We urgently need better debugging
Yesterday I made a number of substantial changes to my rules and added some new ones. Yeah, I know - practically suicidal. The inevitable result: almost nothing works any more, including many rules that are unchanged and were working before.
This is not a complaint about any particular rule (yet). God knows, I have enough tickets open. It's a generic complaint about the near impossibility of understanding what's going on on the Zipabox. We have almost no debugging information. We don't know whether a rule has or not, or why, except by inferring it from the effects of the rule. If it stops at some point, we don't know when or why. We are told that one bad rule can stop all rules from working - why should this be? And exactly how?
Right now it's like a house of cards. You carefully tweak your rules until they more or less (emphasis on more or less) work, and then leave them alone, for fear of breaking things. This isn't a viable proposition.
We need to peer inside the black box,
The same problem 
[quote]We are told that one bad rule can stop all rules from working - why should this be? And exactly how?[/quote]
it is not that a bad rule can stop all rules from working, it is more that a bad rule prevents your rules synchronizing. Though I can imagine that one bad rule could interfere with other rules.
I agree with some rules stopping working for no apparent reason......... some examples:
I have a door with door contact, when door opens light comes on, when door closes light goes off. This worked for almost a year, but now when the door opens, the light doesn't come on, but when i switch on the light manually, the light goes off when closing the door.....??
Another one, when pressing a switch, 2 mood light go off, and the hall light and landing light come on. this worked for a few months, but now the landing light no longer comes on. (yes I checked, the bulb is not broken) :-) switching it manually via the app works.......
Porch light should come on when door opens, except when Dusk to Dawn is set to Dawn. This worked for a while, but not anymore. Dusk till Dawn sensor still works......so no clue why.......
So yes, we need better tools :-)
[quote]We are told that one bad rule can stop all rules from working - why should this be? And exactly how?[/quote]
it is not that a bad rule can stop all rules from working, it is more that a bad rule prevents your rules synchronizing. Though I can imagine that one bad rule could interfere with other rules.
I agree with some rules stopping working for no apparent reason......... some examples:
I have a door with door contact, when door opens light comes on, when door closes light goes off. This worked for almost a year, but now when the door opens, the light doesn't come on, but when i switch on the light manually, the light goes off when closing the door.....??
Another one, when pressing a switch, 2 mood light go off, and the hall light and landing light come on. this worked for a few months, but now the landing light no longer comes on. (yes I checked, the bulb is not broken) :-) switching it manually via the app works.......
Porch light should come on when door opens, except when Dusk to Dawn is set to Dawn. This worked for a while, but not anymore. Dusk till Dawn sensor still works......so no clue why.......
So yes, we need better tools :-)
So, presumably if you get no errors when synchronising, there are no "bad" rules?
I recall being told to disable all rules and then enable them one by one to see which one was stopping the others from working.
That's going to be fun now that I have 46 rules :-)
So, presumably if you get no errors when synchronising, there are no "bad" rules?
I recall being told to disable all rules and then enable them one by one to see which one was stopping the others from working.
That's going to be fun now that I have 46 rules :-)
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