IDK how else to describe it.
About a week ago I noticed one of my ZigBee air purifier fans turning on and off. Odd but I ascribed it to maybe some sort of smart mechanism to avoid burning out the motor. Perhaps if there's not enough airflow it pauses and tries again? It could be a thing. So I ordered new filters and unplugged it.
Shortly thereafter I noticed my other ZigBee air purifier turning on and off. Okay... Makes sense... Filters are about the same age... Let's just wait for the shipment to come in. Unplugged.
Almost immediately after unplugging I noticed ANOTHER ZigBee device turning on and off, but this time it was a smart power outlet! No filters on that motherfucker, and that's when it dawned on me that this could somehow be a command and not just random.
Long ago I had a ZigBee outlet set up to turn on/off on a pattern over and over throughout the day.
I realized that these devices seem to all be following that pattern, which is strange because that automation ran for months but has been disabled since March of last year.
Now as far as I can tell this means one of three things:
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Home Assistant has gone rogue and is sending dormant/backlogged commands to unrelated devices
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A device on my ZigBee network had held those commands for passing them along, forgot about it for 11 months, then forwarded them in the order received to a semi-random device in the network.
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Aliens? Ghosts? Somebody trying to communicate through the multiverse?
Starting with the first 2 assumptions, is anyone aware of a means to listening into the ZigBee network to see which device, bridge or middleman, is sending these on/off commands?
Is there a way to tell all devices in the network to flush their command history? Should I reset the ZigBee network? Reset each individual device?
I'm one ADHD hyperfocus away from rebuilding my entire HA system and all automations from scratch.
Can you not see in the activity log, either of HA itself or of the device, what is causing the action to be carried out? You could go to the device and check which automations the device is part of and check their traces as well, if you have recollection of when this last happened.
If it is a backlog of stuff, maybe restart Home Assistant, or better yet, the server itself. But it shouldn't be sending those to other devices.
What's also possible is that something is up with the electricity in your home. Maybe these devices are getting power surges or cutouts and defaulting to whatever you have that Power On setting set to. I think the default setting is that devices like that go back on after power loss.
Last thing I can think of is an errant Zigbee controller. Maybe it's picking up Bluetooth or WoFi signal interference and sending garbled messages to anything that'll listen.
Or someone outside is trying to mess with you but without physical access to your Zigbee hub this is next to impossible.
Normally, yes, it would say what automation is triggering it, in this case it does not seem to be triggered by an automation.
The devices being rebooted are not associated with any on/off automations, but the device that used to receive those commands is no longer connected.
Done and done. FWIW, the on/off behavior seemed to continue during the reboot indicating it may be lurking in the ZigBee network?
It's too organized for that, and status is toggling off/on not unknown/on. Also the impacted devices are on separate circuits and seem to be impacted one-at-a-time.
Also also, voltage seems generally stable:
I'm generally in agreement, what's suspicious is it is very closely following the on/off pattern of a previous, long disabled, script (on/off/on/off in quick succession followed by ~1h on, then repeat).
What I don't know is how to find the errant device - if its truly the controller, I have a replacement on order (guess I gotta upgrade to the ZBT-2... twist my arm...). If it's a relay somewhere in the chain thinking it's passing along useful info then I have to reset everthing.
These are just the reports coming back from the network. So the device reported it turned on/off.
I have these on my individual devices when the group turns on/off.
So the group gets the correct history entry for which automation/user triggered it but all the members of the group just report "Turned on/off".
Maybe try toggling all your Zigbee groups on and off and see if your misbehaving devices react?