Appropriate action when Zaptec cloud is not working

[sveinse]

Discussion: What is the appropriate action when Zaptec cloud is not responding or returns error?

Currently the Zaptec integration will log them to the HA system log. This can easily be interpreted that its the zaptec integration which is at fault. Typical errors that are observed are timeouts and HTTP error code 500 (internal server error). When this happens, quite many errors and warnings are logged.

The Home Assistant integration Quality scale states that a integration should (for silver):

• Handles internet unavailable. Log a warning once when unavailable, log once when reconnected.
• Handles device/service unavailable. Log a warning once when unavailable, log once when reconnected.

So what should we do? Do we need to implement some way to determine Zaptec cloud's "healthyness" in order for our integration to reduce the error logging?

[svenakela]

Could be solved by setting an attribute on the binary_sensor when an API call fails. Then log the problem. When the API is working again the time stamp can be cleared and a reconnected is logged.
That would make it easy to visualize if the API is down as well.

I've had some issue last two nights with charging stopped several times and I suspect APIs. Could have been detected with an error time stamp.

[Bluhme1]

Agree. Zaptec API has been unstable during the last few days. Error 500.
Has given a lot of errors in the log

[sveinse]

Interestingly, there already exists entities for this: The "* Charger", "* Circuit" and "* Installation" entities. This entity exists to provide a place to store the legacy attributes and only reads "Connected". But it would be a very useful extension to this that they indeed show the status of the API connection. In hindsight it kinda seems obvious to have this feature.

Definitely something to put on the list! Thanks.

[Bluhme1]

Still getting Time Outs like:

Denne fejl stammer fra en brugerdefineret integration.

Logger: custom_components.zaptec.api
Source: custom_components/zaptec/api.py:855
Integration: Zaptec EV charger (documentation)
First occurred: 16.52.35 (1 occurrences)
Last logged: 16.52.35

Request to https://api.zaptec.com/api/installation/bf68a41d-d2f9-44f5-bfc6-20bf42e645a8 failed (attempt 1): TimeoutError:

Perhaps the Zaptec integration should be more patient before reporting an error. After a short while the connection is established

[Bluhme1]

Hi @sveinse

Did you get any further in your considerations to solve this issue. A pity that a very useful integration produces so many errors