Have a new installation of ~75 Jasco and Homeseer dimmers and switches. Read all about creating a good mesh and starting from the hub outwards and in a circle over the course of a few days. Was originally going to use one hub but found after past ~75ft switches took longer and longer to pair and several cut out halfway through the process causing the infamous 'ghost nodes'. Decided to add an extra hub and then another when the same issues persisted as the mesh(es) were created. Thank God for Hub Mesh! Ended up with three hubs, no more than 32 devices on any one hub no more than 50 ft away from their paired hub, and 2/3rds of the devices with no repeating, and most of the others with only one or two hops.
To my dismay, when I created some small lighting Groups in the Hubitat Groups & Scenes App I still get some lights that dont turn on/off or take up to 5seconds or more to fire. The Kitchen group has seven switches and works only about 80% of the time. The other 20% usually one or two devices wont fire. The Master Suite Group of about 12 switches about 30% of the time does not fire one or two switches. And the two switches that are the usual culprits are in the same room as the hub about 15ft away and directly connected!
Any idea's on what I can do to fix this? All the switches on their own work fine. Is there possibly a silicon labs firmware or Hubitat firmware issue that could be resolved at some point. Are some switches just inherently better than others and will not cause this in peoples experience? Or is this inherent to the zwave mesh just sucking when trying to fire multiple lights at once. I am afraid to create an all off grouping of the 70+ lights but gosh isnt that the reason for having this smart home capability to begin with?
Very frustrated and any advice would be appreciated.
In my experience, what you are seeing is typical when trying to command too many Z-Wave devices at once. When I send commands to 18 switches at once, if there is any noise on the Z-Wave frequency, I find that some don’t respond properly. The noise can be caused by devices on the same network or another one (Security device, other hub, etc.)
Like you, I am looking forward to the Z-Wave firmware update to see if it helps resolve the issue.
An option that might resolve the issue would be to set a pause between commands. This could be done by creating several smaller groups and by using Rule Machine. There may be other better options too.
Z-wave doesn't have group messages so it's quite limited with that unlike ZigBee. Only thing that comes to mind is how long has the the mesh been established for? Also are the switches z-wave + and are the boxes they are installed inside metal or plastic?
The first two hubs about 2 weeks ago but the third hub was installed about 5 days ago and everything unpaired from the other two hubs and re-paired to the third hub based on distance and location about 4 days ago. All of the 10+ ghost nodes created from the un-pairing and subsequent re-pairing was done by a USB stick and PC 4 days ago. All plastic electrical boxes and all brand new Zwave Plus Jasco and Homeseer switches. No more than 32 devices, I believe, are on any one hub and the distance is no greater than probably 50ft to any hub which I thought would keep Mesh issues to a minimum.
Maybe the three radio's are now competing a bit with each other?
Is the fact its been only 4 days (actually 2 days since I last tested) an issue as the mesh takes longer to get stable? Its new construction so the only time its tested is when I am in there getting it ready to be moved into and firing the groups to do testing. I would imagine the mesh is only going to get less stable with furniture in the place and paintings on the wall. Just thinking of that is what drove me to put a third hub in the place.
I certainly hope something like a firmware change can fix this. I would hope not to find out that Zwave just inherently sucks as a mesh. I have three hubs in one home for goodness sakes as I could not seem to pair anything past 75ft reliably at all. I finally had to go the route of a USB stick to get rid of the ghosts as just clicking on remove from the hub would not work.
It's possible, @bcopeland would be the guy to answer that.
The mesh should be able to handle much more than this. When you had less meshes did you also have ghosts at the same time?
I'm not saying having more hubs is a bad idea because it depends on the layout of your house and the distance the messages will travel. But if it's compact I would think a bigger mesh (once there are no ghosts and it's settled) should be very strong and fast.
The home is large - 140ft wide and approx 40 ft deep. 2x6 inner walls with insulation. Anytime we went ended up approx 75ft+ and 3+ Inner walls from a hub, inclusion became a bigger and bigger issue. There were always repeaters within 10-15ft as we built out from the hub in a circle but it did not matter and ghost nodes would begin showing up as inclusion became a larger issue and would quit halfway through. It became impossible to include devices so we added a hub on the other end of the home. Then one right in the middle as well.
The three meshes seem strong with over half of devices directly linking to the hubs and the other half mostly being 1 or 2 hops.
The devices in the lighting groups that don’t fire or take 5+ seconds to fire 20-30% of the time most are directly linked to hub. That is why I am thinking it may be a zwave stack or Hubitat firmware issue just not being able to handle multiple commands at once? No idea but it’s maddeningly frustrating.
The kitchen group with 7 devices and master suite with 12 devices are the larger lighting groups and are where the issues are. I am afraid to create larger groups but need to in order to turn off larger areas of the hone with one command.
I have long had the same issues. Every single one of my switches and 80% of all my outlets are z-wave plus. I have devices inside and outside the house. I use multiple hubs, but have all the z-wave devices on one. Like you mentioned, singularly, the devices operate fine. Grouping causes problems and consistently, one or more lights do not fire in one of the groups... Seems sometimes or some periods of the year work better than others. Sometimes it seems to happen because I add a new device into the mix somewhere in the house. I'm sure this has to do with the z-wave mesh, but it is a pain figuring it out... A few months back, I discovered I had what appeared to be a bad z-wave thermostat 10 feet from the hub. I ended up removing both thermostats and replacing them with wifi (not what I wanted) but i have them integrated and instantly my mesh improved... Still have issues with the grouped devices though...
I have three full days into this now. Adding the 75 switches, adding a second hub. unpairing/repairing, adding a third hub. unpairing/repairing. Fixing a lot ghosts with a USB stick.
I guess what I am trying to get to is for someone with more knowledge that me to say either:
a. If you see by zwave details you have a solid mesh then there is nothing more you can do. Firing many devices at once is just not something zwave can do reliably all the time.
or
b. keep trying to adjust the mesh. There is something wrong with your setup that is causing this to happen
The below image of the bottom of the group app leads me to believe it is the former and zwave just does not do a great job of firing a lot of things all at once, every time. But if someone who knows more about zwave than I (Hubitat staff? ) @bcopeland ? can tell me that I will stop trying things and call it a day.
Tried that already. Did not seem to help. I say seem because of the inconsistent nature of the lights not firing.
My understanding is that turning the optimization off basically sends a command to turn off the lights even if the current state of a particular light shows as off. If I am correct in this, I wouldnt think that would help as I have not seen the state of a particular light ever show incorrectly. But I will keep trying both ways to see if it it any better.
We have been exploring this issue. One thing we're looking at is a 'metering' option for Groups and Scenes. If the radios are overrun with too many commands, a command can be dropped. By slowing these apps down by just a small amount, the problem can be overcome.
@bravenel Great to hear. Thank you for looking into this. This would be a big step in getting all on/ all off and other room grouping scenario's to work. I'm pushing Hubitat in my home automation integration here in the SF Bay Area because I am a believer in your stuff. Big homes. Have two other projects right behind this. And as you are aware they are very tech savvy and will push technology if they believe in it. They have a hard time believing the Hubitat 'drink coaster' of a hub can replace Crestron and other commercial level systems but I am swearing by it. Help me to prove it to them!
Edit - If you, or anyone on your team resides in the SF Bay Area I would be happy to show you this installation. Its in the East Bay - Alamo. 5500sf - 3 hubs with HubMesh. 90 zwave devices by the time we are finished which will be in the next two weeks. Might be interesting for you to know the process we went through, especially if you are trying to target this market at some point and not just the DIY'ers. Anyway's... just PM me and we can chat if interested.
@bravenel Bear with me as I am thinking out loud about ideas...
Don't know if you already build in some delay or not, but in my home none of my lights ever show over a 20ms RTT, and usually much less, on the network . What if you guys built in say a 40ms delay between each device within a group. Even at 40ms you would be firing 25lights per second which would probably be more than enough for 99% of all applications.
The actual situation and timing varies depending on a variety of factors, including the specific devices, the overall collection of devices, the number of devices, whether or not Zigbee Group Messaging is used, etc. What we've been testing is a settable delay per device activated not using Zigbee Group Messaging (which should have no problems). Many groups do not need any additional delay at all. We are also going to look at communication stack solutions for this, although we know that some of this happens in the RF domain, into which we have little visibility.
Anything to get the Group to fire with %100 certainty would be great. My only recommendation if you go the route of an adjustable delay is to give the user the ability to arrange the firing order of the devices. There will be a popcorn effect going on with any delay and it will be a much better user experience if the lights fire one physical direction or the other within the Group space rather than randomly.
That would represent a major change to the app, its ui, etc. I understand the request, but we're talking about 50 msecs. We should just take this one step at a time before completely restructuring the app.
@bravenel Checking in to see if you guys are somewhat close to coming out with this metering feature or if we are still talking months out? Also what are your thoughts in creating larger Group lighting scenes by adding smaller groups vs just adding individual lights. Which one would create a greater chance of success in lights actually firing?
I've done it both ways on my side but as soon as I think one way is better, it too starts to bog down and not fire all the lights, all the time. So now I'm not sure...
