Not really sure how to post where the developers may see this.
Hi. I recently changed out an Orbit Zwave controller that was dropping out frequently and in the texas sun..even a couple of days without water can kill a lawn.
As i was making this decision, and searching through the Hubitat community forums, there seems to be several posts where people correlated the drop out to a hub reboot and the work around was to install a smart plug and frequently reset the power to the device.
A few days ago i ordered a Water COP emergency valve for my home and while i should have done this research prior....apparently there is a consensus that this device suffers from the same issue of dropping off after a re boot - with the same work around of installing a smart plug and resetting the power frequently.
So..for some devices - i can see this as being a reasonable solution. reset once or twice a day...but with something like an emergency water shut off...you wouldn't want it off the network EVER,,,,,otherwise murphy's law is going to kick in and it ill be offline when the valve shut off is needed.
I simply wanted to ask. From a hub perspective is there any way that something can be done on a reboot to detect and correct these drop offs? Appreciate that these are zwave vs zwave plus but i'd rather replace the single hub than all of my zwave devices if that were an option.
There is a system event "systemStart". You may be able to write a rule to detect this event and then turn off then on the various plugs. As far as correcting the z-wave drop-off, that is for people a lot smarter than me and possibly support.
Yep this is exactly what I do with my Watercop via Rule:
The issue with the Watercop specifically is bad firmware and nothing to do with HE unfortunately. The valve I have is an older non-plus model and even folks using SmartThings are experiencing the exact issue with these models.
It is not normal to have things dropping off the network. It isn't widespread anyway. Normally that means you have poor signal strength or mesh issues. I am not sure if you have any repeaters, but that would be my first thing to try. That one thing often stops these type issues completely. You may have to play with positioning of the repeater to get it in the right spot, but since most are plug-in, that is fairly easy.
I don't recall what the latest and greatest repeaters are, but I think the Ring are fairly inexpensive, they have been on sale as low as $14 recently. I think they have been recommended as working well, so you may want to search for those on this forum to get more information.
I’d be surprised if my mesh isn’t stong…though I don’t have a sniffer to prove that.
On my main floor ( where the orbit was….there are 10 wired zwave switches. 2 dedicated IRIS (HE compatible) Zwave repeaters and no less than 3 Centralite 3410s (zigbee plug – zwave repeater)
I have 5 of the centralite 3410s in total (2 upstairs). There is 1 wired zwave switch 8 feet from the devices, 1 more 10 feet from that, 2 more 10 feet from that, 2 more 10 feet from that again.
I don’t mind buying a couple more repeaters ( heard it said many times that more is better) but I used that orbit for almost 5 years with Iris and dropping off wasn’t an issue ( or my lawn would have told me)
Not trying to compare systems as I love HE compared to the IRIS I had but it wasn’t an issue then which leads me to believe there might be something in that reboot cycle on HE that can be addressed.
Hope that one of the developers stumbles on to the post and is willing to comment.
That should be enough repeaters and sufficient amount of line powered (supposedly they are repeater) devices to have a decent mesh.
But you might want move the repeaters around a bit if possible, and run a Zwave repair or two, and see if that improves things. Still, I don't think it is normal or usual to have reboots drop devices.
You can tag the developers by using @ and then their username. The list of developers is in the hamburger menu in the top right of the forum, in the About section. You can also file a report by sending an email to support@hubitat.com . But they are probably going to ask for you to do more troubleshooting here before they declare it a bug.
Hopefully, since it sounds like @macdenewf was a former Iris user, his 3210-L outlets will have received the firmware update that seems to make them much more stable Z-Wave repreaters.
@macdenewf - I know you mentioned Iris 3410 outlets... but I am guessing you're referring to Iris 3210-L or 3210-L2 outlets, correct?
Did you have them paired and running with your old Iris Hub before they shut Iris down? If so, then I am pretty sure your 3210-L outlets would have received the last firmware update available for them.
i had a few of them paired with IRIS yes...but i bought some afterward....fully possible they dont have the new firmware. I do have a friend with smart things.,..i could unpair them and test on his system to see the version. If they are not the latest...i won't enable the repeater part..no way to know which are which at this point
I think you can get the firmware version on Hubitat by using the Zwave Firmware updater. At least I get what I think is a valid version of 1.2 when I use that tool.
Also Basic Zwave tool shows this in logs, so I do think that is what firmware version this particular device is on. VersionReport- applicationVersion:1.2
Edit to add, mine seem to work fine. I bought these used on Ebay, so no history of how/when they might have been updated.
@neonturbo
I downloaded the basic zwave parameter tool. Followed the directions to change the driver.
when i press "Get Version Report" it doesnt respond back with anything.
Should it update in the driver page the different parameters i'm looking to confirm?
thanks
Mac
