I have a schedule intended to turn on outdoor lights at sunset, but the schedule appears to never trigger. The lights will stay off all night unless I manually turn them on.
I can remotely control them via the panel, app, and website with no issue. The schedule also doesn’t turn them off at the set time after I manually turn them on.
I have tried deleting and recreating the schedule but the problem persists. Do you have any suggestions for how to get this schedule to work?
It looks like you have a number of schedules. Just to confirm, all the other schedules are working, even the Sunrise triggered ones?
Only the outdoor lights after sunset schedule is failing?
The schedule also doesn’t turn them off at the set time after I manually turn them on.
This is normal, the first portion of the automation didn’t trigger so the second part wouldn’t.
To make sure it turns off whether you manually turn the lights on or not, you could create a separate schedule that just turns them off, instead of using the “then turn off” logic in the sunset schedule.
The lights will stay off all night unless I manually turn them on.
What type of Z-wave device is that? It looks like it is a Zooz plug-in module, is that correct? Just to verify, how are you manually turning that plug on?
This may sound silly but sometimes there is confusion over a switched outlet. If that outlet is switched from inside, and you are turning the outlet off at the switch, the Z-wave plug-in module would be unpowered and inoperable until the swich is turned back on.
Yes
Correct
It is a Zooz ZEN05.
I can manually turn it on via the physical button on the module or via z-wave in the app, panel, or website.
I do not have any switched outlets at my house. The outlet the ZEN05 is connected to is always powered.
Thanks, just wanted to be sure about the switched outlet. Since that doesn’t apply, I think I would first try two things, both as a temporary test:
Do either or both of the above work when tested?
I’ve created the rule and will follow up after sunset.
This worked. The ZEN05 turned on at the scheduled time and also turned back off with the second part of the automation.
The test rule successfully turned on a different light at sunset.
The “outdoor lights after sunset” rule still failed to take any action even 30 minutes after the test rule with the same trigger had run. I was still able to remotely turn on that desired light using the app just now.
Hmm, let’s try editing that successful sunset test schedule to use the outdoor light instead. Then delete the current non-functioning outdoor lights schedule.
Does that schedule work?
That worked for turning the outside lights on tonight. I’ll update the schedule for tomorrow evening to see if also having the followup turn off at 11:30pm works.
The schedule did not work tonight after adding the followup turn off. For next time I’ll try splitting on and off into separate schedules.
I would recommend that. The additional benefit would be that even if you manually turn on the light before the automated schedule would do it, the separate off rule will still fire.
Having the separate rules for on and off worked fine so that is an acceptable workaround.
Having the on and off in the same rule definitely worked last year so hopefully that’s something ADC will fix.
Based on the name I am guessing this might be a rule you haven’t used in a while, is that right? Just wondering if we can pin down when this might have started. Did you just start trying to use that schedule again around the time you sent the first message in this thread?
Yeah I only use that schedule in October and December. I turned it off in early January and then noticed it not working correctly when I turned it back on a day or two before starting this thread.
It worked fine in 2024 and 2025 is all I can really say.
Alright, thank you! We’ll report this to Alarm.com along with the troubleshooting already done so that they can investigate.
Just wanted to follow up here and say I received confirmation from Alarm.com that they have received other reports of this behavior, and this is something the engineering team is actively working on.