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Automation being broken by a disconnected light timing out?? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 week ago by Lemmee@sh.itjust.works to c/homeassistant@lemmy.world

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I have an automation that when triggered turns on a scene that sets my lights a specific way. Then the automation waits for a second trigger.

I noticed that the automation doesn’t continue after the second trigger, so I looked at the trace, and it looks like the scene setting step of the automation times out: “error: Timed out when calling async_turn_on for bulb xyz: <class ‘TimeoutError’>

It looks like this bulb xyz was dropped from my zigbee network, which isn’t always the most stable. So it’s not exactly uncommon.

So how do I safeguard my automations from being broken by a single piece of a scene being offline?

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[–] shards@mastodon.au 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@Lemmee you could try using the parallel building block.

HA building blocks menu with the "run in parallel" item highlighted

[–] Lemmee@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oh interesting! I didn’t even know that existed. That definitely seems like the right choice! Thanks for the tip

[–] lorentz@feddit.it 2 points 1 week ago

I remember searching for a similar workaround in the past. I'm not sure parallel will work because the whole automation is blocked on error if I recall correctly. A workaround I found suggested on the ha website (but never tried) was to put the command that may error in a script and run the script as "fire and forget" from the automation. If the automation doesn't wait for the script to finish it won't detect the error either. But, as other pointed out, try to make the zigbee network more stable first.

[–] mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I would look at making your ZigBee network reliable, as changing the automation is just fixing the symptom not the cause.

I would move your WiFi channel from 1 to 6 or 11 and see if that helps?

[–] lorentz@feddit.it 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Also, since zigbee is a mesh network, the fix could be as easy as adding a smart plug halfway between the controller and the light. Every zigbee device not running on battery works as a repeater too

[–] mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

FYI: not all mains powered devices are routers, I have some light switches that are end devices only.

But in general, yes most mains powered devices are routers and will help with getting the network to reach

[–] turmacar@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I think I've mostly run across that with "no neutral" switches FWIW. It was confusing for a bit when setting up my garage.

Also very frustrating info to try and track down when buying sometimes.

[–] CondorWonder@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can try adding

continue_on_error: true

to the scene action so it doesn’t kill the entire automation. Note that if later parts depend on this action then they’ll fail in weird ways. The best thing is to fix the Zigbee network so the device doesn’t drop off but I know that’s not easy.

[–] Lemmee@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

I might give this a try while I work on the actual underlying cause. The rest of the automation isn’t impacted. It just turns the lights a color when it starts, then resets the color when the automation finishes.