Issue with Automation and Thermostats

Support
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1

I am planning on moving to you all as soon as my contract is up in September, you all have been super helpful in the past and I am having issues with my new thermostats, they will not follow any automation. I came across this post on your site: https://suretyhome.com/forums/topic/issues-with-alarm-com-thermostat-and-z-wave/

I am curious what sort of commands? ADC can’t send anything and I am not sure if this is sending I can personally do.

I should add, the tstats work with ‘scenes’ just fine, they just don’t follow the schedule or “smart away”. Only manually changing or ‘scenes’. Which I find odd and a ADC issue and not the tstat but you all are experts.

Thanks

2

Interesting, should you have the ability to control the thermostat remotely via scenes, communication is not likely the issue here.

The commands mentioned in the forum post linked above would rebuild the Z-Wave rules currently saved. If an error in the automation rules exists, these commands can clear existing errors.

These commands can only be completed by Alarm.com at the request of your current dealer. This would not be a feature accessible by the end user.

Ultimately you will need your to contact your current service provider to troubleshoot and have these commands sent.

3

I contacted the current dealer and they couldn’t help, they said they could only send network rediscovery which obviously doesn’t solve it.

Just to be clear, communication is definitely not an issue, it works to change temp and using scenes I can set the temperature in the scene and I can also manually adjust. But smart away and schedules don’t work, totally ignored. Which would seem to be an ADC issues but weird it is just my account.

4
But smart away and schedules don’t work, totally ignored. Which would seem to be an ADC issues but weird it is just my account.

To clarify, depending on the model of alarm panel you use, automation rules and thermostat schedules are sent by ADC when created, and they are saved in the panel/module to be run locally. ADC does not send commands to change the temp remotely based on your scheduled times.

If a schedule is failing, this indicates that rules at the panel are not functioning properly or local Z-wave network communication is failing. If you can manually control the device without problems it is likely an issue with saved rules.

You can delete and re-save any associated rule to try to resolve, but if that does not work, for suretyDIY users we have ADC send a command to rebuild all rules at once to sync all saved rules. We of course cannot speak to the capabilities of other dealers, but as this is an ADC action, there should be no difference.

5

Thanks Jason, gives me even more reason to get to you as soon as my contract is up next month. I tried to remove the schedule and re-add it (this was recommended by current provider), I removed the theromstats and re-add them (there are two with the issue), neither worked.

I did find it odd that ‘scenes’ would work as that is part of automation but obviously different in some way and I assumed likely that the schedule was just not happening since ‘smart away’ requires the schedule to be active to work. Is there anything I can do at the controller to force an update? I looked through the options and I couldn’t find anything.

6
Is there anything I can do at the controller to force an update? I looked through the options and I couldn’t find anything.

No. If you have a schedule which is not functioning at the thermostat but can send remote commands and scene changes, then you would need to either delete and recreate the rules, remove and re-add the device (then re-add the rules), or have a full rules rebuild and sync sent by ADC.

One thing to keep in mind is that when you turn on a schedule the Tstat will not immediately be set to the set point which would apply to the current time-frame. Set point changes only occur at the specific change points in your schedule.

So in other words, if you only have two temps per day, for example changing to 70 at 8am, then changing at 8pm to 72, and you create the rule in the afternoon, it will not change to 70 until 8am the next day.

If you manually change the temp set point, the schedule will likewise not revert it until the next scheduled change.

7

I removed and readded it and recreated and still no results, would whatever commands you can send be different than such?

8

Yes. The ADC commands strip and recreate all rules in the panel to resolve local Z-wave processing issues.

In cases where recreation of user rules individually did not solve an issue, the rebuild has worked 90% of the time or so.

9

Great, thank you again, if only I could transfer my service but recreating all my rules and such will be well worth the hassle.

10

I got this fixed by resetting the controller itself, then readding back all the devices, took an hour and half but was worth it.

11

Thanks for the follow up. Rebuilding the network from scratch locally will cover the effect of the rebuild command, with considerable effort of course, but I am glad to hear you got this resolved!