I have an issue with tiles not updating correctly and am trying to trace what the issue is. For information I’ve been using SmartThings but am in the process of migrating everything to Hubitat.
Scenario 1 - I switch on/off, open/close any of my devices using the tile in SharpTools dashboard and all works well, the icon on the SharpTools dashboard updates to show its new status once the action is complete.
Scenario 2 - I switch my light (via Fibaro Dimmer 2) on, off or adjust the dimming at the wall switch and the icon updates on the dashboard instantly to reflect the change.
Scenario 3 - I open/close my curtain/garage door (via Fibaro Roller 2/3) at the wall switch and the icon does not update.
It’s scenario 3 that is a problem for me, as the data on the screen is inaccurate when manually controlling switches. When the device was on SmartThings the icons would update after a delay. I can see from the SmartThings device log that there is some sort of update every 5 minutes or so and I guess that when that happens, the new state is seen, and the tile updates accordingly. However in Hubitat the icon stays in the wrong state permanently.
Any assistance, pointers to the guilty device, driver, app would be appreciated.
Hi @John_Williamson, welcome to the community. I saw your Fibaro FGR-222 device driver discussion in the Hubitat community. So it sounds the status doesn’t get updated at the Hubitat side neither when manually changed at the wall switch?
Hubitats dashboard looked awful as soon as I tried to use it (only had it the hub for a day) so I’m only using SharpTools. I have a couple of days left on my SharpTools trial and am trying to get things working there. I have SharpTools connected to both my SmartThings Hub and now Hubitat Hub now. I’ve been moving devices off SmartThings and on to Hubitat one at time then re associating the tile in the dashboard. So I guess initially I should just be able to check the device > current state before and after a manual activation?
Yes, go to the Devices page in Hubitat hub’s admin web page, find the device, and check if its value is updated as expected when changing from the wall switch. (And check does it update every period of time like you experienced in SmartThings.)
Since SharpTools is getting the data from the hub, the first troubleshooting step is to verify if if the data is updated at the hub side correctly, and you may also want to look up the Hubitat logs to see if there’s anything interesting when controlling this device.
Feel free to send an email to support@sharptools.io and I’d happy to reset your trial if you need more time to try things out.
Thanks for the help. Ok so I’ve had a look at that comparing it with the device that works correctly - the Fibaro Dimmer 2.
In the device page of the Fibaro Dimmer 2, when I click the manual wall switch, the state information updates immediately without me needing to touch anything on the page.
In the device page of the Roller Shutter 2, when I click the manual wall switch, the state information does not change. I have to click the poll or refresh button to update it.
Thanks for the additional details. If the device is not updating its state to your hub when it is controlled physically from the wall, then SharpTools won’t get the state either (since it gets it from the hub).
Is this your post in the Hubitat community?
You mentioned the driver getting the status from a contact. Is the contact sensor wired directly to the FGR-222?
Yeah that’s my post - I’m having a whinge about everything at the moment! I’m not that clued up with all of this or the correct terminology but the Roller Shutter 3 presents itself as a contact as well as window shade, so reports this contact as open/close as necessary.to match the window shade level. In ST I’d been using the device handler for the 223 on the 222 models as it worked better than the official driver. Unfortunately in Hubitat neither the 222 or 223 are officially supported and so I’m reliant on the efforts of others.
It didn’t update real time in SmartThings either but did after a delay. In the SmartThings device log I could see that there was some sort of status update happening between SmartThings and the device every 5 minutes or so unlike the Hubitat.
I don’t know if this device would show up in the built in Hubitat Z-Wave Poller app… if not, you could create a rule to poll the status of the device periodically. I’m away from a hub at the moment, but I believe you should be able to create a Rule Machine Rule to run every 5 minutes and issue the poll or refresh command.
Unfortunately, I’m not intimately familiar with this particular device or the related community device drivers, but it does seem odd that it doesn’t report it’s status back without a manual poll.
Ok so I managed to create a rule in Hubitat Rule Machine to poll the device at a specific time - 08:30 AM. I manually operated the device at 08:27 to ensure the status of the tile was wrong and waited…lo and behold, at 08:30 it updated correctly.
I set the time at 08:30 as I couldn’t see an obvious way of setting the rule to trigger every x number of minutes in Rule Machine. I’ll jump back to the Hubitat forum and ask there. Also I wondered are there pros and cons to whether such a rule is set up on Hubitat or using the SharpTools Rule Engine? Thanks again.
The first thing you might try is the built-in Z-wave Poller app within Hubitat. It was designed for devices that don’t support Instant Status. If I remember correctly, the device has to implement a specific capability for it to show up in the Z-wave Poller app though, but I can’t remember what off the top of my head.
Z-Wave Instant Status and Polling History
There’s a long history on it, but the short version is that the massive lighting company Lutron held a patent on the ability for devices to be able to report their status back to a hub without polling. As such, hubs used to build in some sort of feature to ‘poll’ for updates.
Hubs like SmartThings automatically perform the polling without any setup or intervention on the part of the user. Hubitat came into existence around the time that the Instant Status patent was expiring and many more devices were starting to include instant status updates. As such, they decided to include the polling functionality as an optional app that could be installed by the user. (Partially because polling can cause undue burden on a z-wave network if the devices do support instant status updates).
I don’t personally use Rule Machine, but I poked around a bit and it looks like you would need to create a Periodic Schedule trigger which you can then configure for Every 5 Minutes:
You could do this in SharpTools as well. Something about frequently polling a device for status just felt like something that should be the responsibility of the hub to me for some reason (maybe my familiarity with the history of the issue).
I would also note that SharpTools recurring timers are provided for ‘Daily’ or ‘Weekly’ activities. You can create a timer that happens more frequently than that by using variables and time delays – create a true/false variable, then have the rule trigger whenever the variable changes to true; then in the flow change the variable back to false, run your action, run a delay for X minutes, then flip the variable back to true which will cause the rule to run again.
That’s great Josh thanks for all of the information. While moving devices off SmartThings today and across to Hubitat I found that the FGR-223 driver did provide the updates in real time when associated with a 223 module, so it’s just the FGR-222 I’m that’s not playing ball. At least I can find a workaround now that keeps things looking right.
