I have never had any real issues with the GE/Jasco stuff. Nor have I had any real significant failures of any particular brand of device. There are devices that have "quirks" here and there, but not something that can't be worked with.
If the GE were as bad as your experience, every forum about home automation would be filled with complaints. And they aren't. So I think it probably is something in your setup or environment.
So I wonder if you are having power quality issues? Maybe some bad device is killing your mesh? Like someone mentioned, an S2 issue?
I don't have answers, but I think you need to do more diagnosis of the issue.
I wished I could say the same. I have almost 50 GE/Jasco devices (dimmers, switches and fan controllers) and have had almost a 20% failure rate over the past few years.
Honestly a lot of people avoid those switches (though some don't have any issues at all). For myself I use Lutron Caseta because they JUST WORK LIKE FARKING TANKS. The next best would be innovelli red's. They're a pretty solid z-wave switch. Now depending on your setup even with so many switches you may need beaming repeaters because of metal boxes making signal weak. (Aeotec 6 or 7 are good and so is the Ring alarm extender gen 2) (If plastic then my statement doesn't apply). I would also say check your z-wave details page for ghosts to be on the safe side (one ghost can wreak havoc).
I echo the recommendation for Lutron Caseta devices. They pair easily and are very stable. For integration with Hubitat, they do require the Lutron Pro2 bridge rather than the standard bridge.
One thing I like about them is that I can leave them when I sell the house. Although they work extremely well with automation through the bridge and Hubitat, the devices also work without the bridge. Even three-way and four-way setups using Picos paired directly with the main dimmer or switch will still function without the bridge.
I have found that Z-wave devices used in bathrooms can be flaky. Bathrooms have mirrors, electric wiring, water piping, and HVAC ducts crammed into a small area. That makes communicating with Z-wave devices tricky. I tried using a Z-wave motion sensor in my master bath, but never could get reliable operation. I replaced it with a Zigbee motion sensor to automate the Lutron dimmer. All is well.
Add me to the list of Lutron evangelists. Best switches I have used. I ripped out all my zwave switches save one toggle switch and went to 100% Lutron Caseta. Also has the advantage that many of their models don't require neutral at the switch.
This concerns me, in particular. By nature, a switch or dimmer does not add any significant load to a circuit. Even a failure in a switching or dimming TRIAC would make the circuit always on or always off.
Also, breakers are slow to respond to small overloads; faster for very high overloads. So, my gut is pointing towards a significant and potentially dangerous situation. There is just no practical way to remotely troubleshoot 20+ devices across multiple unknown circuits.
Before we spin out of control troubleshooting your mesh or recommending other brands, start with the recommendations that @erktrek mentioned. The receptacle tester will help to identify common wiring problems BUT only if the receptacle is on the same circuit as the dimmers and switches. A voltmeter will help to confirm that wires are really doing what you anticipate (labels and colors can be wrong).
IF it was all working properly with manual switches before, then there is value in swapping the worst offenders back to manual switches. At the least, this will help to confirm that the circuit load is not a factor in tripping the breaker, and allow for safe control until the rest is figured out.
It does look like all of ours are using S2, so you're saying if I disconnect everything and reconnect everything with a different security protocol we might get better results?
I pair all my Enbrighten dimmers with S2 and have had no issues. That said, pairing with no security does make the communication simpler and potentially more reliable in some specific scenarios.
My testing has shown that there is a firmware problem in the Enbrighten FAN controllers that will cause them to lock up in many situations (requiring power cycling to restore function) when paired with S2 security. You should DEFINITELY redo the fan controllers with no security.
S2 in and of itself is not a systemic issue... However, implementations vary. There are examples where the vendor of a new (to them) device didn't handle S2 correctly. Do we know that GE/JASCO is one of those vendors?? I can't say that we do, BUT, with the scale of the problem you're having, taking one potential off the table could help. When you get the S2 pop-up asking for those first 5 numbers, you should have the option of selecting none of the options. That will allow the device to join with no security. I'd suggest you take one of the devices that connect to the hub directly and that you know will fail "sooner" and Exclude it, then Include it using no options, and see if there's an improvement.
If GE/Jasco did S2 right, then it won't make a difference and you won't have to Exclude/Include the remaining.
Wife of OP here - to be clear, we manually trip the breaker to get the switches to respond again. The switches themselves are not causing the breakers to trip.
@dmrickey Are these overload breakers i.e. they trip when excessive current is drawn or do you have safety breakers - earth leakage breakers or might be called ground leakage breakers which can and should trip on just a fault condition with current flowing to ground ?
See above - the switches are not causing the breakers to trip. We are doing that manually to remedy the situation when the switches stop responding to manual control.
Hi @dmrickey, @JasonJoel was the person I was referencing in re: the S2 lockup. His response provides more the detail than I could since he's lived it so I defer to his input and suggestions.
There was a misunderstanding here. Sometimes the lights/fans get stuck on/off. They don't respond to automation. If I walk to the wall, the physical toggle doesn't work. It's at these times I, personally, have to go to the breaker and manually toggle it to interrupt the switch to get it to behave again. My breaker has never been overloaded and tripped due to a switch under normal operation.
Thank you very much for correcting my misunderstanding. While cycling the breakers as toggle switches will eventually fatigue them, this makes me feel better that there is not an urgent safety issue. I will defer to the folks that are way smarter than me regarding device, drivers, logs, etc.
Yes, that is the S2 firmware issue I am referring to.
I've never had it happen on an S2 paired dimmer/switch (I have a dozen or so of them), but could make that happen almost at will on the fan controllers when paired with S2.
Hasn't ever happened again after pairing with no security. And I cycle the fans automatically mtiple times a day for temperature reasons, so I'm sure they are actually working.
And I cycle the fans automatically mtiple times a day for temperature reasons, so I'm sure they are actually working.
