RCS z-wave Thermostat issue(s)

William Olsen · December 15, 2023

Happy Holidays to all form members, I initially had five RCS Z-Wave thermostats integrated into my ISY system from its inception. Recently, I migrated to the Eisy platform and resolved some persistent bugs yesterday with the help of a knowledgeable forum member. However, I'm currently facing issues with all of my thermostats. The three programs that used to run on the ISY platform didn't migrate correctly to Eisy, so I had to rewrite them.

These programs served specific purposes:

Weekday Thermostat Morning
Weekend Morning Thermostat
Night Thermostat Setback

The two morning programs depend on the outdoor temperature for their set temperature. In my northern climate, I prefer to raise the set-points a few degrees higher when the outdoor temperature (ODT) is below 40°F. Additionally, the weekday and weekend times are tailored to our household's typical activity hours.

At night, we have a 'go to bed' routine that adjusts the thermostat set-points and night lighting. Unfortunately, both the Night set-back and weekday programs that set the thermostats have not been functioning properly since my Eisy was booted up at 17:00 yesterday.

In an attempt to diagnose the issues this morning, I adjusted the thermostat values both in the Admin console and locally at each thermostat. However, I noticed that each thermostat reverted to a heating set point of 72°F shortly afterward. This behavior persisted even after I disabled all three programs.

I am seeking assistance with this issue and would like to know the best forum to post my question. I appreciate the help provided by a specific forum member who assisted me in resolving previous bugs.

DennisC · December 16, 2023

18 hours ago, William Olsen said:

Happy Holidays to all form members, I initially had five RCS Z-Wave thermostats integrated into my ISY system from its inception. Recently, I migrated to the Eisy platform and resolved some persistent bugs yesterday with the help of a knowledgeable forum member. However, I'm currently facing issues with all of my thermostats. The three programs that used to run on the ISY platform didn't migrate correctly to Eisy, so I had to rewrite them.

These programs served specific purposes:

Weekday Thermostat Morning

Weekend Morning Thermostat

Night Thermostat Setback

The two morning programs depend on the outdoor temperature for their set temperature. In my northern climate, I prefer to raise the set-points a few degrees higher when the outdoor temperature (ODT) is below 40°F. Additionally, the weekday and weekend times are tailored to our household's typical activity hours.

At night, we have a 'go to bed' routine that adjusts the thermostat set-points and night lighting. Unfortunately, both the Night set-back and weekday programs that set the thermostats have not been functioning properly since my Eisy was booted up at 17:00 yesterday.

In an attempt to diagnose the issues this morning, I adjusted the thermostat values both in the Admin console and locally at each thermostat. However, I noticed that each thermostat reverted to a heating set point of 72°F shortly afterward. This behavior persisted even after I disabled all three programs.

I am seeking assistance with this issue and would like to know the best forum to post my question. I appreciate the help provided by a specific forum member who assisted me in resolving previous bugs.

For anyone to provide assistance, we would need to see the programs in question. Right click on the program(s) and select copy to clipboard, then paste the program here.

To insure the migration directions were followed, did you confirm the Zwave addresses were correct? If you migrated using UD ZMatter dongle, the device address changes from ZW to ZY prefix. Verify the programs are correct and then resave each program, even if no changes were necessary.

William Olsen · December 16, 2023

@DennisC, thanks for the reply. I have attached a copy of each of the three programs as you suggested. I followed the migration instructions by the letter although after migration had been completed each of the programs were commented out so I rewrote them. My Z-wave devices also did not migrate from my ISY to the ZMatter dongle but since there were only 5 the interview process was swift and completed without errors. Thanks in advance for your help Dennis. Just take note that I have been "fooling around" with the heating SP's for diagnostics and the programs do not reflect the actual values that part of my household routine for the moment and one of the programs is disabled to confirm that it was not the cause of the unwanted setpoint relapse. Also I can control each of the thermostats from the Admin console verified by physically reading each stat after a command was issued, locally at each stat where the local changes were reflected in the Admin console and via Alexa. The event viewer dutifully records each change and then the unwanted command not issued by me reverting each of the stats back to their original value. I have attached a snip of that occurrence. My ISY installed somewhere around the turn of the century exhibited none of these issues. If I changed a setpoint via any means the stat would remain at my SP until one of the programs changed it. Sorry about being wordy but I'm trying to convey all of the information that I've gathered hopefully in a clear fashion. As a side note to cover all of the bases, while the RCS thermostats have the ability to run an autonomous internal schedule, the feature remains disabled.

Weekday Thermostat Morning ODT condition - [ID 0010][Parent 0001][Not Enabled][Run At Startup]

If
        On Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
        Time is  6:00:00AM
    And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F
 
Then
        Set 'Thermostats / Basement Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bathroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bedroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Den Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Living Room Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
 
Else
        Set 'Thermostats / Living Room Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Den Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bedroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 69°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bathroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 73°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Basement Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F

Weekend Thermostat Morning ODT condition - [ID 001A][Parent 0001][Run At Startup]

If
        On Sat, Sun
        Time is  8:00:00AM on 
    And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F
 
Then
        Set 'Thermostats / Basement Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bathroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bedroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Den Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Living Room Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
 
Else
        Set 'Thermostats / Living Room Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Den Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bedroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bathroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Basement Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F

Thermostat night Set-Back - [ID 000D][Parent 0001][Run At Startup]

If
        Time is 11:59:00PM
     Or (
             'ELK Controller / In Bed' is switched On
        )
 
Then
        Set 'Thermostats / Bedroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 65°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bathroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 65°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Den Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 65°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Living Room Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 65°F
 
Else
   - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

Here is the entire event log since bootup after MK and I did some serious but productive troubleshooting of another issue. Look towards the end starting at 23:10, ~~I have highlighted~~ where I sent a command to ZY stat 1 and everything after that goes asunder, to my old experienced eyes I can not imagine what my EISY is thinking. The ISY was either more straightforward or technology has passed this old body by when I wasn't looking.

[EDIT: Admin removed very long "event log" and added as file. Much too long to scroll even on a computer.]

event log.txt

DennisC · December 17, 2023

On 12/16/2023 at 9:59 AM, William Olsen said:

Weekend Thermostat Morning ODT condition - [ID 001A][Parent 0001][Run At Startup]

If
        On Sat, Sun
        Time is  8:00:00AM on 
    And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F
 
Then
        Set 'Thermostats / Basement Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bathroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bedroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Den Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Living Room Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 74°F
 
Else
        Set 'Thermostats / Living Room Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Den Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bedroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Bathroom Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F
        Set 'Thermostats / Basement Thermostat' Heat Setpoint 72°F

Since there is nothing obvious with what you posted, let's try something, change your If section so it reads as follows:

Weekend Thermostat Morning ODT condition - [ID 001A][Parent 0001][Run At Startup]

If

(

From 8:00:00AM

To 11:58:30PM (same day)

)

And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F

William Olsen · December 17, 2023

Dennis, thanks for your response; I will happily follow your advice but before I endeavor to do so I thought to remind you that with all three programs disabled changes manually made to any of my Z-wave thermostats whether locally at the individual thermostat or via the Admin console would shortly revert to their previous setting without any input from me, I had hoped that you might have seen it transpire in the event log the same way that I did.

Last nights temperature dipped and when I went into the Den to say good night I found my spouse was wrapped up in a throw. It didn't take me but a minute to go downstairs and remove my Z-wave/Matter dongle and make a final adjustment to the Den heating SP. As of this morning my CLSPH change remained as I had left it before going to bed last night.

William Olsen · December 17, 2023

48 minutes ago, DennisC said:

Since there is nothing obvious with what you posted, let's try something, change your If section so it reads as follows:

Weekend Thermostat Morning ODT condition - [ID 001A][Parent 0001][Run At Startup]

If

        (

             From     8:00:00AM

             To       11:58:30PM (same day)

        )

And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F

DennisC · December 17, 2023

6 minutes ago, William Olsen said:

with all three programs disabled changes manually made to any of my Z-wave thermostats whether locally at the individual thermostat or via the Admin console would shortly revert to their previous setting without any input from me

That would suggest that there is another programming (maybe forgotten?) that is changing the temperature, or is it possible there is a forgotten setpoint in the thermostat? Maybe you should double check the thermostat's just to be sure.

Next, use the Find/Replace option in eisy programs (right click on one of your programs with the thermostat device in it) and search for all programs with the device.

Finally, run one of the programs, let the setpoint change back, then check the program summary page for a program that just ran. You could also monitor that page while triggering the program to run.

Let's see if you find something else triggering the change.

William Olsen · December 17, 2023

@DennisC; Thank you for some very salient diagnostics as you seem to be a sharp knife. I'm quite experienced (a.k.a. old) and have already performed that which you have kindly suggested. Please feel free if you have any more thoughts, from my perspective you appear far more qualified than that of a typical user. 🤓. I have attached a copy of the few programs that I currently have running in my EISY.

dbwarner5 · December 17, 2023

@William Olsen I would concur with Dennis that my first point of investigation , since your programming doens look overly complicated, is to double check the thermostats themselves for thier own programming / settings.

If you manually adjust the thermostats, does it also revert back, or only if the ISY adjusts it?

William Olsen · December 18, 2023

Good morning @dbwarner5, M initial post very detailed, specific and included those very details that you brought up. Thank you very much for contributing.

GHenry · December 18, 2023

If
        On Sat, Sun
        Time is  8:00:00AM on 
    And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F

From a pure logic standpoint, shouldn’t this program execute only once, at 8 a.m., and even then if and only if the temperature is below 40.5°F? Doesn't the proposed change make it execute at all times between 8 a.m. and almost midnight (again, if and only if the temperature is below 40.5°F)?

If
        (
             From     8:00:00AM
             To       11:58:30PM (same day)
        )
And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F

dbwarner5 · December 18, 2023

4 hours ago, William Olsen said:

Good morning @dbwarner5, M initial post very detailed, specific and included those very details that you brought up. Thank you very much for contributing.

In your first post you said: In an attempt to diagnose the issues this morning, I adjusted the thermostat values both in the Admin console and locally at each thermostat. However, I noticed that each thermostat reverted to a heating set point of 72°F shortly afterward. This behavior persisted even after I disabled all three programs.

In your next post you said: As a side note to cover all of the bases, while the RCS thermostats have the ability to run an autonomous internal schedule, the feature remains disabled.

So if the ISY programs are disabled and the temps still change back, that would lead me again to the thermostat. Have you double checked that the feature really is disabled?

Conversely, another test would be to unplug your ISY and see if the thermostats still make the adjustment locally, to absolutely rule out a local issue and bring it back to an ISY issue.

From there one thing I noticed through some of hte updates / migrations, some of my programs got corrupted. Simply modify ing them or hitting Update on any line will allow you to resave them and possibly eliminate any corruption behind the scenes.. Good luck.

Geddy · December 18, 2023

22 hours ago, William Olsen said:

I have attached a copy of the few programs that I currently have running in my EISY.

@William Olsen I think @DennisC hit the nail on the head and @GHenry backed it up. Your programs are only running AT a specific time.

On 12/16/2023 at 9:59 AM, William Olsen said:

If
On Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
Time is 6:00:00AM
And 'Automation / Outdoor Temp' Temperature < 40.5°F

This program ONLY runs AT 6:00am. Further, in your image above that program is DISABLED. Even if not disabled the slim red line along the left side of the icon indicates that the last time that program triggered it triggered false.

Meanings of colors on the programs can be found in the wiki: https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY_Programs:Icon_Colors

For your program to run the THEN portion it would have to be the very moment it was 6:00:00am and below 40.5°F the program would be true. If it doesn't happen that way exactly at 6:00:00am the ELSE runs (meaning the program is FALSE).

On 12/15/2023 at 12:48 PM, William Olsen said:

However, I noticed that each thermostat reverted to a heating set point of 72°F shortly afterward. This behavior persisted even after I disabled all three programs.

The first part of this statement seems to be accurate since your weekend programs are showing enabled and run at startup if you rebooted the device after you manually set the temp on the thermostat the "ELSE" would trigger at start because the program is showing "[Run At Startup]".

If you disabled the program and the temp changed then it is either on the thermostat or another program is triggering it. That's where the find & replace that @DennisC mentions come into play. Find what other programs mention these thermostats.

Last question - before you migrated from ISY to eisy did you happen to make a text backup file of your programs? I don't think it's specifically in the wiki method, but it's long been a suggestion to make a text backup of your programs so they can be easily recreated should something fail. My expectation is you had to recreate the programs from memory and aren't exactly as you had them in the ISY994.

My final suggestion might be (do you still have the ISY994 backup you used to migrate?)

make a full backup of your system now
make a text backup of the programs - right click on the "My Programs" folder and then select "Copy folder to clipboard" and then paste that into a text editor - like Notepad (not a word processing file/document). Then SAVE that text documents as your current programs.
if you still have your migration backup from the ISY994 restore that again to the eisy
DON'T DO ANYTHING TO THIS RESTORED VERSION!
IMMEDIATELY make a TEXT BACKUP of your programs. (again, copy "My Programs" folder to a text file)
Restore the eisy backup you made in step 1.
Now you should be back to where you were and you might have a valid text backup of your "old" programs that were on the ISY994 and can recreate them again in the eisy.

But I think just adjusting your programs to run in a range would be what fixes your issue. Furthermore, as @dbwarner5 suggests unplug the eisy and adjust the thermostat. The issue is you might need to leave it unplugged more than 12-24 hours to span a day of when your temp settings change.

Good luck! Please report back with changes you attempt and any further findings you have.

William Olsen · December 18, 2023

@GHenry, I have to correct an error I made a minute ago, I marked your post as a solution (no glasses). But from what I briefly read both of us are of a similar mindset regarding the application (logical) of this program. Let me get on reading... and thanks!

William Olsen · December 18, 2023

Everybody, the programs that appear in my Eisy didn't migrate properly from my ISY because of the differences that each device was handled by the individual Z-Wave chipsets so I cut and pasted them between the two generations. The programs ran flawlessly in my ISY since it was released to the public. I need to find my glasses.

William Olsen · December 18, 2023

One more point that one of you missed, I indicated in a subsequent post to my original that to maintain sleeping privileges on my side of the bed I pulled out the Z-Wave dongle after observing my spouse wrapped up in a throw.

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RCS z-wave Thermostat issue(s)

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