Water Leak Sensor - blank state after reboot

[ferdies]

Hi,

 

After rebooting ISY - Water leak sensor has a blank state. I have to press the button to activate it. However, I see it as a problem when there a power failure and ISY reboots and it no one is home. Will the water leak senson still detect water presence if state is blank?

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ferdies,

 

Unfortunately RF devices are NOT query-able and thus the problem. The following scenarios may indeed happen and there's really not much we can do to help alleviate:

1. ISY knows the status of the leak sensor

2. ISY loses power

3. the status of leak sensor changes to wet while ISY is off

4. ISY is re-powered

 

ISY will NOT know that there's indeed a leak till the next heartbeat signal which is 24 hours after the first one.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[MWareman]

Hi Michel,

 

Just bought 2 leak sensors - sorry to post to this thread again but one question is unanswered, and I need to know the answer as I setup my program:

 

Will the water leak senson still detect water presence if state is blank?

 

In your scenario where the leak happened during an outage of the ISY - the status will not be known by the ISY. In this state - if the leak sensor triggers a leak again - will the ISY know right away (I suspect this is the case)? Or will it have to wait for the heartbeat before leaks will be detected?

 

As secondary question I have - the 'heartbeat' node has a status 'On'. How would I utilize this?

Does the ISY status change to 'Off' if the heartbeat is not received in 24 hours?

Or do I have to trigger a program on 'Off' and wait 24 hours to see if it changes back to 'On' - and sent a notification if not?

 

Thanks!

 

Michael.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi Michael,

 

 

Will the water leak senson still detect water presence if state is blank?

 

In your scenario where the leak happened during an outage of the ISY - the status will not be known by the ISY. In this state - if the leak sensor triggers a leak again - will the ISY know right away (I suspect this is the case)? Or will it have to wait for the heartbeat before leaks will be detected?

I think the latter. Or, at the least, that was my experience with it

 

As secondary question I have - the 'heartbeat' node has a status 'On'. How would I utilize this?

Basically, this is a Control that's sent every 24 hours. So, you would have a program that checks for this Control and waits 24 hours. If you do not hear it within 24 hours, then you can assume something is wrong

 

Does the ISY status change to 'Off' if the heartbeat is not received in 24 hours?

[/quote

No

 

Or do I have to trigger a program on 'Off' and wait 24 hours to see if it changes back to 'On' - and sent a notification if not?

Precisely!

[LeeG]

MWareman

 

This is a Program I use to test the Heartbeat. If the Wait ever completes the Leak Sensor has failed to send a Heartbeat. A Notify would be more logical after the Wait.

 

If
       Control 'Leak Sensor-Heartbeat' is switched On
    Or Control 'Leak Sensor-Heartbeat' is switched Off

Then
       Wait  25 hours 
       Send X10 'A10/All Lights On (5)'

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

 

Regarding the blank Status, if the Leak Sensor went Wet during a power outage and remains Wet the Leak Sensor does not send another Wet. It requires a Heartbeat message which indicates the Wet/Dry state of the Leak Sensor along with the Heartbeat itself.

 

If the Leak Sensor went Wet during the power outage and goes back to Dry before power comes back the Leak Sensor sends another Wet if it goes Wet again. If that happens after power is restored the Status will be set to Wet on the next leak.

 

Having said all that the Leak Sensor is sensitive to the conductivity of water as all Leak Sensors are. I found it common for the Leak Sensor the cycle Wet to Dry to Wet as it is sitting in a Wet situation. Although not an absolute I suspect the Leak Sensor would cycle Dry/Wet/Dry/Wet well before the 24 hour Heartbeat. Also since the Heartbeat is on the Leak Sensors 24 hour clock, not when power is restored, the Heartbeat will likely happen before a full 24 hours when power comes back unless power just happen to be restored a few seconds after the last Heartbeat message

[MWareman]

Sounds good! Thanks Lee and Michel for the info. Extremely helpful as always!

 

I never really though of 'Control On OR Control Off' - but it does make sense for, in effect, 'any change'.

 

I'm a little confused with Michel's affirmation of my initial thought of the heartbeat though. Does the heartbeat status only change if the heartbeat is missed for 24 hours (as I initially thought) - or does the heartbeat flip-flop on/off with each 'pulse' from the sensor? Or is it something else - like a change to Off followed by a change to On each 'ping'?

 

If the status only changes if something bad has happened due to a missed heartbeat - I would not want the program on the ISY to have to wait another 25 hours before alerting. Hence my question.

 

There appears to be a bit of a lack of documentation for this device out there.

[LeeG]

I'll see if I have an Event trace archived with the Heartbeat message. I turned On the Event Viewer to catch the next one but I don't know the real clock time of the 24 hour cycle of the Leak Sensor.

 

As I remember it the Heartbeat node gets an On command every 24 hours. The ISY does not have a 24 hour clock running for each Leak Sensor so the ISY is not going to alter the Status of the Heartbeat node if it does not hear something in 24 hours. That is what the Program I posted does. If nothing comes from the Leak Sensor node for more than 24 hours the Program does something. I picked 25 hours because I was not sure how accurate a battery powered clock would be keeping a 24 hour elapsed time. Any check of the Heartbeat node needs to be in the 'If Control' format. As I remember the "Status" of the Heartbeat node is not going to change because only On commands come from the Heartbeat Group so 'If Status' is not appropriate.

 

The problem is all my testing of the Leak Sensor was quite some time ago so I am going on memory. The next event trace will help if I did not save a trace file of the Leak Sensor testing.

[LeeG]

The Heartbeat message contains an On command when the Leak Sensor is Dry.

 

The Heartbeat message contains an Off command when the Leak Sensor is Wet.

 

That is how the Heartbeat message updates the Wet/Dry state of the Leak Sensor every 24 hours.

 

When checking the Heartbeat node 'If Control' is the correct means of testing as the Heartbeat message will normally contain an On command each 24 hours as the Leak Sensor is normally Dry. If Status does not work because most of the time the Heartbeat node will be On so there is no Status change to trigger a Heartbeat Program. It is necessary to check the Heartbeat node for both 'If Control xxxx is switched On Or If Control xxxx is switched Off' as the command in the Heartbeat message depends on the Dry/Wet state of the Leak Sensor.

[MWareman]

Awesome! Thanks Lee. That perfectly explains what is going on, and I can now put this into a program as you suggested.

 

Do we wiki-ize the peculiar devices?

[MWareman]

Just for completeness - I set my ISY to do a notification via Pushover whenever a heartbeat is detected from one of these devices. It appears almost exactly every 23 hours and 50 minutes. It is only sent once - so (I would guess) could be missed.

 

I think I will do my heartbeat alert as this:

 

If
       Control 'Basement / Basement Sump - Heartbeat' is switched On
    Or Control 'Basement / Basement Sump - Heartbeat' is switched Off

Then
       Wait  48 hours 
       Resource 'Pushover - Sump Leak - Heartbeat Fail'

Else
  - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

 

That way - a single missed heartbeat is tolerated - but two being missed will be reported (I should expect to get two within 47 hours 40 mins).

 

Thanks again for all the guidance! Very much appreciated.