Giving up on Hubitat, change my mind

Where to start...

I have a C7 with the latest 131 build that just came out tonight (I always update when one is released), nearly 30 Zen77s, 6 Zen30s, and 5 Leviton ZW4SF fan controllers. I had the occasional issue with my C5 but it was manageable but generally pretty reliable. The C7 has been a nightmare since day one. When it comes to inclusion it works 10% of the time. Firmware updates takes an hour to several hours. Exclusions work less than 30% of the time or not at all. Right now I'm stuck with switches that are corrupted thanks to my hubitat. Can't factory reset them (solid red led light with no way to exit test mode it throws itself into). Hubitat won't exclude them which is what's needed in order to reset them (clears out the solid red light). For the ones I was able to get to exclude and factory reset the switch now won't include.

What I find interesting is that with my UZB-7 stick using the PC Controller software I have zero issues. Inclusions 100% of the time and instantaneous. Exclusions 100% of the time and instantaneous. Updating the switch firmware, 5 to 10 minutes per switch at most. The thing is I've been trying to update switch firmware because when I had everything setup properly with the Hubitat it was insanely unreliable. Latencies in the thousands of milliseconds (one switch was in the tens of thousands of milliseconds). Inaccurate state changes. Not registering state change requests. Zwave repairs yielded inconsistent node failures. The list goes on and on.... I tried an inclusion 5 times with one switch but nothing. Pulled out my UZB-7 and what do you know?! It included instantly.

At what point do I throw in the towel because I've been working at this for months. It took 4 days to update the firmware on 5 switches with the Hubitat. It took half a day to update the firmware on 20 switches using the UZB-7 stick and PC controller software. Somethings wrong here. do I have a bad hub? I can't keep blaiming Zooz.

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That does sound like a very frustrating experience, and you have certainly put a lot of time and effort into trying to get it to work.

I am thinking you might be right, it may be something to do with the hub, but I'm definitely no expert. Have you contacted support to troubleshoot the issue with them?

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I am not saying to quit. But i wanted to add to your report. I recently just finished recovering from total Z-Wave failure. I had no control of any Z device. I did all reset types shutdowns leading to nothing. I had to use the nuclear option and type the word reset. That option kills all rule association to devices so you have to delete all the rules. I tried just bringing the devices back in after the reset nope, they came in with different ID's than they had before. That meant everything had to be redone took me 2 days an a lot of running around excluding and including. luckily I didn't have any devices lock up as in your case. This all started after the second update to 2.2.9. I rolled back to 2.2.8.156 and thats where I am staying till see the most of the problems go away on this forum.

Bruce almost immediately after posting this contacted me and is even shipping a replacement - at nearly 11pm at night no less. Kudos to him.

Right now I'm using my UZB-7 and PC Controller to try and fix the ones that have locked up. Fortunately I've cleared (that I know of) all but one. I have one switch that won't do anything. Can't include or exclude on the hubitat or via PC Controller and obviously can't factory reset. Fortunately when I ordered the Zen77s I ordered more than I needed expecting one or two to be bad out of the box so have a few extras. Unfortunately it means I may have to replace what is probably still a good switch/dimmer.

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That is great customer service

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So yeah, that sucks - I just came home tonight to a corrupted C5 - this one only had network and cloud devices on it. NOT running the latest firmware on this hub. Fortunately the diagnostic page :8081 came up and was able to do a soft reset. PAF (Partner Approval Factor) was really really low..

I'm not really sure where you would go from here? Every platform will have issues - if you are a tinkerer you can try "home assistant" and the UZB-7. You can also share those devices with HE using the HomeAssistant Device Bridge... so that might be an option while still keeping HE around.. Warning cool stuff in HA but also dragons..

If you want to spend the big bucks on a complete system then Control 4 or Savant.. on the hub front there is Homeseer or you can go with the data collection giants - Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home. Each system has it's own set of cool capabilities, restrictions, frustrations, limitations etc.. so ymmv.

Any hub/system in particular you are interested in?

I’m certainly no expert, but I’ve seen other folks mention that the PC controller software uses a different (older) interface to the underlying zwave stick, while certified hubs have to use a newer (more buggy) interface. I’m certainly no expert and I’m just repeating the essence of what I’ve read before.

I think that explains some of the discrepancies that people experience.

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I moved away from the cloud for a reason (was with Wink) so definitely don't want to go back. Honestly if I were to go with a proprietary setup it would be Levitons Casata line. I had several of them in my old house and they ALWAYS worked. Unfortunately they're also pricey. I totally expect there to be issues on any platform so hoping the C7 replacement will do the trick in fixing the majority of my issues but of not the only other direction I'd go is with HA.

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It's always possible but I will say it's gotta be fairly new because it handled the S2 authentication like a champ. Seriously, the inclusion process even with S2 was perfect, smooth as hell, and quick. I had zero issues with PC Controller even with S2 Authentication.

I am in the same boat with Hubitat. I’m moving from Insteon and it was so reliable. Even with devices all over the house I get mixed results. I’ve moved the Hubitat 3 times and redid the whole network each time. Frustrating!

I’ve found Hubitat to be mostly very reliable, however recently I had one falling zwave device cause my primary hub to grind to a halt unless I bounced it every day.

Since finding and removing that device my primary hub is back to being reliable.

I’d certainly encourage the Hubitat team to harden the OS so a single bad device can’t cause everything to start falling after barely more than 24 hours of uptime.

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I have had major issues in the past with my Z-wave devices and learned a lot from the experience:

  • when devices don’t pair correctly, they create “ghost” devices which disrupt the mesh and cause a lot of issues
  • some devices will disrupt the mesh on the C7 and should remain on the C5
  • power reporting will spam and therefore weaken the z-wave mesh
  • S2 security on everything sounds good, but will cause issues
  • S0 is to be avoided at all costs (except on locks)
  • the Hubitat support team is absolutely awesome! They have a passion for what they do and it shows!
  • the Hubitat community is also awesome! There’s pretty much always someone willing to share their knowledge and expertise to help others succeed.
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I agree with all your points. One of the main reasons I have the UZB stick is to get rid of ghosts and other troubleshooting. Don't get me wrong, I really want to stay with Hubitat, but at the same time I can't be fighting with it on a daily basis. I'm literally sitting in meetings (work from home) while troubleshooting my zwave devices.

The only reason I even mention S2 is because including it when setting up with PC Controller resulted in the fastest firmware update time. Part of the reason for this is due to registering the optimal checksum. When S2 isn't selected PC Controller defaults to 40 but Zooz switches can't recognize 40. For S2 Unauthenticated devices it would default to 40 so I'd manually change to 20. For the zen77s with S2 Authentication it defaulted to 28.

Basically, I have no intention of migrating away from Hubitat (especially after the stellar service Bruce provided) unless I absolutely have to. Maybe one of these days I'll set up a HA (thinking about getting their recently announced hub that should be out next year) just to play around with but for now I still have high hopes for Hubitat.

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@christopher.hart6 please see the PMs

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A minor point, but it’s Lutron (not Leviton) that makes the caseta line of smart lighting devices.

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You're right. My mistake. Had Leviton on the brain as I have the Leviton ZW4SF fan controllers.

I had similar marginal results after going from Wink to SmartThings to Hubitat C-5 then C-7. Things with Hubitat C-7 only became solid when I sprinkled 6 Ring Alarm Extender Gen 2 devices around, strengthening the mesh. Our house is all brick and tile inside, and I only have about a dozen Z-Wave Plus devices (in addition to the Ring extenders), so I chalked it up to Hubitat’s antennas being smaller than those of Wink and SmartThings hubs.

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I have about 40 devices with the majority of them within 15 feet (upstairs and downstairs). From an overall distribution there's a good mesh so there really shouldn't be any signal issues.

What does your topology look like? I struggled for months building mine up but it finally settled down and has been rather solid for a while.

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mine has been pretty solid lately with about 94 zwave devices.. but as others have noted

If one zwave devices fails and others route through it ... well it basically brings your hub down.. if having issues check for a marginal or bad device. I hope this can be fixed. Maybe some kind of watchdog process that sees one device causing issues and sets it innactive. But since route changes need to come from the device as far as I know I am not sure there is much that can be done. Maybe also some new features in the SDK that lets us specifically tag certain problematic devices to NOT be allowed to be used as Repeaters?

Use exenders... aeon v7 or ring i have 2-3 on each floor of the house and one each outside on front and back of house for outdoor devices
.

Agreed ... locks are bad on zwave.. i converted all my kwikset locks to zigbee.

Only using s2 where necessary .. ie for devices that require it link power failure notifications on ring extenders or on my garage openers.

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