@mike.maxwell I have had a GE dimmer paired for a few months now and it has been working fine. I did have to setup automated refresh to get the physical events. I noticed today that the data information changed and it’s nothing like other GE dimmers of the same model in my home. What would cause this and do you have any thoughts on how to fix it without removing and repairing it? This device is no longer responding to refresh commands and physical on is not being logged. It does work digitally.
Speaking of GE devices, I have had 3 on/off switches stop reporting events too. I can control them digitally but the on and off events are never logged, physically or digitally. I replaced one switch completely to get it working again. A receptacle just started doing this tonight and is automated through simple Lighting and no physical presses. It was working earlier this evening, only thing that changed was upgrading firmware.
This model switch, I thought these didn’t report physical no matter what you do?
I would try a zwave repair, though that doesn’t explain what’s going on here.
What do you mean by this? How did you set up automated refresh and why? I'm seeing that the device status doesn't update ever until I refresh, even if i turned it off by Z wave
Unlike ST, HE doesn’t poll switches automatically so if you want older switches to report physical events you need to setup a period triggered rule in RM to refresh the switches.
Which Device Driver do you currently have selected for this switch? There are two that are named very similarly, something like "Generic Z-Wave Switch" and the other is "Generic Z-Wave Smart Switch".
The first one is the correct one to use with older Z-Wave Switches that do not report their physical events. When you use the "Generic Z-Wave Switch" driver, activating the switch from Hubitat will cause the status of the switch to be reflected immediately.
The "Generic Z-Wave Smart Switch" driver relies on the physical switch to properly report status updates back to the hub. This driver sends the Z-Wave command, but does not change the switch status immediately. It waits for a Z-wave response.
Not sure I follow you? They both work as intended. I have a mixture of old GE Z-Wave and newer GE Z-Wave Plus switches. As long as I use the correct driver, they work very well. Do I wish the old GE Z-Wave switches reported physical events correctly? Yes. But they don't, so I work around them by using them in places where I don't care about physical events.
What I mean is that, yet again, it doesn't work out of the box and there is absolutely no clear instructions to get it to work for someone who doesn't know this stuff like the back of their hand. I spent 3 hours last night trying to figure out why this wasn't working. There was absolutely no clear explanation anywhere I could find that described that. I am still not clear on which driver I am supposed to use for which switch and which situation requires me to write some type of other rule to refresh the device.
Out of the box, when you pair these devices, they should be automatically assigned the correct driver based on their fingerprint. If you pair a device and it comes up with the non-specific "Device" driver, then the fingerprint has not yet been added to the appropriate Hubitat Driver, if one exists. In that case, you can try the various 'Generic" drivers to see if any work. If yes, then please tell @mike.maxwell and he will add the fingerprint to the appropriate driver in an upcoming firmware release. If none of the built-in drivers work, then it is often best to reach out to support@hubitat.com to see if the device is on their radar.
Others have linked the older threads where this specific topic has been discussed repeatedly. To sum it up simply... If you have an old GE Switch/Dimmer that is not Z-wave plus, then you should be using the "Generic Z-Wave Switch" or "Generic Z-Wave Dimmer" driver. These drivers will properly update the state of the switch when activated via Hubitat. However, using these drivers will require you to poll/refresh these devices periodically to keep Hubitat's state up to date with PHYSICAL button pushes on these devices (only if you need this capability!) Be aware that polling these too frequently, or too many at one time, has caused some user's Z-Wave mesh to get bogged down.
If you're using a newer GE Z-Wave Plus Switch/Dimmer, you should be using the "Generic Z-Wave Smart Switch" or "Generic Z-Wave Smart Dimmer" driver. No polling or refresh is required with these newer switches that report their PHYSICAL button presses correctly. These 'just work' as you would expect.
Here are some of the threads...
Hubitat has just created a new documentation site that needs help to make it complete. The team is willing to allow users to contribute as well. I'll just leave this here...
Okay, this doesn't explain the behavior I am seeing. I found the box, and I do have the z wave plus model. When I use that driver in HE, the device never reports as being off or on until I refresh it. Whether through software or physically. So, what am I doing wrong?
You don't specifically say that I don't need a polling rule to refresh the device after a change is made with the Z-wave plus model. Is that still required?
Do I have to modify the associations in the device properties? Should I do a factory reset before re-pairing to HE or is excluding from ST enough?
I'm not saying that what you're saying is wrong but I'm also not seeing what you're describing so I'm trying to figure out how to get there.
First thing is to make sure you have the correct driver.
As @ogiewon mentioned above, if you have a zwave plus switch you need to be using the "Generic Z-Wave Smart Switch" driver. If not, switch that driver and click the SAVE button. Next you would need to click the CONFIGURE button at the top of the driver page. Give it a shot and let us know.
I do have the z wave plus (14294-2) and I am using the Generic Z-wave Smart Dimmer as the driver. I hit configure. When I turn on the switch through the device page it does not report as on until after I hit refresh. And when I turn the switch off it does not report as off until after I hit refresh.
The device ID i'm getting is 12344, which seems to match up what is expected with the z-wave plus model (0x3038). Had to convert from Hex to Dec but I think that's right.
I dont know enough about this but my guess would be that you are having mesh issues. How far is you switch from the hub...and do you have any zwave repeaters in between?
So far this is the only Z-wave device on my network and the switch is 4 feet from the hub through one wall.
The device does report status correctly when turned on or off physically at the switch, It's only when it's done through software that it does not. I have to manually refresh it.
My local Lowes has several of these, and I have it on my ToDo to swap out a few of the "critical" ones with ZWave Plus. I'll get one or more today and let you know how my pairing went.
