Hit limit in home state 18

Hello, Everyone
I'm having a strange issue where my 3 axis machine is failing to home "Z". It was a working machine, I had no issues with it until now, and all of a sudden I get this error message when trying to home "Z" : Hit limit in home state 18
There is little to no information available about this error message and all I can see is that "Z" actually searches for Home in the right direction, finds the home switch, stops on hit, goes back in opposite direction and searches for the home switch again in low speeds to set the home on the initial hit of the switch, but never stops until the axis hits a limit. Yesterday was working just fine, I can see all signals in Hal Configuration and as a hardware, everything is working just fine...
Running Axis 2.8.2-11-g6a3d0

Do you have "home to index" enabled? These symptoms would fit if you do, and if the index has stopped working.

Strangely enough, I went to the ini file and did HOME_USE_INDEX from Yes to No only on axis Z, and machine homed properly. Ill keep a close eye on the way It goes and Ill inform you if anything out of the ordinary happens again

I think that this means that either the encoder itself, or the wiring for the index pulse, or possibly the IO board input, has failed.