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The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Flow wizards needed - Question on fallback flows
lenonline
Member
Hi there -
I'm thinking of trying to solve a minor issue I'm having using flows. I did try to search on the forum but I don't seem to find topics where people have similar ideas / challenges hence why I'll ask my question.
I have designed a flow that basically switches off all devices and lights before I go to sleep. I use Google Home to start the flow by saying 'Hey Google, have a good night'. Expected output: all fibaro dimmers switch off, multimedia devices switch off and sunscreens go in (when applicable).
In theory, the flow works perfectly ok. In practice, the flow works 2 out of 3 times with regards to switching off my Fibaro Dimmer 2. Sometimes the following happens: some of the lights are switched off but some of the lights remain to be switched on. The signal is probably not received by the dimmer. Again, the most of the times the flow just works though. Yay!
At the end of the day, zwave is a wireless protocol and just doesn't always work fluently. Shit happens. I want to try to solve for this by creating an additional backup flow(s). So just imagine the following to happen: I give the command, flow doesn't switch off ALL the lights, starts new backup flow, backup flow will again try to switch off the lights that didn't appropriately switched off the first time.
So far so good. But it's here why I run into troubles. I can trigger the backup flow that checks if a light is still switched on after x time (and rechecks again after x time until the light actually is switched off). However I'm talking about at least 5 lights; so that would mean I have to create at least 5 flows because I can't use a 'OR'. I read that this will be supported in the near future but that you only get three 'ORs' per flow.
So can some Homey experts think with me on how I could create such backup flow(s) more efficiently? I would really appreciate your help!
I'm thinking of trying to solve a minor issue I'm having using flows. I did try to search on the forum but I don't seem to find topics where people have similar ideas / challenges hence why I'll ask my question.
I have designed a flow that basically switches off all devices and lights before I go to sleep. I use Google Home to start the flow by saying 'Hey Google, have a good night'. Expected output: all fibaro dimmers switch off, multimedia devices switch off and sunscreens go in (when applicable).
In theory, the flow works perfectly ok. In practice, the flow works 2 out of 3 times with regards to switching off my Fibaro Dimmer 2. Sometimes the following happens: some of the lights are switched off but some of the lights remain to be switched on. The signal is probably not received by the dimmer. Again, the most of the times the flow just works though. Yay!
At the end of the day, zwave is a wireless protocol and just doesn't always work fluently. Shit happens. I want to try to solve for this by creating an additional backup flow(s). So just imagine the following to happen: I give the command, flow doesn't switch off ALL the lights, starts new backup flow, backup flow will again try to switch off the lights that didn't appropriately switched off the first time.
So far so good. But it's here why I run into troubles. I can trigger the backup flow that checks if a light is still switched on after x time (and rechecks again after x time until the light actually is switched off). However I'm talking about at least 5 lights; so that would mean I have to create at least 5 flows because I can't use a 'OR'. I read that this will be supported in the near future but that you only get three 'ORs' per flow.
So can some Homey experts think with me on how I could create such backup flow(s) more efficiently? I would really appreciate your help!
Comments
https://forum.athom.com/discussion/3470/app-blowfish-check-battery-levels-last-updates-capabilities-and-condition-for-lights-in-a-zone
https://github.com/swttt/com.swttt.blowfish
install through cli:
https://forum.athom.com/discussion/1448/how-to-cli-install-method
I get it that you want to find a solution to your problem by creating some kind of fallback (and i think @bvdbos his solution is the best one for this). Plus there is an action card for turning off all lights in a zone as well. This way you keep it variable, so when adding a light to the livingroom you don't need to edit the flows.
But the source of your problem is actually something with your z-wave network. Maybe look into the z-wave logs, and let someone with knowlegde (not me) check what goes wrong there. @caseda maybe
Since you devices just should have switched.
@micha35w: yeah, I looked at that. But then I'm always asking Homey to switch off the lights again after the initial flow; in most cases the lights are actually already properly switched off. It's . But indeed, I was trying to understand if there were more effective ways for doing this. This is the really nasty fallback.. But I'm trying to stay away from it...
@bvdbos: that looks like an interesting option. Going to dive into it!
@swttt: thanks for the app, and thanks for the feedback ;-). In my already existing flow, I'm indeed using the action card "Devices". Works brilliantly if the zwave commands are actually received
With regards to your last point; interesting that you never ran into issues so far. Unfortunately I can't remember if had the same problem when I was still using Smartthings for my zwave dimmers
You should be able to see some info in the Settings->z-wave->stuff for geeks log.
Is it allways the same device thats missing the command?