Missing motion alarm cancellation

I've got some Fibaro Motion Sensors (FGMS-001) which I use, among other things, for heating and lighting automation. Normally everything works as it should but, now and then, I observe unexpected behaviors, like lights staying on despite no motion occurring around the relevant sensors. This just happened last night, so this morning I tried to track the problem. I found out that, for one particular sensor, which was working fine before the incident and worked fine afterwards, a "status update is off" message was missing. It should have been received some 30 seconds (this is the value of Z-wave parameter 6. Motion detection - alarm cancellation delay) after last motion was detected.

These are the log entries for this sensor:

2019-01-04 20:40:19.081 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is on <--- Motion detected
2019-01-04 20:40:49.873 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is off <--- Some 30 seconds later, motion alarm is cancelled
2019-01-04 20:54:28.740 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is on <--- Motion detected
2019-01-04 20:54:59.710 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is off <--- Some 30 seconds later, motion alarm is cancelled
2019-01-04 22:33:09.069 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is on <--- Motion detected
<--- There should have been an alarm cancellation message, but there was none
2019-01-05 06:40:56.297 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is on <--- Motion detected
2019-01-05 06:41:27.141 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is off <--- Some 30 seconds later, motion alarm is cancelled
2019-01-05 06:41:57.986 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is on <--- Motion detected
2019-01-05 06:42:28.626 Z-Wave received "Escalera Planta Alta Presencia" status update is off <--- Some 30 seconds later, motion alarm is cancelled

I don't know whether the missing message was not sent by the sensor, or it was missed by the Z-wave interface, or was not processed by Indigo but, in any case, this makes my lighting and heating scenes unreliable. Any idea for the cause of the problem might be ?


I'm attaching a screenshot of the device configuration form.

[matt (support)]

I don't know whether the missing message was not sent by the sensor, or it was missed by the Z-wave interface, or was not processed by Indigo but, in any case, this makes my lighting and heating scenes unreliable. Any idea for the cause of the problem might be ?

As long as Indigo is awake (look for Event Log messages about OS sleep requests) and there are no interface USB communication errors (will be logged as errors), it will show when it receives the Z-Wave status update command in the Event Log. It could be a firmware bug and the module didn't send the command, but more likely would be some type of interference or Z-Wave routing problem. You can try the Interfaces->Z-Wave-> menu command to optimize your Z-Wave network, or might want to consider adding some additional modules between the motion sensor and the Z-Stick to improve the routing options the protocol can use.

Thanks for your reply.

There are no sleep requests from OS nor USB communication errors in the log.

I doubt it's a sensor firmware bug, because the sensor normally reports the alarm cancellation after the set threshold, and because this eventually happens to other sensors that also use to work fine.

So I'm down to interference or Z-wave routing problems. Last time I tried a Z-wave network optimization it ended up in a big mess, with plenty of "no ack", and had to exclude and re-include most of the devices and fix all relevant actions, triggers and schedules. But by now I've got some 60 Z-wave devices involved in many triggers, actions and schedules, so I don't want to mess up again. If I do a backup of the z-wave stick prior to the optimization, could I just restore it in case it causes problems ?

[matt (support)]

Backing up and Restoring the Z-Stick if there is a problem would probably work, although some of the routing information is stored in the individual modules (like what their neighbors are), so backup/optimize/restore won't get your entire network back to the same state. I don't think that would be an issue though.

Regardless, instead of trying to optimize the entire network I'd suggest you choose to optimize just the motion sensor and maybe a few of its neighbor modules first to see if that helps.