Curtain bot and hub mini - comparing notes on numerous issues
I would appreciate feedback from other users on some issues I have been getting during my first month of Switchbot ownership. I have had a support ticket open virtually from day one and although I love the idea behind these products I am on the verge of sending the whole lot back for a refund.
For reference I have a pair of rod type curtain bots configures as an "open from centre" pair, and a hub mini. I have scheduled routines operated from my Amazon devices.
I am getting:
1) Very frequent connection errors between curtain bots and the hub mini (errors 190 and 161) despite the hub being only 3m from the curtains, in the same room and in direct line of sight.
2) Frequent loss of calibration of the position of the curtain bot on the rail, which usually means that if hits the end stop and just carries on running. There is insufficient friction between the rod and the bot to force the roller to stop unless I clamp it up to maximum (see my other thread).
3) Sometimes one of the bots doesn't move at all but somehow still registers its position as having changed. This usually means that the bot gets stuck on the wrong position and a re-calibration is required to restore function.
4) I have had one instance of the entire system going offline - both bots, and the hub. This required a hardware reset on all three items to restore functionality.
At the moment on average I am having to do some kind of manual intervention every 2 days or so to keep things working, which is not really acceptable for a home automation product.
I have sent numerous bug reports and videos to the Switchbot support (who I have to say are pretty good, even if I am no closer to solving my problems) and I currently have an offer to send these items back for a replacement. At the moment I am using the following workarounds.
1) Clamping the bot to the maximum on the rail to prevent overruns. Early days yet but seems effective even though I am worried that this is going to overload the motor or roller bearings and shorten the life of the bot.
2) In my scenes I am repeating the open and close commands three times. My Alexa routine activates the scene three times with a 15 second gap in between. This means that each time my Alexa routine triggers the hub sends the command 9 times. This means I get a lot of "clicking" at the end of each movement. If this approach proves successful I will tune the number of repetitions down.
If I can get these things to work flawlessly for a whole week I feel that will be a step forward.
Any similar experiences out there?
コメント
Hello Darren,
Sorry for the unsmooth experience and thank you for your thorough feedback.
The connection error has many things to do with the network and the server, affecting the stability of the connection somehow. This issue could be alleviated by pulling down on the homepage to refresh.
As for the calibration issue, this is a tricky one as the installation and calibration need to proceed correctly. We need to make sure the Rod-type SwitchBot Curtain is installed on the rod in a decent tightness. If not, it has a big chance of slipping while it is running, causing the calibration to lose.
But don't worry, any issue you encountered is welcome to bring on to support@wondertechlabs.com. The support team will help you resolve the problem.
SwitchBot Team
Hi Switchbot Team,
Thanks for the reply. My curtain bots seem to have settled down a bit now but I am still left with the calibration problem. My bots are clamped up to within 1 "click" of maximum. This gives much better repeatability but is not quite enough to always make the bot click off when it hits the bracket at the end. However, if I clamp it to the absolute maximum then the bot motor struggles and i am worried I am damaging the unit.
Regarding an answer I just got int a different thread:
"Thank you for your suggestion. The SwitchBot Curtain calculate its movement by the roller in the middle. When it spins, it will tell how many rounds has it turned."
This is good information, but I don't understand it because when my bots lose calibration they often continue to spin for a very long time even after hitting the end bracket. I guess this wears the roller and would gradually make the problem worse as the roller will slowly lose grip on the rail. This suggests to me that the bot is either not counting the revolutions correctly, or it doesn't know how many revolutions to count before switching off.
The frequency when I have to manual adjustment to the curtain bots has dropped from every 2-3 days to about once a week, but I still think that is too often. It really feels like rather than the wheels spinning on the rail causing the calibration problems (i.e. hardware / installation issue), then the bot just suddenly "completely forgets" its calibration (which to me seems more like a software issue).
Is there any way to verify this through looking at my logs?
Regards,
Darren
Dear Switch bot.
One of my curtain bots completely forgot its calibration today for no apparent reason. This is exactly one week after my last post and the bots have performed absolutely fine since then and right up until today.
Unfortunately, I was unable to re-calibrate the bots until I had deleted and hard reset them as at the same time the app refused to communicate with them despite my phone being less than a meter away. Once reset I was able to re calibrate without any problems, although one bot does now seem to lag behind the other which was not the case before.
In my opinion this has to be a software problem. Is there any way you can take a closer look? These constant problems are ruining my enjoyment of your product.
Thanks,
Darren
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