C-7 hub not communicating to Zwave devices unless power cycled

Since my old c5 died and i upgraded to a c7 I've been having random hub communication issues with Z-wave devices. A power down and power up seems to temporarily alleviate the problem but after a day or two the problem comes back. I downgraded the software at first thinking it was an update issue but over time I noticed the problem rearing itself back up. I did a soft reset yesterday after having a database corruption and still had the communication issue less than 24hrs later. I updated the hub to the latest software this morning but doubt it'll resolve this issue because I had last month's version on it before down grading. Is there a remedy to this problem I'm having or is this a common issue with c7 hubs?

I have two iblinds next to the hub and have them automated so I know when the communicating starts to stop working when the blinds dont open or close in the morning or evening. If I try to open them via dashboard they show that the command was sent and received. It's like it's in a virtual test mode where the device(iblind) is emulated. The iblinds aren't the only zwave devices that fail to communicate. The last remaining jasco switches fail to communicate as well but those don't update if I try to change power positions.

Again, powering the hub down, then booting it back up resolves the problem right away.


im keeping this here just to see if things change over 24 hours.

iving room chandelier, garage sensor, and kitchen fan have no route back to the hub. This is indicative of ghost devices, which will definitely cause issues. How did you do the migration from c5 to c7? If you manually excluded and then included the devices I'm guessing some of them didn't include properly and that's what caused the issue. If you used the migration feature available with Hub Protect I'm not familiar with it and you may need some help from others.

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My hub died so I had to rebuild my Z-wave network from scratch. Do ghost devices still occur when you rebuild the network from scratch?

Yup - they are created during the process of adding Z-Wave devices to your hub, when the join process doesn't complete properly.

You'll need to remove those ghost devices, and re-pair the devices to your hub.

Remove power from those devices and then use the Refresh button until you see a Remove option, and hit Remove. May take multiple tries of both the Refresh and Remove buttons for it to work.

If you don't remove power from those devices the hub will still be able to ping them and won't remove them. Many switches have airgaps you can pull out to kill power to the switch w/out having to hit a breaker.

If the hub removal process doesn't work you will have to go this way...

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ah thank you very much. I'll touch back in a day or so and see if this resolved my issues.

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Good luck...the C7 has gotten much better at removing ghosts on its own (as long as power is killed to the ghost device) than it used to be, but unfortunately there are still cases where you have to resort to the UZB stick approach...

I had to go through this process recently. One thing I wish I had done was check for firmware updates for my devices before I wrote up a whole pile of automations. The C-7 supports OTA firmware updates for Z-Wave devices, but you have to go find the correct firmware packages for them yourself.

i was wondering that. Would be nice if there was a master firmware thread

I suspect there would be issues with folks willy-nilly applying firmware and bricking their devices. It's a bit of a minefield with the "same" device having different version numbers that will only accept certain firmware upgrades. Aeotec

was i supposed to use the "force remove" after clicking "remove"?

Yup. But have a look at the "removing Ghost Devices" thread.

I skimmed through it lol.

I'm assuming I have to pull the battery out of the iblinds and remove them since they're battery powered.

You'll have to check the iBlinds documentation for what it required to get them into Exclusion mode.

alrighty thanks,

looks like the kitchen fan is now connecting to the hallway light. Seemed fairly pain-free :joy:

Need to turn the chandelier breaker off to pull power off the levitron switch. Then get a ladder for the other stuff.

Thanks again guys!

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It takes a village to raise a zwave network

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Bumping this a little, but saw a bit of a rumor here: Z-Wave 5-Button Scene Controller + Dimmer Switch | Project Limitless - #358 by robstitt - Projects & Roadmaps - Inovelli Community

Seems SiLabs might have a new zwave 700 series controller firmware that fixes this failure to transmit?

There is a long thread from about a month ago that has a link to another brand hub that is also testing this, but posting their results publicly. The results of that seem positive.

Hubitat has said they are testing that updated Zwave firmware. Nobody knows for sure whether it will make it into an upcoming Hub update or if it will fix anything on the Hubitat side of things.

I am making an assumption here, but as long as this update is taking to get out, they are probably intending on getting this Zwave update in the the next Hubitat update. As to when the release will happen, at this point I would take a wild guess and say April for non-beta users as there hasn't even been mention of a beta release yet.

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I think this is the thread for reference:

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Agree...the beta clearly isn't rushing out, so I'm also hoping the Z-Wave stack update will make it through Alpha (assuming it is in Alpha) and show up in the next beta.

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