I have a bunch of z-wave in-wall dimmers I'm adding but it seems I can only add one at a time. Is this normal?
Seem I have to include the device, save it, do something that discontinues the z-wave inclusion process (like test the new device), then start the process over for the next z-wave device. Trying to perform and inclusion one after the next isn't working.
Here are the steps I've tried:
Put hub into inclusion mode
Put first device into inclusion mode
See device being added and ready to be saved
Move to next device
Put next device into inclusion mode
Nothing happens
As I stated above, if I save the first device, test it and start the process over with the next device it adds fine.
Yes. It would be a mess otherwise. When I jumped hubs to Hubitat, I went room by room and set up my rules as I went. A periodic reboot will help when it seems that things are slow to add. Slow and steady gets it done. (Although I can see where it would look like you could add a bunch in the interface. But you shouldn't... even if you could.)
There is a post about how to do this: How to Build Your Z-Wave Mesh. Be sure to build your new mesh network from the hub out. After several devices, do a z-wave repair. Then let it sit for a bit.
I understand the concept of starting at the devices closest to the hub and work out. However the wording seems to sound somewhat final as if doing it wrong is going to stay with the mesh and cause unknown problems down the road.
When I converted from VeraPlus I moved devices by group, not adhering to the above rule. Migration took about 3 weeks (except for a few stragglers). Does this mean my mesh is / could be somewhat crippled?
Thank for the reply. I pretty much thought it would eventually sort itself out but the wording of the linked thread (which I've read before) suggested otherwise, but not stated as such.
Everything is working for my system so it was more a learning question.
Regarding @april.brandt 's comment about terminating the exclusion mode. Its not a big deal but eventually they should add a button to terminate the exclusion mode.
Who me? I just rebooted when I felt like I'd been doing too much. Force of habit being a windows girl. Better thing would be as mentioned above - zwave repair, but my mind always goes to reboot first. Terminating exclusion mode wasn't my idea. No credit here.
Sorry, but I differ from your answer, I would say maybe, there is no self-adjust or healing for z-wave(you must repair the mesh for healing), that only happens on zigbee, the how to build the mesh thread has a lot of sense, for example, you installed a battery device a little far from the nearest repeater, it works but you don't know it actually has a little interference(like a mailbox contact far from your front porch) then you decided to add a repeater that is in between the device and the other far repeater, well, the battery device will not notice the change even doing the repair, unless you wake up the device for the repair (which is difficult) or exclude it and re pair it on its final location after you added this new repeater.
I hope my writing makes sense to you as English is not my main language.
Z-Wave is able to self-heal automatically. Z-Wave nodes will try various routes to get their message thru if at first it doesn’t succeed. The node will remember the Last Working Route and try that one first for the next message. But if the nodes have no idea there are other nodes in the network they have no way of knowing what routes to try so at least one full heal of the network is required.
Also, for everyone else that has jumped in to help, I not have spelled out my question clearly enough.
When performing an inclusion with ST it would build a list of z-wave devices as it found them. Then you would click on each one at a time to add them.
When performing an inclusion with HE it only ever lists one z-wave device regardless of how many are in inclusion mode. Then you must add that device, stop the inclusion mode and start all over with the next device.
I'm asking if this is what everyone else is seeing?
I can confirm that ST does what you mention, but I don't remember HE doing that when I did my migration, and probably because I did one by one device migration, but to be honest, I did not use ST to exclude all the devices, so I excluded from ST or force deleted and/or excluded with my z stick and added the device to HE, starting from the nearest of the hub and going forward.
Currently, after you add a Z-Wave device and save it, you need to refresh the browser / reload the page to discover another Z-Wave device. Zigbee on the other hand can discover multiple devices.
We are looking at ways we can improve the device discovery process to make this a better experience.
I highly recommend discovering one device at a time and confirming it's properly working before moving to the next one.
@patrick Could it be as simple as terminating the inclusion mode after a new device is discovered? It would lead to less "inclusion confusion" (sorry I just had to say it).
Looking at the ZWave devices table under settings. Is the node number in the left hand column sequential with inclusion sequence? (i.e. are they sequentially the order items were installed)
More or less. The ZStick allocates node IDs sequentially. Once it gets to 252, it starts over (wrap around) and will fill in previously skipped. Thus if you've wrapped around, then the sequence doesn't match inclusion sequence.
Because I thought the same thing when I was adding things. It looks like it's going to build a list that you could run down and save. But the naming there would be confusing to try to figure out which device was where. But after experiencing hubitat, it only makes a lot of sense to do one at a time.
When I originally moved to Hubitat almost two years ago, I used an Aeon Z-Stick. I'd walk around, exclude a few devices, then include them to the Z-Stick. Then I'd plug the Z-Stick into hub, thinking the devices were in the order I added them. Wrong. I'd label them wrong, only to discover later they were mixed up. I don't know how or why that happened.
I'd go with one at a time just to save on the brain damage later.
