For some reason, my C-7 hub's z-wave devices in settings shows nothing; I am on the latest platform firmware and I haven't touched my hubitat in months before this happened (no changes to app or devices except for platform updates). It looks like it stopped working about 3 or 4 days ago. All my hubitat devices/apps are present, except none of the z-wave devices responsd and the z-wave devices settings page shows no devices. I have tried the following to no avail:
Power-down, wait (5 minutes, 20 min, overnight) and power-up
Restore a local backup (oldest automatic one was from three days ago), power down, restart
Restore a backup I had saved from June ( 2.3.5.152), power-down restart.
Soft-reset, then do the above.
Z-wave repair
Nothing, none of my z-wave devices work. I have not done a hard reset.
I am at my wits end; anyone have anything else to try? This has happened at least 2 times in the last year, but doing one of the steps above has usually fixed it. If I have to rebuild my network and all my automations, I may just move to a different platform at this point.
That is not good. If power-cycling didn't restart the Z-Wave radio, it likely means that you are dealing with a hardware malfunction. If you didn't do so already, you may want to create a warranty case. If you happen to have Hub Protect, please submit a case by visiting the following page: Subscriptions – Hubitat Support.
If your hub is still within the warranty period, then you can visit the following page: Warranty – Hubitat Support
That is unfortunately the negative effect of not addressing the issues head-on. The radio may go offline due to any number of environmental factors, and may recover with a power-cycle, but prolonged radio meltdowns, without addressing the underlying cause of failure, could lead to a permanent damage.
This sounds like a product defect to me then, if the software causes the hardware to fail. And there;s no notification to the user to do something different.
How do I find out if the hardware has failed?
Is there any other debugging I can do? I'm pretty sure it's out of warranty and I didn't realize I have to pay a monthly fee to keep my hub working.
You don't have to pay a monthly fee. Just like an extended warranty coverage, Hub Protect is there when the catastrophe strikes. It's just an insurance policy, if you will, that ensures a user can be back online in 10 minutes or less, when the hardware fails.
There is a notification of a hardware failure that is posted on location events. It shows that "Z-Wave radio is offline". The risk of a permanent failure increases with each recurring offline event.
With everything that has been said above, if you'd like us to confirm that your hub is indeed dealing with a hardware malfunction, you can send me your hub id and I'd be glad to take a look at its engineering log (assuming your hub is connected to the cloud, and we are able to retrieve the engineering log).
Well, I'm pretty sure it's not a hardware issue as I was able to use the Z-wave exclusion mode in Settings to exclude one of my close by switches, and then I was able to include it as a new device. My Z-wave network page now shows I have 1 new device . I could try to rebuild my network by hand, but I'm not sure how to swap in the DNI of this new z-wave device into the hubitat device that used to be associated with this switch, so I don't need to rebuild everything. Is there a way to do that?
If it was me, before I go down this road I would do as @bobbyD has suggested and get him to check your logs.
If there is an issue with the z-wave radio, you will only have to go down this road again.
Just my opinion....
Good luck with whatever you choose.
I wouldn't do that at this point. As mentioned in our private messages, the radio appears to be functional. So that's the good news. You have a series of Z-Wave crashes, but they seem to have happened around the same time as database crashes happened. I would try running a Soft Reset again. Based on your hub's engineering log I cannot confirm nor disprove that you are dealing with a hardware issue, however there is a good chance that the hub is recoverable (assuming that you have not reset the Z-Wave radio).
So, I tried the soft reset, but no z-wave devices show up. I'm going to assume the radio settings have somehow been wiped (either when the firmware updated or some other crash in the firmware, since at no time did I do hard reset). Since I don't have hub protect, I'm SOL with restoring the radio settings. I'm hoping to do the following work-around, which I'm hoping will allow me to get back up and running without having to redo all my automations, apps, and custom drivers with re-included devices that have different DNIs:
For each z-wave device:
Put hub into exclusion mode in Z-wave settings
Exclude the z-wave device. This will say "Unknown device excluded", and none of my hubitat devices/apps/automations should be touched.
Include the z-wave device using "Add device". Once included, name it as "TEMP" to find it easily, and then take note of its DNI; let's call this NEW_DNI.
Modify the DNI of TEMP to something not used (like FF)
Go back to the actual hubitat device this z-wave device used to be and update its DNI to NEW_DNI.
Remove TEMP from its device page.
At this point, it seems like (at least for the few test devices I did), that the mappings are back to where they used to be.
One caution of doing that, if one of the devices you re-join takes the DNI of an existing device entry it will assume that device on the hub, not create a new one. This could make a mess as they could be totally different devices.
If you add one extra step of going through all the old zwave device entries first, and edit the DNI something like DNI_OLD, then it will prevent this clash.
I wouldn't carry out your plan just yet. It is not known that the radio crashing or the database being corrupted could lead to a Z-Wave wipe out. Let me check your hub again to see what's what, after the last Soft Reset, and go from there before you do anything else.
You are not limited to the two char HEX for the DNI so you could really just append "_OLD" to the end of all the old devices. Don't feel like it has to look like a real Zwave DNI. Then as you said earlier once you have it paired again and a real DNI, just edit it back to take over the new DNI.
. I could try to rebuild my network by hand, but I'm not sure how to swap in the DNI of this new z-wave device into the hubitat device that used to be associated with this switch, so I don't need to rebuild everything. Is there a way to do that?
