I thought about getting a battery powered one after I saw a review about one by adam savage from myth busters but figured I wouldn't use it often enough to keep the battery in good condition.
I have a butane one for the boat. Or had... I sold the boat and it was onboard.
Buddy of mine said the same thing about his ex wife and his boat.
Love this little guy.
My older one is good but uses 4 AA batteries and anything below 75% isn't hot enough or dissipates to quickly.
Throwing another idea out there. Did you ever mess with zwave associations?
I remember turning off a device once that I had associated with another devices. It caused all sorts of issues with my automations. Removed the association to fix it.
Worth mentioning.
@kencoon I think @gavincampbell might be onto something. Didn't you mention in your very first post "When the issues occurs and devices with a direct association on zwave can still control the associated devices"? Might this be a zwave association thing interfering with HE? I honestly haven't heard of anyone but the two of you use zwave associations so it might be a pretty rare issue...
Interesting .... I also remember when looking at associations there were certain restrictions. For example, two associated devices had to be in direct connection and not through another node. Things like that. May want to check into that as well.
I will check that out for sure. That will be a step in the debug I will try. I have two simple direct associations, but I can change those to mirrors using built in apps and see what happens. I will say I am dubious because I started using the associations because of the issues I have described and wanted to link 2 lights without relying on the Hubitat, but that was ages ago (in my troubleshooting world) so its good to go back and revisit.
I also moved all my setup to a single hub today and I am sending my extra Hubitat C7 to @lewis.heidrick for the external antenna mod. When I get it back I'll restore from backup and see how it fairs.
On a completely unrelated note, I have now had 2 complete lockups on the Hubitat in the last 3-4 days (not exactly sure when the first occurred). I am almost positive it has nothing to do with my zwave issue, but I dont have enough data yet to figure out what is causing it. My Hubitat has been rock solid as far as functioning goes since I set it up over the summer, so this is a new development. Nothing I did new in the last few days, so I'm not sure why but I'll keep an eye on that as well.
After some testing with the association off I'll follow up here. Also, I will report when I get the antenna mod done how my zwave works. I am optimistic on that experiment based on reading the thread so we shall see.
Thanks again for all the help everyone.
Just remember, if you're getting a ton of lock ups where you are having to dirty power down the router, do a manual backup, soft reset, restore from said backup as the database will eventually corrupt causing even more issues.
Also be careful of creating association loops.
For example, I have two inovelli dimmers and I associated them to create a 3 way situation for my light.
Inovelli has a specific setting (parameter 12) that you have to set properly or what will happen is when you trigger one it will send the command to the other, which will then relay it back and this will create a loop. I locked up my hub once when playing with this. I'm not sure how the switches you use handle this.
All these little things you have to look out for, but at this point you can't rule out anything during the troubleshooting phase.
Thanks. I have removed both associations I had in my network. I hadn't thought about the loop potential when I set them up, but by blind luck I avoided it becasue both were one way (one switch controlled a second switch, but the second switch didn't control the first). I noticed when doing these associations that the GE/Jasco switches didn't generate an association command if the switch received a z-wave command - it only would control the associated switch if the device was physically switched. Perhaps that is why - to avoid loops. That was a different behavior than the Zen switches which will send the association device commands for both physical and z-wave changes.
So far with all associations removed from my network I am still seeing a high number of reroutes on my devices, but its been less than 24 hours so I am going to give it some time.
Yesterday, I rotated my hub so that the wires are coming out the top (3D printed the desk stand).
Things currently "appear" to have gotten better in regards to Z-wave. I have 5 more direct connects, and a few more 100 Kbps connections. I still have a few wonky routings, but things, overall, appear to have gotten better.
Only 18 hours so far...so we will see what happens.
Quick update on my issue - with all direct device associations removed I still see high re-routes on my z-wave network, but the responsiveness of the scenes that previously included devices with direct associations has improved noticeably. Key take away - I am avoiding using associations on my network. Thank you for that suggestion.
No lockups so far either. If this holds, I would say that I am happy with the performance of the network and the only issue I have is the high network re-routing stats (which doesn't seem to affect the performance of the network too much). Once I get my C7 hub back with the external antenna mod I may be able to address that issue as well.
Same, just rotated and wall mounted my two C7's, one is pointing up (wires below), other pointing down, having to do w/where wires are coming from for each hub. The number of devices connecting at 100 has increased. Unfortunately forgot to take screen shots to know exactly which ones, but the number at 100 is noticeably greater when just scanning down the list.
I also had some issues w/Z-Wave associations, missed that in your description unfortunately, glad that others caught it.
Sounding good. I wouldn't give up on associations though. I use only about 3 of them in my setup and they are mainly to associate a switch with a plug to give me a faster response time. I also use it to associate two switches in a 3 way setup, but that one I had to be careful with. If response time isn't important I just use the hub to handle it instead.
If things continue to be stable maybe add one back and see if it causes problems again.
I think I am going to leave the associations out of my configuration. Neither of the 2 I had were time critical and it could just be a placebo effect, but I think the lights in my scenes are running better when there isn't a direct association involved in that group of lights.
For my upstairs hallway "N-Way" setup I have 4 smart switches that are power only (no Load) and a smart switch single pole hall light dimmer. Originally had some funky rules to try and get everything synced but never managed to get it just right.
Switched over to associations and that worked but was kind of slow and "clicky" - there was a noticeable audio popcorn effect when all the switches toggled. Also you could fake it out by rapidly turning devices on or off.. leading to some weird behaviors.
My current setup uses the "scene controller"/button function of smart switches. Now it detects button presses and turns the the light on or off accordingly. No more relay clicks and the response is very fast with no contention. Also ended up doing this in my den as well.
I was ready to convert a 4 way dumb switch setup to Inovelli + 2 aux switches but after the last install turned out that the GE Light Almond aux switch doesn't match any light almond plates I have, I started looking at other options, including 3 Inovellis. So your advice is helpful, thanks!
