage is typically the result of poor software design and/or implementation.

     

    Is the advice to get rid of my HCL and buy an HC2?

     

    tjena

    yes it is, together (in the HCL case) with a poor hardware design (low RAM quantity and not up-gradable)

    Then you will hear a lot of non sense instructions like do not use a lor of scenes, do not use timers, do not use ......

    Same thinking of buying a Ferrari but please drive it at max 100Km/h otherwise the engine breaks.

    I need, I buy, I pay, I want. Period.

    And when I buy I read the specification of the product and nowhere from Fibaro there is stated that you cannot use a lot of scenes and blablabla.

     

    If your RAM is 80-85% you are really lucky, mine is always around 97/99%.

     

    If it get stuck within 24hours you are not lucky, in mine I had to imlpement a daily automatic restart just because it does not freeze within 24hours but some thing more than that.

     

    On 7/20/2017 at 9:46 AM, LMR said:

    I hope  the Fibaro team can sort out the basics, because there are some fancy things in there that would bring great value it it just stopped crashing all the time.  

     

    I do not think so. That problem has always been there and still is.

    On the other hand Fibaro is investigating new frontiers to gain money, Apple kit, ....

    Forget about the HCL, it will never be up and running as a reliable product to control your expensive house and you more expensive life. People here are spending hours and hours trying to have it working in some way.

    Just read about the ones that upgrading the FW now have the virtual devices not working anymore.... mah.

    Sometimes I even think it is all made by purpose, maybe to buy HC2 and spend money twice on the same brand? No way, there are plenty of other products in the market.

    Make your own conclusions.

    cheers

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    @Flowy: Unfortunately I do have to agree ;(

    @ all the others: Especially on the HCL, where all is done thru graphic interface, programming errors 'canot' be done, it should all end up in executable code. You can not mix up a pointer with the address, you can not use an undefined variable or flood the memory. It should all be handled by the interpreter of the graphical code, which is obviously not the case. If there are issues due to the graphical code, there should be a message like when too many instances of a scene are running.

    In a graphical programming interface like in the block scenes, it should lead to executable code, even the code itself might not make sense. If something is not possible, you should not be able to click it and insert it into the block scene. Not only timers and timeouts and delays are a problem. Just read thru the forum. Currently it is a lot of frustration, not only the wasted money.

     

    Edited by kunoch
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    I'm currently frozen with a error 503.  Brand new HCL, ver. 4.13.  Only 3 devices and a couple simple scenes.  Three plugins that do not work, will be deleted as soon as I can recover access to the HCL.  This is discouraging since I only received my HCL this past Wednesday, and included my first device yesterday.  My Zipatile was aggravating to program, but was stable as a rock.....glad I still have it, but really want the HCL to be a stable reliable platform.

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    2 hours ago, Gman34798 said:

    I'm currently frozen with a error 503.  Brand new HCL, ver. 4.13.  Only 3 devices and a couple simple scenes.  Three plugins that do not work, will be deleted as soon as I can recover access to the HCL.  This is discouraging since I only received my HCL this past Wednesday, and included my first device yesterday.  

     

    you must be doing something wrong, recover to 4.130 or even better to beta 4.134 (not 4.13 ...), re-add you devices and let the HCL running for 2-3 days, with no scenes. If that works, you have done something wrong before, if not, your HCL is broken.

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    I restarted services (Rebooted) HCL this morning and it has been stable all day.  I've made no changes by adding new devices or scenes.  Will wait a couple days and see what transpires.

    i currently have 2 scenes.  One turns a light on when a door sensor is breached, and the other turns said light off when the door closes.  These scenes work perfectly.  I can't imagine why this should confuse the HCL.  

     

    For or some odd reason, my CPU usage is at 9%, but my RAM usage is at 97%.  That may be some indication of an issue?   I'm new here so I'm not sure what to make of that.

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    On 7/23/2017 at 4:52 AM, Gman34798 said:

    I restarted services (Rebooted) HCL this morning and it has been stable all day.  I've made no changes by adding new devices or scenes.  Will wait a couple days and see what transpires.

    i currently have 2 scenes.  One turns a light on when a door sensor is breached, and the other turns said light off when the door closes.  These scenes work perfectly.  I can't imagine why this should confuse the HCL.  

     

    For or some odd reason, my CPU usage is at 9%, but my RAM usage is at 97%.  That may be some indication of an issue?   I'm new here so I'm not sure what to make of that.

     

    hi, to me your values are standard. I remember that when I bought it and just had two scenes as well with a door sensor the RAM started with a low value but after some time it increased close to 100. That is the effect here called "RAM eating" that actually is also in other software when the RAM usage is not managed in a correct way.

    CPU instead has always been low, and I can understand it since it does not amazing calculations or similar.

     

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