I’ve been trying to add my last few critical devices to HE before the ST classic app is discontinued and haven’t been having a lot of fun. The first 130 or so devices went very smoothly. Now, I’ve had issues the last couple of days:
Monoprice tilt sensors - in general, the devices are found quickly but not all the fields (such as status) appear. I’ve messed around adding, readding, and pulling batteries and got them to appear eventually, but that is a pain. What gives?
A tilt sensor in my garage is 20 ft away from a powered Zwave device with direct line of sight. However, Hubitat wouldn’t route through that device at all until this morning, but the tilt sensor is usually in “Not responding” or “failed” status. Why?
I rebooted my hub, hoping it would help the issues. Now, I have a Ghost Zwave device and clicking remove does not remove it (screenshot below). I’m on the latest firmware. How can I remove it? Does Hubitat have to do it for me? Please don’t tell me I need to purchase a USB stick to do it.
Similar to #1, I added a Quirky Tripper this morning and not all parameters showed up using the default generic zigbee (no temp) contact sensor. More adding, readding, device resetting, etc finally had it show up. Again, why? These issues seem to be becoming ore frequent and I don’t know why.
It's a Battery device. They go to sleep and the mechanism to detect dead devices does not work well in the real world. It probably works great in a Lab environment
SiLabs (via the mandates in the certification process) is dictating Hubitat's implementation, as far as I can interpret. The C-7 introduced those buttons and despite other products offering them for years, Hubitat isn't offering them to the older C-3, C-4 and C-5 owners. That seems like a good decision given this thread and others like it.
For the most part, I recommend ignoring those flags. They originate from the Radio's firmware and not explicitly from Hubitat. Future SiLabs improvements (via ZWave Firmware upgrades) may improve the accuracy, but for today, begin by ignoring them, as if you had a C-5. When you have a real, known issue, such as the device is not working, then sure.. use those to assist with troubleshooting.
Said another way... troubleshoot a bad device, do not troubleshoot the status/buttons, they may not be accurate.
If your tilt sensor is not working, that's the time to consider the Status and buttons for that device on the ZWave Details page.
I have the same types of status/buttons too:
All three of those are battery devices and I know the Closet Door Sensor is working just fine. The light comes on when the door is open. Both the other sensors are sitting on the shelf in front of me and haven't been near a magnet for a month. I'm not shocked they are showing as Not Responding. It's not accurate.
Thanks. What about the Ghost Zwave device? I noticed last night that rules affecting some of my Zwave devices were really slow and I wonder if that node is the issue.
Click the Remove button, once. It will appear as if nothing happened.. this is because that button mostly just sends the command to the Radio and let's it do all the work, behind the scenes. If the device completely doesn't exist, then the radio will detect that and delete it. Hubitat will detect THAT and delete it from the list.. some time in the future.. probably no less than 2 mins though. Which is why it looks like nothing happened.
After 5 mins, give that page a refresh and click the remove button again, once. Repeat at no less than 5 min intervals. If you had a Zniffer you'd see the 'storm' of packets related to the attempted removal, making it clear why a 5 min wait is best. I have Zniffer, and thus am able to offer this advice.
The critical thing to understand is that the Radio begins the Removal process by 'pinging' the device. Far too often it determines the device is responding and that terminates the Remove process. A 2nd and even a 3rd attempt by you and me will eventually convince the radio that we are serious and it will grudgingly detect that the device is not responding and THEN do the actual removal. (More technically, radio's using cached info that fools it into thinking the device still exists.)
That means it's reporting back as "still alive". There's a lot of messages about this "stuck ghost" in the recent past. More than a few people chose to purchase a ZWave stick and get the SiLabs PC Controller software to obliterate it from the 'other direction'.
I'm not suggesting you MUST, just that it's frustrating and for a subset of people, the $35 for another USB Stick was worth it.
Remember, if the device is "alive" it will not remove it... which is why I suggested the multiple attempts. I have used the PC Controller for this many times before the C-7 came about.. so I am very familiar with clicking "Is Failed?" (within PC Controller) more than a few times.. and then clicking "Remove Failed" only to have it fail because the device seemed to respond.
That cycle of "IsFailed?" & "Remove Failed" is what the single Hubitat Remove button is doing behind the scenes, I believe.
Generally a ghost is a device that didn't complete the Initialize process. What's hard to identify from this chair way over here, is if the device is actually still powered up and active, but not usable, or just gone. (Perhaps joined a 2nd or 3rd time, successfully.) The second type is, in my experience, easier to get rid of... the device just doesn't answer on that Node number. It can't, it's got a completely new Node number.
The first set though, is a device that might be Discoverable -- which is just an additional attempt at Initializing. Thus it will forever be responding, and never removable. Unless you power it off
There's a lot of different sticks available... I have a preference for the Aeon Z-Stick. I have the Gen 5 but I just saw today that they have a 7 series but it's not released yet.
It's benefit is that it has a use the day after you fix the Ghost issue... It has an internal battery and a Button to put it into Include or press longer, into Exclude. This makes for a GREAT way to migrate or to 'force' an exclude. It's portable.. you can walk to your stubborn device, put the stick into Exclude and then start the exclude on the physical device. Being close and having the blinking colored lights makes it a breeze to use. I suspect that no one who's ever bought one, regrets the purchase.
The SiLabs PC Controller software is 'free' but you have to create a login to the site.
You may want to look at:
If you consider a Zniffer path, you have to realize that once you flash it to ZNiffer code, you can't easily go back. I would absolutely not do that to the Aeon, because of its extreme value in it's native feature set.
All of that extra thinking has lead me to own 4 Zwave USB Sticks... Each dedicated to a specific function. I have 4 Hubitat Hubs with ZWave enabled plus a SmartThings hub. So I have a LOT of Zwave Meshes to join/monitor. -- Don't be me.
Thanks guys! I just ordered the USB stick. I also have some Zooz 4-in-1s that can't pair to the C-7 and I think this will allow me to pair them according to the threads I read here.
4-1 are crap and only do s0 .. unless there are newer version.. mine only caused trouble with all the traffic and ate batteries like there was no tommorow.
Unfortunately, I can't get the controller software to see the USB7 stick after lots of attempts and multiple reinserts. I did open a ticket with Hubitat late last week/early this week and all I got was an email that a fix will be included in the next update.
My patience is wearing thin and I'm seriously considering rolling Zwave devices back to SmartThings - this is just not acceptable from Hubitat.
I had the same problem, took me a while to get the controller SW to see the stick on my PC. Luckily it started working and the second time I used it is also was recognized. You may not have the patience at this point (understandable), but if you have another PC you can try that might help. This PC Controller stuff is definitely on the twitchy side...
I've tried it on 3 systems. I have one more I can hook up and try it on, but I'm not overly optimistic. Are you aware of any other controller software?
No, I haven't heard of other options. The fact that it doesn't work on three systems makes me think you may want to arrange a return/replace, it could just be problem w/the hardware.
have you tried installing the driver manually it should be in the unzipped folder.. go into the usb devices and update the driver.. you should be able to see the device appear in the list when you insert it.
Yes, I did all of that and none of it worked. However, I finally got it working after multiple attempts. Even though the stick was showing in the list of controllers, I finally clicked Detect AGAIN and noticed it filled in more information. Once I did that, I was able to use it without issue and using the excellent instructions provided by @danabw, got rid of my Ghost and then unpaired the UZB. Woot!
One thing, the stick worked best for me using driver that comes w/the software, not downloading/changing to another version. Everyone's-MMV, of course.
Glad you got it to work.
And to give credit where it is due, the instructions were created from info and posts from other's here, and in particular thanks to the help/patience of @erktrek, who was in an unbearbly long (for him, I'm sure) PM thread w/me while I was working out how to do this the first time.
I'm not shocked they are showing as Not Responding. It's not accurate.
Unless you power it off 
