Long time user, I have 20-30 zwave devices, including many of these first alert zwave smoke/co detectors.
Recently I needed to replace one after it was end of life. I got a new one (zcombo 2nd gen, zwave plus device), started inclusion, inserted the two AA and got the initial chirp. But the hub didn't find it. Tried several factory resets with a 10 second long press of the button while inserting the batteries, still nothing. Tried to add another zwave motion sensor and that worked fine. So I tried ordering a second replacement smoke detector (same one) and it fails to detect also.
I'm on 2.3.7.145 on a C8 hubitat. I've never had issues adding zwave before. I went to settings, tried a zwave repair and got:
but again, other zwave device added fine. So I'm not sure what to do. The zwave topology has lots of red and blue rectangles, and the device graph shows lots of repeaters, one hub, and lots of devices.
Is there an advanced log for why inclusion is failing that I can learn more from? I clicked settings>view logs button but it was a blank page. I looked in the normal logs and didn't see anything useful. I've also tried
rebooting the hub
powering down the hub and pulling power for 10+ seconds before starting again
two different zcombo
several factor reset of zcombo
different batteries
doing this all next to the hub
I'm very confused as zwave has been solid for me forever before this, and if I can add that other motion sensor it's still working and adding other zwave so....
I had these ZCombo at my old house. They're pretty awful. I had some 1st gen ones that they replaced RMA twice, because they would never stay on the Z-wave mesh. Only devices I've ever seen fall off the mesh. It's as if they hung around one too many ZigBee friends in middle school or something...
Ended up with 2nd gen ones after the second RMA. They didn't fall off anymore, but they had a TON of issues getting paired up. They would get about halfway through inclusion and the device would go to sleep. I can remember if I had to pull the battery tray out and slide it back in or press the button on the detector or what, but I needed to wake them up a couple times to get them included properly. Including them next to the hub also helped.
These devices had issues on all 3 Z-wave implementations Home Assistant has used. They had issues on my C7. They had issues on Z-way.
It's not HE that's a problem here, it's these garbage devices.
At my new place I ended up just getting regular smoke detectors. These ones specifically. Plus their CO unit and one of their remotes.
Do they connect to Hubitat? Nope. Do I care? Sorta... but not enough to ever think of using a ZCombo unit. If I was really worried, I'd get another detector, take it apart, and connect something like a Fibaro Smart Implant on the siren output to detect when it's going off.
The Zooz Zen55 is worthy option to consider if your (at least primary) dumb smokes are interconnected. Just need one for the entire interconnected network, and it works very well.
Just for another datapoint; I had several of the 1st gen ZCombo detectors and now 2nd gen Z-wave plus. They have been perfect up until eol. The surviving detectors are now connected to my C-8 and continue to work perfectly. I did join them all in the same room as the hub before moving them to their installed locations. I’m also using @jtp10181 ’s driver, but that’s a recent change.
@rlithgow1 The details page is very large, not sure I want to share that here also. Is there something specifc there you wanted to see?
All, thanks for the suggestions for other smoke sensors. I do really like these though, and as mentioned I have several of them working already. So I would like to learn how to get this thing to include again if at all possible.
@Ken_Fraleigh your experience sounds similar to mine, until this very recent attempt to add one more replacement (2023 gen2 for 2016 gen1 that was EOL)
Exclusion is a good way to test if the device is talking to the hub. Even on a brand new device you should see "Unknown device excluded" on the hub side, if the device and hub are able to see and talk to each other. If that exclusion wont work there is a near 0 chance an inclusion will work.
Thanks @jtp10181, that's good to know. And it is definitely the state I'm in. Are there any ideas what could cause this given:
I have successfully added another brand new z-wave device in this state (as a test)
I have factory reset the two brand new z-wave zcombo devices multiple times
I have many other of these zcombos in use as I write this
I see no logs from these two zcombo during inclusion/exclusion, but do see other zwave device logging
I have run the "zwave repair" and had one failure (5D) but all other devices have a check mark for status. (below is the one failure device which I'm not sure what I can do with)
That device you show there is a ghost node, it is not attached to a device on the hub. It is showing 19 neighbors so you will have a hard time getting rid of it. If its the only one like that it is probably not causing too much trouble, especially since you can include other devices.
Do your ZCOMBO device have the smart start QR code? If so, yes you can use that. You have to scan it on the mobile app found at Tools > Z-Wave Tools > SmartStart
Once the code is scanned in, you just power up the device and wait. Usually they include themselves within a minute or two but since these are being stubborn maybe it will take longer. Worth a try if they have the QR codes.
One other thought, does First Alert have some pool of ID values it can use and has run out? Sorry, I don't know the technical details but just wondering given the ability to add other devices and the fact that I've gone through two cohorts of total zwave devices for my house now over the years.
Oh nice! I never knew about this feature in Hubitat. So I just did the SmartStart button, qr code read in fine, it was pending for ~1min and then said "included, Node: 0x89". I gave it a name, and saved.
Then I went to the list of devices on the hub and was expecting to find it, but didn't. Is there another step to complete this flow?
Thats normal. To find it I usually go to Z-Wave details and then it will be the last device at the bottom.
Side effect is once you have it saved in smart start it will always re-include it if it gets removed. So you may want to remove it now, so that does not happen on accident down the. Although it could come in handy as well, since you would not need to scan it again if you ever did need to reset and include it again.
Now check this driver out if you dont have it already
Great to know, thanks! Marked the earlier message as answer. I will check out the driver. I need to share a driver I made also that watches battery devices for either low battery or stale communications.
Oh, one other quick note, I did notice that this smoke detector did not show up as being used in HSM, even though I had "use all smoke detetors" toggled on. I wonder if that's a bug due to the smartstart zwave add?
It was easy to work around with just selecting the smoke detectors manually...
