Can anyone tell me why this piston runs so slowly?


#21

This bit is because you used an ELSE in there…
Any false conditions will default to the ELSE.
(which is one reason why I rarely use them)


#22

Many thanks as usual @WCmore - for clarity I have a smart lighting routine setup that switches on the hue lights and the virtual switch when a contact sensor is opened (but only when another switch is off, sunset sunrise etc). So when this is activated the hue lighting will be on.

Weird thing is worked ok in my previous very slow pistons. Things work as expected if I manually turn the outdoor lighting on, but it used automatically switch on the outdoor lights with the first piston, and off when the virtual switch turned off. So I’m not sure what happened with this new piston…

Atm I’m putting it down to it not recognising the hue bulbs did not change for 1 sec, due to the hub updating at the time (obvs I checked all other restrictions, switch was on, location mode etc).

Hubs updated now, (and I’ve removed the else if) going to try again in the next few hours and report back…


#23

Ok, so it wasn’t anything to do with the Hue hub.

Effectively I’ve added ‘turn on’ commands and that seems to have helped that issue (though weirdly it worked without them previously). I have also changed the final if virtual switch ‘is’ off, turn off command, to: if switch ‘changes to’ off, turn off, which solved that issue. I also changed it back to ‘else if’ (yeah, I know… But this combo works so I’m just going to leave it now)

Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same, slightly faster than before, but still quite slow. Not sure what else I can do aside from remove the 1sec hue change wait period, but I read somewhere else that this should always be in place to avoid issues when quickly cycling through colours.

So I’m now inclined to think this is as good as it gets? Ideally I’d like to use a local mirroring solution with smart lighting, but I can’t add sunrise/sunset
‘only if this switch is off’ restrictions in the app.

Any other way I can make this local (I’m using hue and osram strips here, both with local running dths) whilst adding these types of restrictions?

Many thanks again.


#24

Last thing to add, if I use the colour picker for the hue strips in Smartthings the mirroring effect is virtually instant using the above piston, it’s just when I select a scene in the hue app or via Alexa that things slow down, I may have one light change within 5secs, then the others can take another 10-20secs to respond.

It’s like it all falls apart when all 3 lights are reporting back, tempted to split it into 3 separate pistons to see if that makes any difference at all.

Will let you know in a few days…


#25

Just throwing this out there…

I usually do all my programming here in webCoRE, but if your scenes changes all three of the Hue lights, you could ‘cheat’ a bit and only monitor one of them. When that one bulb changes, then you can mirror the 3 outdoor lights using the example above.

This would reduce the triggers down to one, which should seriously speed things up for you.


#26

That’s a good idea. Will give it a go, only thing is that sometimes I might want one light on and then the opposite outdoor to mirror, but if it isn’t the ‘trigger lightstrip’ then nothing will happen. :thinking:


#27

Good point… Although the idea would still work if you chose that device as your trigger bulb…
(IE: use the bulb that you sometimes use solo)