Light - Manual from app works, program or scene does not, T3 does or not depending on mood.

[TundraSonic]

One of our exterior sconces that's on a C4 central dimmer (8 channel module) is acting strange. It will not turn on/off/dim from a scene or within programming but I can turn it on/off/dim manually from the C4 iPhone app.  

Sometimes on a T3 it will be listed with no slider and pressing on/off appears to have no affect (it remains off according to the T3) though in reality it does turn on and at the same time it functions correctly from the app.

 

[Neo1738]

Start w controller reboot would be my 1st try.

[TundraSonic]

Thanks. Reboots every night at 2a.  

[msgreenf]

9 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

Thanks. Reboots every night at 2a.  

Bad strategy. Your system is screwed if you have to reboot nightly 

[TundraSonic]

2 hours ago, msgreenf said:

Bad strategy. Your system is screwed if you have to reboot nightly 

Why do you say that?

[Amr]

21 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

Why do you say that?

You shouldn’t have a systematic reboot, better take a deep dive into your issues and fix it, reboot regularly is a bad practice …

I would check this T3 to start with, wipe it out, reset it, remove from project, then re-add it and see if it’s more responsive.

[Andrew luecke]

41 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

Why do you say that?

If it's a full power cycle, it's possible it will happen during auto updates or system upgrades and it will possibly cause other storage corruption.

Some drivers also slowly rebuild their states as they operate, so those could be lost

Drivers are written in a language with garbage collection, so memory leaks aren't that common.

If you're using a soft reboot, the reboot driver will probably stop working in the future anyway and removal should already begin.

Finally, it would be better anyway to get the root problem fixed if you do have issues.

[Amr]

2 minutes ago, Andrew luecke said:If you're using a soft reboot, the reboot driver will probably stop working in the future anyway and removal should already begin

Why is that happening, was there a document explaining why C4 is doing this?

[Andrew luecke]

1 hour ago, Amr said:

Why is that happening, was there a document explaining why C4 is doing this?

C4 Tech phone support have been warning installers for at least 3 years now about drivers like Reboot / ping. In fact, I was first told by another installer who was told (and I myself was an installer at the time and was told something similar). Given the warnings, nobody should be surprised when/if it is removed.. 

Plenty of valid reasons to block the function, but the most ironic valid reason I can think of as an example, is the ping driver..

 

People use the ping driver to improve the perceived stability of their Control4 system by testing devices on a regular basis and rebooting them.

Ironically, every time it runs, the controller freezes for 4 seconds and can't process any commands, or make connections (so, on a CA10/Core 5 with 1% CPU usage, if this happens every hour for 5 devices, the controller will lag for 4 seconds, 5 times an hour).The installer might not notice, but an enduser definitely will, and won't be impressed (and will likely blame Control4 incorrectly)

We already have ways to do things like this safely without that delay, using an official API (which our internet rebooter driver does), or power points with built in ping function.  And, I'm fairly sure OvrC offers a way to software reboot controllers too (and controllers can now act as a OvrC hub).

For reboot, its not something that needs to be done regularly anyway.. 

Honestly, from my experience, I have logged into a few systems which use drivers like ping. In 2022, especially given the state of Control4, you shouldn't need them (a software reboot either likely won't fix the issue you're having)..  

[msgreenf]

The only time my system gets rebooted is due to a software update of the OS or due to power loss. I can probably count any other reboot outside of that on one hand and they were probably caused by bad programming. On my part. You just should not have to reboot regularly. This isn't Windows

[Amr]

9 hours ago, Andrew luecke said:

C4 Tech phone support have been warning installers for at least 3 years now about drivers like Reboot / ping. In fact, I was first told by another installer who was told (and I myself was an installer at the time and was told something similar). Given the warnings, nobody should be surprised when/if it is removed.. 

Plenty of valid reasons to block the function, but the most ironic valid reason I can think of as an example, is the ping driver..

 

People use the ping driver to improve the perceived stability of their Control4 system by testing devices on a regular basis and rebooting them.

Ironically, every time it runs, the controller freezes for 4 seconds and can't process any commands, or make connections (so, on a CA10/Core 5 with 1% CPU usage, if this happens every hour for 5 devices, the controller will lag for 4 seconds, 5 times an hour).The installer might not notice, but an enduser definitely will, and won't be impressed (and will likely blame Control4 incorrectly)

We already have ways to do things like this safely without that delay, using an official API (which our internet rebooter driver does), or power points with built in ping function.  And, I'm fairly sure OvrC offers a way to software reboot controllers too (and controllers can now act as a OvrC hub).

For reboot, its not something that needs to be done regularly anyway.. 

Honestly, from my experience, I have logged into a few systems which use drivers like ping. In 2022, especially given the state of Control4, you shouldn't need them (a software reboot either likely won't fix the issue you're having)..  

l also wants to warn others from some old drivers that have mDNS when turned on, it brought projects to its knees like Berto v1 driver, settings mDNS had completely freezes the project every 5 minutes. Unpredictable performance of almost every thing, remotes, screens, lights, app connection, etc.

I understood old libraries is the reasons for this, it might also clashed with other drivers, but it gave me hell for a week till I figured it out!

[Amr]

8 hours ago, msgreenf said:

The only time my system gets rebooted is due to a software update of the OS or due to power loss. I can probably count any other reboot outside of that on one hand and they were probably caused by bad programming. On my part. You just should not have to reboot regularly. This isn't Windows

BWD driver have this feature after updating a driver it reboots the controller.

[Andrew luecke]

13 hours ago, Amr said:

BWD driver have this feature after updating a driver it reboots the controller.

DriverCentral actually removed the reboot action  from their cloud driver in build 1028.

IMHO though, are you sure it does it automatically after updating every driver? Whilst it makes sense for things like capabilities changes, many people use C4 for things like sensor lighting, or music or controlling their security system. In many commercial environments, that probably wouldn't be ideal.

13 hours ago, Amr said:

l also wants to warn others from some old drivers that have mDNS when turned on, it brought projects to its knees like Berto v1 driver, settings mDNS had completely freezes the project every 5 minutes. Unpredictable performance of almost every thing, remotes, screens, lights, app connection, etc.

I understood old libraries is the reasons for this, it might also clashed with other drivers, but it gave me hell for a week till I figured it out!

Not so much old libraries as the fact that many of them aren't suitable for C4 in some cases without modification but only if specific libraries are being used. On drivers like our Big Ass Fans V2 driver, this problem won't affect MDNS on our driver.  

That being said, there are lots of other reasons there could have been performance issues (totally unrelated), and I'm sure the issues were fixed long ago anyway