I have an old (Back Porch Light) and a new (Patio Lights) Leviton Z-wave switches and I created an App that turns on the Patio Lights when the Back Porch Light is turned on and this works when turning on the Back Porch Light via the Dashboard Tile but it doesn't work when turning the Back Porch Light on manually (physically at the actual switch) which is the intent of this App...it also doesn't work when turning the Back Porch Light on from within the Device menu. One thing I noticed is both switches don't report the current state in the Device Menu when operated manually/physically at the light switch, which I think may be the problem but I don't know how to fix it.
Can someone help me figure this out?
My hub is 3 years old but everything else works perfectly.
Sounds like you have older Z-Wave switches that do not report physical (from the device itself) changes back to the hub. This was common in the era before Z-Wave Plus because Lutron had a patent, now expired, that most manufacturers did not license.
Others include replacing the devices, using them somewhere that doesn't depend on knowing physical state changes, finding a way to only change their state them from Hubitat, or modifying your automations to not care about the physical state (this is difficult with Dashboard, which of course depends on their current state for both the display and knowing what command to send to toggle).
Thanks for the help! Following your link, the Z-wave polling app did help get the polling to report when turning the switch off and on from the Device menu, which wasn't working before, but it still isn't reporting it when manually turning the switch on at the switch, which is the intent of this whole exercise. So I may have to upgrade that light switch.
Z-Wave Poller is designed specifically to help in that last situation and not the first, so the fact that the first was even happening in the first place is odd, as is the fact that the app isn't helping in the latter. I'd verify that you're using the recommended driver for your devices by comparing your model numbers with those plus the driver listed for it here, if you can find your specific device: List of Compatible Devices - Hubitat Documentation
That being said, if you can afford to upgrade, you'll rarely regret replacing a Z-Wave device with a Z-Wave Plus device, IMHO.
Well if there's no more trouble shooting to do I guess I'll go and buy a new switch, just never a straight forward process (single pole etc??) and then you have to move the hub right next to it which isn't easy...what a bummer, just wished it worked as stated.
One other thing I just noticed is the Device will report the Current State but only after I click the "Refresh" button in the Device menu...is there something that can be done to have it automatically refresh?
Polling and refresh should basically be the same, as far as I know, though if the device has lots of possible attributes, it's possible that polling only looks at "switch" (the only thing of concern here anyway, so it shouldn't matter). The "Smart" driver you mentioned usually goes with Z-Wave Plus devices that do report their state back automatically, so that might not be a candidate for Poller.
As an alternative, you could use a Rule instead of the Z-Wave Poller app to do this, but the Poller app is supposed to have some extra smarts that throttles the polling if the device isn't heard from in a while, which should cause less panic/traffic on your network should that happen. (And on a related note, in general, you should poll the least often as you can while still fulfilling your goals, since less traffic is generally better.)
But I'm not sure why yours wouldn't be working...
Most new switches I've seen can work in either a single-pole or three-way setup, just with usually different installation instructions for either setup (definitely so if you need to use the traveler from the three-way, of course, since that's an extra wire). The manual should say for sure.
This should not be necessary for most new devices (or Z-Wave Plus or Plus v2 in general), which should support Network-Wide Inclusion (NWI), i.e., pairing through the mesh. This was the typical advice at one time, however.
I bought a new Leviton switch and everything works now...thanks for your help.
One weird thing is, the new switch was easy to add to the hub without have to move the hub close. But the other, identical Leviton switch bought 3 weeks ago, wouldn't connect and the only way I can get that switch to add as a device is to put the hub within inches of it...very weird. So in order to make this whole thing work I had to buy a new switch and also move the hub to a new location near the previously bought hub BUT it all works so all is good after this weirdness.
