Relatively new to Hubitat (Came over from SmartThings) and am wondering if ghost devices can just pop up out of nowhere. I checked Z Wave details a week ago (settings>Z Wave Details) and everything showed up fine with all my devices registering as they should. Today I checked Z Wave detail again and it shows two devices With no data which appear to be ghost devices. I've managed to deal with, and get rid of, ghost devices before while changing everything over to Hubitat, but they were always related to a device that was defective or refused to be included. These two apparent ghost devices just appeared out of the blue, and everything in my system appears to be working fine. Is this something that happens from time to time, or do I have a problem I can't put my finger on???
I have never seen this happen myself, but maybe others have?
@bcopeland, could something cause this to happen?
Thanks. I'll go around and recheck my devices functionality then try to delete the ghosts.
Can you post a screen shot of your zwave details page showing said ghosts? And have you updated the firmware on your z-wave radio? It is pulled down periodically with a platform upgrade but installed separately.
I've found its helpful to me to make a cut and paste of the Z-Wave status page and drop it into excel. Then if a node goes belly up leaving a "ghost" node I know what it was.
Yes need screen shots. Do they have a discover button or are they just not showing routes?
If just the "Route" column is empty or mostly empty, that's normal after a migration - mine was completely empty and filled in over the next day or so. Bobby (HE staff) said his took 2-3 days to fill in. Devices all work normally during the period of the table re-populating Route info.
Screenshot included here. Both had a "discover" button, but they've said "pending" for probably 48 hours now, at least since before my original post.
I have not updated z wave radio firmware as far as I am aware...I'll see if I can figure out how to do that. Platform updates are up to date though.
Look for a "firmware update" button on your z-wave details page. That updates the radio's firmware.
Thanks, Screenshot posted above
Yes, thought of that while working this issue....will definitely do that from here on.....Thanks
@Mustang Likely the devices that caused the ghosts are still powered up. Disconnect power from those devices, then power cycle the hub for 2 mins (actually disconnect power) bring up hubitat again and attempt to remove again
Have not migrated anything, or included/excluded any devices in the last few weeks. I think I'm just going to go ahead and try to remove the two items, see if anything stops working and fix it if needed.
Thank you everyone.
Since they are not linked to a device entry, they would be ghosted. Should be safe to remove.
If you have issues removing them, shut down hub, pull power for 30 seconds and reboot. Wait a few minutes for it to settle.
Click refresh on the device ONCE, wait for page to refresh. Should have remove button, Click Remove ONCE. Again, wait. May want to have logs open while doing this as well.
Some times it takes multiple refreshes to get the remove, just have to be patient and NOT click it furiously. If you start getting Zwave busy errors in logs, power down and reboot again.
That's my problem, I don't know which devices they are. Everything is working fine. I've tried the disconnect and reboot and well as loading platform updates.
One option is to take the hub somewhere else (with a laptop to a friend's house) and do it or just use a stick to remove them
It could be the next successfully paired device in the list.
There has also been some discussion about whether the original device actually needs to be turned off. I have had success (and failure) with both approaches.
IMO, it doesn't. I have factory reset devices and left them powered up many many times, then use the refresh / replace option. Have no problems getting the Remove/Replace buttons. If the device is paired to another node or reset it has no idea of this node ID you are trying to remove, why would it reply back to the ping?
Now there is also a theory that other badly behaving devices are possibly responding to pings not meant for them, which totally messes up the remove process.
I should bust out the zniffer next time I need to force remove something and see what it looks like, I dont think I have ever done that actually. I fully expect there will be no ping replies at all and the zwave firmware is just garbage.
I had 5 ghost devices that followed me from my C7 to my C8. I finally found @jtp10181's instructions and got rid of them.
I agree - and this has been my experience also. But I have also had many instances of the hub reporting a device is no longer on the failed node list when it is literally in my hands in pieces and most definitely no longer functional.
