Timers and Pesters completely failing

Posted on
Thu Sep 04, 2014 12:47 pm
AndyVirus offline
Posts: 257
Joined: Mar 18, 2014
Location: Newport Pagnell, UK

Timers and Pesters completely failing

Hello,

I use timers quite a bit for things like determining that someone has been home in the last 18 hours and 4 hours to determine if the heating or hot water should turn on.
I also use a further 9 timers for turning on lights if the timer is active and turning off when inactive. This is because i have multiple sensors that could turn on the same log in a room.

In the last 3 days i have had timers and pester plug totally just die. All timers are made inactive. I notice this at night as none of the lights come on anymore.
If i look at a trigger that uses a state change of a timer device it say this:

Error (client) timeout waiting for plugin response from com.perceptiveautomation.indigoplugin.timersandpesters for request CalcDeviceFunc

If i try to look at the config of the timer and pester plugin at that point it says this in the log:

Error (client) timeout waiting for plugin response from com.perceptiveautomation.indigoplugin.timersandpesters for request UiGetValues1
Error (client) timeout waiting for plugin response from com.perceptiveautomation.indigoplugin.timersandpesters for request CallPluginFunc
Error (client) runConfigDialog() caught exception: NSInvalidArgumentException -- *** -[__NSPlaceholderDictionary initWithObjects:forKeys:count:]: attempt to insert nil object from objects[0]

If i restart the plugin all goes back to normal though all my timers have to start again.

I have no idea what is causing this so i have enabled debug to see if when it fails again i can give your more info.
I am running 6.0.14.

Is there a limit to the number of timers i can use? I don't think i am maxing out my Mac Mini, i have only got 2GB ram but it is SSD and its 2Ghz Core 2 Duo running OS X 10.7.5 (too old to run anything else)

Posted on
Thu Sep 04, 2014 2:24 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Timers and Pesters completely failing

About how many timers do you have active at once?

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Posted on
Fri Sep 05, 2014 2:40 am
AndyVirus offline
Posts: 257
Joined: Mar 18, 2014
Location: Newport Pagnell, UK

Re: Timers and Pesters completely failing

Usually at any one time about 4 or 5.

So 2 Timers are pure presence indicators of 18 hours and 4 hours and are reset when there is any motion in the house. At that point, when those times are inactive (each different requirements for different triggers) triggers such as HotWater ON will not trigger as there is a condition to check if 18h Timer is Active.

Then there are timers for each room that has more than 1 PIR (More than one trigger required). These usually count down from 2 mins for corridors etc. and 30 mins for rooms that may be occupied, reseting the timer on motion.

Posted on
Fri Sep 05, 2014 7:13 am
AndyVirus offline
Posts: 257
Joined: Mar 18, 2014
Location: Newport Pagnell, UK

Re: Timers and Pesters completely failing

Also while i am waiting for it to fail again so i can provide more of a log (I am hoping it won't but i kind of am as i have debug on and want to turn that off for sure) is there a more efficient way that i could be checking for activity in the house in the last x hours or if something triggered in the last x seconds?

I was thinking instead of restarting a timer, i could achieve the same thing by writing the date and time to a variable and in the condition some how say" if variable A contains a date and time that occurred in the last x hours"

I am thinking of a way as well for direction of travel using PIR's ( i am building quit a collection). So basically if PRI A triggers, the evaluation would check if PIR B was triggered in the last 5 seconds and if so then turn on Light in the direction of travel. Any ideas on that? Sorry to hijack my own issue. :-)

Posted on
Fri Sep 05, 2014 8:49 am
jay (support) offline
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Re: Timers and Pesters completely failing

4-5 definitely won't be the cause of this problem. I tested yesterday with 35 running simultaneously and didn't see any issues.

So, that leads me to believe that you have another plugin that's misbehaving and causing the server to hang up for extended periods of time. And since the timer plugin pings the server every second (to update the states) it's the first one that shows a problem. Do you have any 3rd party plugins running? I'd recommend disabling any and see if you still experience the issue. It's also possible that a runaway AppleScript can hang the server up so you might want to look for that as well.

The event log file might provide a clue - send it to me at support@indigodomo.com (reference this thread) and I'll take a look.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Fri Sep 05, 2014 8:53 am
AndyVirus offline
Posts: 257
Joined: Mar 18, 2014
Location: Newport Pagnell, UK

Re: Timers and Pesters completely failing

That makes sense.

I have lots of 3rd party plugins running so tracking down which is the culprit is could be a pain.

I will send you my logs from the last 2 days prior to enabling debug (i will leave it on just incase unless you see no point) until it happens once more.

Thanks!

Posted on
Mon Feb 02, 2015 1:41 pm
AndyVirus offline
Posts: 257
Joined: Mar 18, 2014
Location: Newport Pagnell, UK

Re: Timers and Pesters completely failing

Well I never got to the bottom of the issue (mainly becuse I have 3/4 different protocols being relied on so could never stop all the plugins).

I did however change my loginc and now i not rely on timers and pesters as they still hang even with just 2 timers. Im sure its a plugin but i have 500MB ram free and SSD for anyting paged. I dont know what the max thread count is so maybe im hitting that somewhere with all the plugins i have (less than 10 but maybe some are chattier than others).

Anyway, what i have done is, and i cant belive i did not think of it before, instead of having a timer per room and then having multiple triggers restart that timer when motion is detected on either of the PIRs or the Door opened trigger; I have set up the light as an action group (even though it is just a signle device) but the timer is set in the action group not the trigger(s) so no need fo the timer at all as the action group handles that nativly in the auto off. So i just have the 3 triggers action as Server Task - Execute Action Group "Blah Lights"

Really dont know why i did not think of that before, i guess the name "Action Group" threw me off :-)

I love a product that has many ways to achive the same thing, seriously, that is not sarcasm. Its part of the hobby for me to think about the logic. Yes it would be nice if it just worked but where is the flexability (fun) in that? Awesome product! (maybe i should lay of the cold and flu mixture for a bit...)

Posted on
Mon Feb 02, 2015 7:16 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Timers and Pesters completely failing

Glad you got your solution working. Still a bit mystified since we've not had any other unexplained issues like this...

Jay (Indigo Support)
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