Slow advanced flow

Questions & Help
1

Hi

I have a stair with some lights, 2 motion sensors and a presense sensor.
I have set up this Advanced Flow, but it’s so slow that it it takes like 5-7 seconds before lights turns on.

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The most simple flow I have tried in another room is with a contact sensor and a light.

When the contact sensor is on, the lights turns on and the other way around.

This is real slow in Homey, but fast in HomeKit.

Any good advice how to speed things up in Homey?

Regards
Thomas

2

What do you mean by slow? When playing / testing it in advanced flow or the flow is triggered?

The animations in an advanced flow make it “slower” when testing the flow. This shouldn’t however reflect trigger actions.

3

I mean when I step on to my stairs and motion/presense is registrered - it takes 5-7 seconds before lights turns on. And then I’m down the stairs already …

4

It could also take 5-7 seconds before motion is detected and the flow is started. Or have you verified that already somehow?

You could add a “timeline notification” card with add some text (zone active / first light on / …) at several steps to see what’s actually causing the delay. It might be a communication issue with one of those devices (lights or motion sensor)

5

Do all of these actually trigger zone activity (is the respective setting enabled in their device tiles)?

Also (unrelated): most dimmable lights do not require you to switch them on if you set a dim value greater than 0. That will normally switch on the light aswell.

6

Timeline Notification?
I use a similar presense sensor in another room, where I use HomeApp for automation - there lights are on immediately.

7

I tried just to use DIM, but the lights aren’t turned on that way - therefor the extra step :frowning:

All 3 units are included in Zone Activity

1 Like
8

Just trying to help. If it’s working as expected then no investigation is needed indeed. If it’s not working as expected you might want to find out what’s causing the issue.

9

And I really greatfull for all help, thanks!
It’s working elsewhere when setup in HomeApp, but similar setup in Homey is slow.
And I need these more advanced features Homey offers, so I can’t move it to HomeApp :frowning:

1 Like
10

The only way to find out out is by testing. So you start with the most simple flow:

WHEN motion detected THEN switch on the light.

when that works ok and fast enough, you start adding a few more more cards and test again. Until the flow is complete and working fine, or until the flow is slow and you know which card causes the delay!

3 Likes
11

I will do that, thanks!

12

This takes 2-3 seconds from I see motion detected until lights turns on - good or bad?
I find it slow :frowning:

Was there a way to see some logs?

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13

I think it should be faster, depending upon how do you see motion detected?

Logging you have to make yourself with the app Log or with writing messages to the time line, directly after the WHEN card.

14

Maybe the motion sensor’s current time out or reporting interval settings in Homey are causing a delay. Not sure which options you can set in Homey, but you might want to review (and if necessary adjuist) them.

Also: you might want to add a timeline card to both card with a test message as also suggested by @Rmb. So that you can determine which of the two cards is causing the delay. It might not be the motion sensor…

15

Have fougth similar fight years already… HomeyPro+Zw in my bathroom. The only reason, i have the lights via central controller is, that the switched on light source depends on action time ( during night little bit darker and hidden source). From my experience:

  • Think, do You really need the controller there ( for example some Z-wave devices allow also set up direct actions sensor-switch). May-be sensor directly switching lights is faster solution?
  • Are the delays constant? In my system i have mostly immediate responses, BUT sometimes, offtenly at night there may be quite long delays ( almost half of the “business” already done in total darkness, only then light comes on)
  • Timestamps in flow - usefull sometimes, but also useless, because You do not have exact event timestamp, just only times inside of Homey ( if there is blind or network delay, the timestamp does not shows them)
  • Yes, if this is Your first flow, then… sensors have “blind times” - both hardware and also software side and settable. They are there do not overload network. So, if You are intensively walking in and out (testing the system), then probably You can hit this delay

From my system - i suspecting something related with network re-config (delays in air-transmissions) or deep-sleeping Homey. But as the situations are quite rare, then hard to catch. There was also times, The Bug hits offten - so, suspecting, may-be related also with Homey software version.

Hope, You got some ideas to check :wink:

16

Thank you - really great points and ideas!

I have tested some more and it seems the issue is with LIFX and Homey. Flows with LIFX are slow with Homey, but not with HomeApp automations.
Same flow in Homey with Matter lights work well.
So Homey/LIFX is a no go for me - must be that LIFX uses wifi?

17

Or the quality of your wifi network / wifi reception.

18

I’m pretty sure it’s alright.
Have 1000/1000 connection. Unifi DreamMachine and 3 Ubiquiti U7 Pro XGS WiFi 7 Access Point across my house.
Also LIFX respons immediately with HomeApp/HomeKit

19

Are you using LIFX via Cloud? In this topic i read others complaining that cloud is “stupidly slow”. If so maybe using that app might solve the issue.

20

Maybe this is it? The LIFX app from Athom is using Cloud access so every command needs to be processed by the cloud first.