Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

Posted on
Thu Nov 08, 2018 4:35 am
Nick offline
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Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

I have 6x Z-Wave Fibaro Wall Plugs, 5x Everspring AN158 and 1x AN157. Before I added the AN158 6 months ago the other wall plugs had been working great for a few years.
My controller is an Aeon Labs Gen2 Z-stick and on Indigo 7.2. Not one of the devices has any associations.

After a few weeks adding the AN158 some of them, as they have been always on as devices to monitor energy usage and not perse for switching, were switched off. Not any sign in the Indogo log that it had been switched off. And no, also not manual as some of them are behind closets. After 4 times this had happend I had reset all the AN158's. It seemed to help. But now my Fibaro wall plugs are having the same kind behavior. Switched off, not manually and no indigo action. But the difference with the AN158, the Wall plug is showing an off message in the indigo log.

Problems with wall plugs have happend to me before when I used a Fibaro Home Center and Greenwave Powernode 6. But then I had Ghost switching also on other z-wave devices.

Anyway it seems that also other platforms are having issues with wall plugs with the power metering. Any ideas what could be causing this. It is quite annoying to find your refrigerator ot tv being switch off. Thanks in advance

https://github.com/openhab/openhab1-addons/issues/2740

Posted on
Thu Nov 08, 2018 6:40 am
autolog offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

Yes, I have seen this as well with Aeotec Smart Switch 6. :|

In my particular case, the switch was controlling one of my UPS devices (it has happened twice so far), so I got an audible warning from the UPS.
There was no apparent reason as to why it switched off. :?

I have now added in a trigger that switches it back on after 10 seconds delay if it is switched off. :)

Posted on
Thu Nov 08, 2018 7:37 am
Nick offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

A trigger is indeed a workaround but the AN158 does not even leave a message in the Indigo log so for this device this does not work.

So it seems not related to a brand or platform but the common thing is it is a wall plug with power metering.

Posted on
Thu Nov 08, 2018 7:48 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

I think there's a hole in the market for a device that has the footprint of the Aeon Smart Switch that monitors energy usage but does not have a switch. A Smart Energy Plug. This would remove any possibility that the device plugged into it could be switched off. I reached out to Aeon about this idea, but they didn't see the value in it.

As a workaround for my sump pump, I had an electrician wire the circuit to its own breaker and I have attached a Smart Energy Meter lead to that line only. It works, but it could be so much simpler.

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Posted on
Thu Nov 08, 2018 8:02 am
kw123 offline
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Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

There is an Insteon device that does that.



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Last edited by kw123 on Thu Nov 08, 2018 8:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Posted on
Thu Nov 08, 2018 8:10 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug

kw123 wrote:
And you could use the zwave energy monitor. But requires putting the coil around the line wire only

That's what I did. :D

As a workaround for my sump pump, I had an electrician wire the circuit to its own breaker and I have attached a Smart Energy Meter lead to that line only. It works, but it could be so much simpler.

I should've said Z-Wave device (I don't do Insteon).

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Posted on
Thu Nov 08, 2018 8:15 am
kw123 offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

Only read half of your post.

... you could put it into a box next to the pump and put the coil there. Split the cables ... put the coil around the line wire.




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Posted on
Fri Nov 09, 2018 12:34 am
Nick offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

A workarround a hole in the market but why does the behavior of the z-wave wall plugs happen. Something in Indigo or in general a z-wave bug.

Posted on
Fri Nov 09, 2018 7:17 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

Nick wrote:
A workarround a hole in the market but why does the behavior of the z-wave wall plugs happen. Something in Indigo or in general a z-wave bug.

I'm not sure it has to be one or the other. In fact, I'd suggest that if it were an Indigo bug or Z-Wave bug, we would see tons of complaints and I haven't seen that. IIRC, I've never had a Z-Wave device turn on or off unexpectedly.* I have had conditions where a Z-Wave device has gone "No Ack" and then not responded to Indigo commands--but the state of the switch didn't change. I don't think I've ever seen a discussion where a Z-Wave device was responding to phantom commands. If folks are seeing the issue on OpenHab, then that would point the finger away from Indigo (it would seem extremely unlikely that Indigo and OpenHab would have the same bug).

BUT, just because I haven't seen it doesn't mean that it's not happening.

Good luck,
Dave

* Not entirely true, but in the rare circumstance, it was my fault through bad logic or forgotten triggers. In other words, the device just did what it was told to do.

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Posted on
Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:01 am
autolog offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

autolog wrote:
Yes, I have seen this as well with Aeotec Smart Switch 6. :|

In my particular case, the switch was controlling one of my UPS devices (it has happened twice so far), so I got an audible warning from the UPS.
There was no apparent reason as to why it switched off. :?

I have now added in a trigger that switches it back on after 10 seconds delay if it is switched off. :)

This happened to me again last night on the UPS controlling Indigo :? - I didn't notice and after an hour+ of running on battery Indigo did a graceful shutdown before everything went dead on the iMac. :shock: - luckily I was still up and recovered the situation before retiring for the evening.

The triggers didn't work because Indigo didn't get notified via Z-Wave that the switch was off - I should have thought of that one! I have now added in a schedule to request a status update every 15 minutes which hopefully will fire the trigger if it happens again.

Also need to look at getting the APC UPS alerts into Indigo as these were appearing in a couple of terminal windows I had active.

I really want to leave the power monitoring switches in place if I can. :)

Posted on
Thu Dec 06, 2018 7:23 am
Nick offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

Behavior is indeed sometimes it shows an Off in the Indigo log and sometimes it does not. So a trigger on an Off is n't always a WA for the problem. And it only happens to wall plugs with power metering.

For me it started when I added 6 Everspring AN158 wall pugs with power metering. I already reduced the frequency of power updates to the controller and that seems to help. Today again a wall plug went Off without any reason. An off was in the log. What I saw in the log was that the specific plug had been sending quite some power updates before.

Could it been triggered by congestion of to many power usage updates.

Posted on
Thu Dec 06, 2018 11:01 am
matt (support) offline
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Re: Z-Wave wall plug "ghost switching"

The power/energy command shouldn't trigger the OFF, but I think it is definitely possible if there are a lot of commands/congestion bugs can surface in modules.

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