I have had my C-5 running for a couple of years with very little trouble with 30 Z-wave devices. It is connected to a UPS so I doubt it has seen a power loss that entire time. I always do a manual shutdown via the web interface when I need to take it offline for any reason.
The past couple of weeks I have had a few devices randomly turn on without a reason. The logs do not tell me much and some of the wonderful people with Hubitat have already worked with me on that. We were suspecting some mesh issues. I have been trying new hub locations and have run the Z-wave repair a few times over the course of a few weeks. I factory reset one device and the random turning on issues went away for that one, but I was still having some random issues on 2 other nodes.
A few days ago, the power to my home was flickering on and off a dozen times in rapid succession, when it came back on, I discovered my Z-wave network was totally unstable. I lost half of the nodes. After cycling power to everything (except the hub which I rebooted) I got most of it back, but I still have a few lingering issues. Two of my GE dimmers (old ZW3005/45712 ones) won't come back and I can't even get them to factory reset. I tried the air gap + 10 Ups as well as the 3up, 3 down methods without any luck. They will not respond to exclude either. They still work fine as dimmers, just no Z-wave. I am pretty sure the Z-wave chip fried on these two dimmers due to the power fluctuations unless someone has another idea how to deal with these dimmers.
Ok, with the background you can see where I am as of today. Is it possible the hub has a failing Z-wave radio... a weak signal that causes the intermittent connectivity issues and lag? Is it possible that could be related to the exclude function not reaching my failed dimmers? Just thoughts I am having. Any input, suggestions, past experience you may be willing to share would be greatly appreciated. As the pile of issues grow, so does my frustration. I can't tell you how hard it is to retrain myself to turn off a light now LOL!
The Z-radios are NOT reset by a reboot. They remain powered on at all times... except when the power is removed from the hub itself. So that's what gets recommended around here when we hear "ZWave is crazy" type of messages. Do a shutdown, then remove power - from the wall, to not stress the tiny micro usb. Wait a few seconds, power it up again.
As someone who has used the C5 for many years with 30+ zwave devices. I would guess your problem is most likely related to having zwave devices listed on your hub that are not working. This seems to cause mesh issues. I had two zwave devices (GE Door Pin Senors) finally have their battery go dead. I did not notice and wondered why my zwave was giving me so many problems. Any zwave devices that are listed in HE, but are not operational seems to give rise to zwave problems.
If these dimmers were being used as repeaters by your hub to communicate with many other z-wave devices, then the failure in their z-wave radio will have a dramatic negative effect on the hub's ability to communicate with z-wave devices.
Wouldn't running the Z-Wave repair create new routes though? I have done that since those switches dropped offline. I will be forcibly removing everything that is not communicating when I have more time, but now I fear that removing those devices will cause more routing issues.[quote="aaiyar, post:4, topic:103474, full:true"]
If these dimmers were being used as repeaters by your hub to communicate with many other z-wave devices, then the failure in their z-wave radio will have a dramatic negative effect on the hub's ability to communicate with z-wave devices.
[/quote]
No. Because those dimmers are still left as ghost/stranded devices that the radio still sees. I had the a similar issue with my C-5. It was resolved by using a secondary controller to remove ghost/stranded devices.
The new z-wave stack in the C-7 has many more tools to manage the z-wave mesh.
I had a couple things unplugged for several months without issue. All of these issues have started in the past month without any changes being made. I will remove those devices to eliminate the potential though. Thanks for the advice.
I don't have another hub but I have been considering upgrading to the C-7 and just doing a fresh start which may help get rid of the ghosts (or would it?) Are the ghost devices you refer to living in the nodes or on the hub? Also, can you tell me a bit more about what the C-7 offers over the C-5 for troubleshooting tools? I did not realize they were that different. The lack of tools to see what is going on in the network has been my biggest struggle with the C-5. When it worked, it did not matter, but now it matters a lot! I feel like I am totally blind. I am actually a PLC programmer (industrial machines) so the lack of tools to troubleshoot has someone like me really baffled. I prefer to figure things out on my own, but in this case, it seems I have to ask others for help and advice to get anywhere. Tools would be really nice to have so I am not bothering people with things that a C-7 might have solved for me.
On the hub's radio database. With the C-5, ghosts and stranded nodes are not always shown in the z-wave table. And the only way to remove them is using a secondary controller.
Ghosts/stranded nodes are easily identified in the z-wave table and there are tools to remove them. It is also possible to do node-specific z-wave repair. There's also a built-in z-wave device firmware updater. And, the radio itself is a 700-series radio.
Great information to know. I think I will get me new C-7 ordered and plan a fun filled weekend of starting over from scratch. At this point, I have messed with so many things and deleted 90% of my automations from the legacy rule machine trying to get these problems fixed, I think a full "do over" is in order for a clean new start.
