[2.3.5.113] C8 Z-Wave dropout at random times of the day

I've also seen the opposite. Mesh performed OK the previous day, nightly whatever it is does more harm than good.

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Just a FYI, I had this very thing happen but on the C7, I had several devices ZWave that were not plugged in Xmas devices, and once I put them back in the mix and fixed other devices that were spammy all was good. I had to completely shutdown to get the radio to work again. I think if you fix those devices and exclude the ones that are not being used you will be back in business. The Z wave is very fast on C8 and I have not had one issue with Z wave, Zigbee on the other had has been a bit of a struggle at times, but I got that working correctly for now. It's not the C8. I believe it's the Z wave devices that are causing you those issues. Good luck !

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All of my devices but one were plugged in early morning yesterday and it still dropped out yesterday afternoon. The one device has been unplugged for about 4 months, so it's not like it was a recent change to the mesh. Didn't want to remove it because it can be a real pain to get Z-Wave devices to pair sometimes. Still need to get around to actually remove it, I'd rather exclude it properly than force a remove. Gotta remember where I stored that device lol!

I will say though this morning everything was still working fine, which is the first morning since I started back with the C8 that everything was set where it should be.

I had some weirdness last night with my motion lights before bed, but I can't rule Z-Wave exclusively to be the problem. Motion sensor is ZigBee, and switch is Z-Wave. Lights didn't come on, so I hit the switch and they came on. I have a second ZigBee bulb that gets turned on when those lights are on, and it actually turned on. Tells me the devices were responding as normal, maybe a delay in the network, or the motion sensor didn't work properly.

Just going to keep monitoring it and see what happens

Made it several days and mesh/radio just failed this evening. No commands working. Hub reboot, nothing. Had to shut down, pull power, etc to get working again. :confused:

Im seeing similar issues on the z-wave side. Sensors just stop responding for a while like they drop off temporarily. Or a ring keypad will be connected for 2 days and then suddenly one morning it isn’t.

Yeah I'm unfortunately still seeing random issues, but it does seem better than total Z-Wave network failure. Yesterday in the afternoon I shutdown and restarted the hub and it took a little bit but things began working again eventually. This morning some devices weren't responding again. Didn't have time to see if it was multiple devices or just a couple though.

I have noticed with my Z-Wave door sensors, if a door is open then closed (doesn't really seem to matter how long its open) then it doesn't update and the state in the dashboard is still showing open.

Devices like switches seem to update better when physically pressed than virtually toggled, especially if they have been in the same state for a couple hours or longer.

I did just notice an update is available, so hoping that improves things as well. Will look into it, but I won't update until I am back home later this evening

These symptoms sound very much like either a weak mesh or there is a problem device spamming events or routing messages. But we know some people have come from a stable C7 and now the C8 is having zwave issues. So I am thinking the different routing with the C8 is creating some unintended issues. For example I have one ZEN30 v1 (known to have a terrible antenna) which used to have 2-3 neighbors, there are switches very close to it. Now on the C8 it slowly has lost those and just shows 1 neighbor, and always direct connects. It is also not as reliable like this, because its antenna is terrible. If it was unable to direct connect it would be routing through a switch that is about 2ft away and it would be more reliable like that.

I wonder if other people are having issues like this, where a device is direct connecting that really should not be, which in turn could cause a lot of route changes due to weak signals but it keeps going back to direct and then the process starts again? High numbers of route changes will clog of the zwave traffic and cause delays in all other devices. Every route change the device will spam out discovery messages to try and find new neighbors and routes.

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My situation precisely. Most of my devices are connected directly to HE with 100kbps speeds and very few reroutes. My two Ring keypads have a high number of reroutes and are not reliable though they have beaming repeaters within feet of them. Some of the other devices that drop out (or become very, very slow to respond) at random times are directly connected with few reroutes. Whether the reroutes for the Rings are causing my larger issues I don't know.

I also had a couple of Zooz motion sensors with a high number of reroutes jumping through all sorts of repeaters whereas on the C7 they were directly connected and just feet away. I ended up tossing those.

I am also able to replicate the Ring issue on a very simple z-wave network consisting of just three devices - the C8, an Aeotec range extender, and a Ring keypad. All within a few feet of each other. The range extender obviously isn't doing much. It will show a route if I do something with it and there's nothing routing through it.

Would be curious to see how many route changes on a full mesh, and how long the hub was running at the time of the screenshot.

Also, is that device always paired with access control? That means it has access to add/remove nodes on the mesh, and not sure what else exactly but its basically a secondary controller. Those keypads might act as coordinators on the normal Ring system? With the access control security it might be asking for node details on the entire mesh from the hub, causing even more traffic.

I am not sure with all the interface changes, if you can deselect some of the access when pairing with security, but if you can I would select just S2 Auth, and deselect S0 and Access control.
If that's not an option I would be curious about testing it with no security just to see if that changes anything.

I'm not sure I understand the comment about S2 access control and a secondary controller. S2 access control is a standard z-wave security protocol generally used with door locks, garage door openers, security keypads, etc. Usually when I pair a secondary controller I do with without security at all.

I have tried a manual inclusion and skipping security altogether (for testing - not something I would do in the real world) and the results are more or less the same. It has been a while though so I'll give it a shot just to see. Though a security keypad without security would be... well... a keypad!

So while trying a manual inclusion I skipped security altogether and the hub never completed the inclusion process. Did a smartstart inclusion and I got a partial inclusion with a discover button. There's just something about the C8 that the Rings dont like. Or vice-versa. But this is on a network with just the hub and the ring so it doesn't account for the other problems I'm seeing.

I guess I don't have any locks or or keypads so I was not aware they would normally be classified as Access Control, although it makes sense now. I always just assumed since my USB stick got access control it was only used for secondary controllers. According to that article it is normal, so probably not hurting anything. And I agree that device should be paired with security.

The part about it not finishing the including, is the same problem that is being reported with USB sticks. So I think you are onto something there, the C8 seems to have some sort of issue pairing S2 access control devices. I believe a lot of people are struggling with locks as well (but that seems to be normal, always people having issues with locks).

The issue where it wont pair without security at all may be on purpose, some secure devices refuse to pair without security (to protect us from our own stupid selves).

Yeah I thought about that too and you may very well be right. It's trying to be idiot-proof. Probably not a bad thing.

Yeah. It's kind of like aqara sensors. Probably not the best litmus test. Or maybe it's a FLIRs device issue... locks are usually FLIRs too.

I almost wish I could reproduce this myself so I could sniff the traffic. Mine is working great :person_shrugging:

I would like to take a peek at some details to see if there are any patterns, might help devs narrow it down.

For people having these issues, can you please let the hub run for at least a few hours (when there is normal household activity). Use this app: [BETA] A Z-Wave Mesh Tool [C7 and 2.2.4+ Only] and get a screenshot of the entire page.

Ideally if you could use ShareX (or equivalent) to get the full thing in one screenshot it would be helpful as well. There is an option called "Scrolling Capture..." which will get the entire page. Recommendation for Screenshot App - ShareX

This chrome extension works also: GoFullPage - Full Page Screen Capture - Chrome Web Store

Definitely happy to help as much as I can here. I installed the app, and can post some information later once it has been running for a while.

Any settings I need to set in the app interface that would also be helpful?

I don't know what columns are selected by default but this is what I always use:
Manufacturer could be useful in this case also to help spot known problematic devices or patterns.

image

Set my settings similarly. I attached a baseline I just screenshotted a couple minutes ago. Might be a little light on activity compared to normal, evening would probably be better with lighting needed. I can screenshot again later today or tonight sometime, just figured it might be good to have something to compare to. Should I reboot in between screenshots or keep the hub up the whole time?

No rebooting would be best, reboot clears the stats, the longer it is up the more you can start to see if certain devices are misbehaving.

Overall yours does not look bad, lots of neighbors. Most have good response times. A few devices are struggling but do not have excessive route changes, they are just not responding quickly (responses from device might not be getting to the hub reliably so they have to send multiple times).

Figured I shouldn't reboot, but wanted to check. The route changes causing issues makes sense. I sorted by max route changes, posted below is everything 2 or greater. Of course the Schlage lock is the most troublesome, followed by a couple Ecolink battery sensors.

I see for the Zigbee radio we can now control the power level, I wonder if this could be implemented for Z-Wave too? Would be nice to try to force weaker devices to use repeaters to see if the network would become more stable.

If things start acting up worse, I will post another full screenshot to see if anymore useful data can be read. For now, things have been cooperating.

Here's another odd z-wave thing going on... not seen this before, looks like it started a little while ago.

This aeotec trisensor has been happily chugging along up there for about a year, then all of the sudden these started appearing in the log. No changes have been made other than to move the sensor from the C7 to the C8 - and that was 6 weeks ago or more.