I upgraded from a C5 when the C8 came out and at first, and the migration went well and it all worked. Everything was nice and snappy and a bit of a refreshing change from some slow down that would occur occasionally with my older hub.
Then, a few months after, this past summer, my z-wave network completely crapped out on me. Devices would not respond at all, would not update their status, and those that worked were sluggish all around. Trust me when I say I combed over every forum post I could find that might be potentially relevant, and nothing seemed to work. Only when I got a z-wave stick to try to kill any dead nodes (not that I could find any) and set it all up on the computer with Simplicity, did everything magically start working as it should. I left it connected to the network for awhile, afraid that it would all implode again when I turned that computer off. Eventually, I turned of the computer and removed the stick, and everything kept working just fine. Problem solved, right?
About a month later, we had a power outage that lasted 8 hours and my UPS gave out after a few hours, so the whole system sat unpowered for 4-5 hours. When I got everything turned back on, my zigbee network was trashed and completely unresponsive. I let it sit for a few days and it slowly rebuilt a lot of the pieces, which was super frustrating as some of the lamps I use are all zigbee bulbs and couldn't be turned on. After awhile, everything was working well again, except none of my Sengled bulbs worked, except for a couple I was able to get to reconnect successfully. I tried and tried again to get the remaining ones to pair again, and even some brand new ones, but nothing works. I've combed the forums again, moved them closer, farther, tried all 3 pairing modes available for zigbee since the 2.3.6.xxx firmware updates, moved back to older firmware versions, but not a single one of my remaining bulbs will pair. They all either never get spotted by the Hubitat, or start initializing and never finish. I've factory reset them every time too. All my reading shows that I'm clearly not the only one experiencing this issue with the C8, but nothing seems to be getting done about it. I've also tried swapping around zigbee channels, changing the power up and down, non of which did anything except break the network for a few days so that it could rebuild itself again.
I made my peace for now with the bulbs for now as the 2 that did manage to rejoin the network are the key ones along with a few Tradfri bulbs I have that rejoined without any issues.
Now, a few months later again. My Z-way network started failing utterly and completely. Nearly every one of my approx. 40 devices became unresponsive. I went through the entire network and noticed that one of my zooz switches wasn't showing on the z-wave details page, even though it was still on the devices page. I attempt about 20 different ways of removing it, but nothing would include or exclude on the z-wave network. Even brand new devices wouldn't pair. I reconnected my z-wave stick to try and fix some nodes that looked like they may have become ghosts, but my stick was one of them, so I couldn't do much and the repair/remove options did nothing. I killed a few WLED devices that were clogging up the works maybe and purged a z-wave plug that I only ever have plugged in at Christmas time and then I finally was able to kill a node with my stick and was able to pair a new device. I copied the app settings from my switch that appeared broken and successfully removed it and installed a whole new switch, paired it and properly removed the z-stick from the network this time. I was able to use the repair function to reconnect a few devices that didn't seem to come back to life after I got the z-wave mesh somewhat working again (mostly outlets). It seems to be working again, sort of. About a dozen different devices either randomly don't work, or are super slow to respond, taking up to a minute to complete the command. My garage door doesn't respond half the time, and doesn't update it's open or closed status most of the time, so I get notifications that my alarm couldn't arm because a door was open, or it simply won't open or close because it thinks it's already in that state, when it's not.
I've considered deleting the whole z-wave network and rebuilding from scratch, but if I do that, I'm not staying on this ecosystem. The sheer amount of stress and frustration I've experienced in the past 8 or 9 months is a deal breaker and I'm about to throw this damn thing in the garbage and move on. I've combed through my logs and see no indicators of any of the issues that would be causing this in there, so it's just firing in the dark half the time trying to resolve these recurring issues. The worst part is, I've generally steered away from Zigbee as much as possible, due to avoiding wifi interference and because on both my Smarthings before, and my C5 since, Z-wave has been so much more reliable and solid by comparison. I would honestly have 100% Z-wave network if I could find enough affordable battery powered sensors and lightbulbs to make it work. I'm not feeling that anymore at this point. My Zigbee mesh is proving to be a lot more robust on the C8, with the very notable exception of all Sengled bulbs apparently no longer being compatible or something.
Here are some screen shots of my z-wave mesh for reference:
I find it weird that nearly all of my devices are connected direct to the hub, but 2 of the ones that are not, are literally the closest 2 to the hub. Directly above it, across the hall. They're connecting through the garage door openers that are like 5 times farther away. Bi product of the new chip with more output and antenna maybe?
Does anybody have any clue how to fix this before I dumpster the whole thing and start fresh somewhere else?
PS, I'm on firmware 2.3.6.146
