I have recently purchased the newest version of the iBlinds and have installed them on 10 windows. Installation wasn't overly complicated and while some of the buttons could fit better in some blinds vs others, it's mainly due to inconsistencies on the blinds themselves rather than the iBlinds Motors.
I like the ability of being able to pair these with Alexa and control them using rules. The manual button itself leaves much to be desired. Instead of the button closing or opening I feel a better functionality would be to leave the button pressed to graduate the tilt until it either closes or opens or you can tilt until desired.
My biggest issue though, is how slow these are to respond to a command. I feel like they're asleep half the time and I have to send it multiple commands for them to work. (I'm using the community driver).
When I check at the z-wave settings details, it seems as if all of them are getting 40kbps so I don't think there's an issue with the signal strength but instead it seems as if they're just not reporting the right status to Hubitat. In fact, even though my automation asks all blinds to refresh after they open or close as a way to ensure they refresh their last status, I've noticed that sometimes Hubitat still doesn't receive the correct status and I have to manually click refresh on the device.
Sometimes, they may even not respond at all and just stop working intermittently.
I was wondering if this was a common experience and if there are any pointers other than resetting the motors back to factory settings on how to improve the response rate. Is it a good idea to have Hubitat refresh them throughout the day every 15 minutes? Or would that cause congestion in the z-wave network?
Any help would be appreciated. If I can't get these to improve, I'll have to end up returning them and trying something else like Switchbot.
I assume these are the iBlinds v3/3.1 units? The v2 units do not report back on their own, but my driver should poll them after a bit of time. The v3 units should. If they aren't, you can try running a "Configure" again to make sure Z-Wave lifeline association got set correctly, or you could indeed be dealing with a Z-Wave mesh issue (do you have many repeaters, any nearby? these are often installed inside unfortunate locations like metal headrails that can impede communication).
Excluding and re-including as you suggest might help (another way to make sure the driver sets that association, plus another chance for it to establish a good route -- adding the device in place rather than near the hub is a good idea if you aren't doing that already, though it should eventually figure things out anyway). I see you have no security selected for all of these, which is the advice some people would give in general if you're dealing with a device that does not require it (like locks). However, S2 offers some advantages like Z-Wave Supervision that might help ensure the reliability of commands from the hub, so you might also want to consider that if you re-join any to your hub.
A periodic refresh probably won't bring your Z-Wave network to its knees, but that's generally a bad band-aid for a problem that could actually be resolved via some other means, and their batteries are at least likely to wear down faster. Battery-powered Z-Wave devices like these that still need to respond to commands technically are sleeping most of the time but are also "frequently listening" (the actual term) for "beams" that will tell them to wake up fully and get a command from a hub. Having beaming-capable repeaters in your network (most modern repeaters are, and even some older ones) is often recommended as a help in this case.
But yes, I occasionally notice some problems with mine, like them not responding to a command. Waiting a few minutes and trying again normally helps (or "rebooting" the blinds if I'm impatient--the button might work to actually open/close them, too, but I can never remember what it's supposed to do across the two generations of these I have or what I have where). One or two never report battery back to the hub even though identical models with the same driver do the same. I chalk it up to probably being on the fringe of my network and maybe just how finicky Z-Wave can be sometimes...but I really think it's a lot better on my C-8 (Pro) than any other hub I've used, at least.
I noticed that some of these have a significant number of route changes, which is weird because each one of the rooms they're installed in has beaming capable devices as well (switches).
So I'm not entirely discarding the possibility of signal strength, but then again if it were signal strength they wouldn't be connected at 40kbps right?
I'm going to try a soft reset of the hub to see if that helps with the routing issue as suggested in another post. Is this something you have attempted?
Where was that suggested? This will not help. The Z-Wave database is separate from the hub database, but the hub database is all that a soft reset will touch. (I mean, it can't hurt, but it seems like it can only waste time...)
Still not sure what generation you have, but I think at least the latest ones with 700-series Z-Wave should support 100 Kpbs -- but higher speed isn't always better, as lower speed can get you more range, which can be especially important for devices like these.
I really don't see any particular problem that stands out for you, so any of the general Z-Wave troubleshooting seems like it is equally likely to help, though.
I've just ordered these so I am operating under the assumption that they're the latest version, here's a snip of the device ID. Version 3.12.
So are you suggesting a rest of the problematic motors should be the first layer of troubleshooting rather than resetting the entire hub? Aren't 100+ route changes an issue?
You can reset the whole hub if you want to start over, but that's not what you mentioned above (if you don't know why, see: Soft Reset | Hubitat Documentation). If you don't have much added and don't mind starting over, I suppose you can try a kind of reset that would include Z-Wave and see if you have better luck next time. But if you don't have "ghosts" or other possible problems (e.g., you added the repeaters after the devices and it hasn't been very long yet), it might not really help.
If you just added these all today, waiting until tomorrow might help -- some people report Z-Wave takes a while to "settle down," especially if you add a large number of devices at the same time.
I did not intend to suggest any troubleshooting approach over another, though troubleshooting individual devices is normally easier than starting over (which is also no guarantee of help). For example, you could try excluding and re-including with S2 to see if that helps, as I mentioned above. I suppose only you will know how much work either approach is for you and what is worth it. If you are not sure how to troubleshoot Z-Wave in general, see also: How to Troubleshoot Z-Wave | Hubitat Documentation
@rlithgow1 do you mean all blinds or all devices of the z-wave details page?
This morning I had a different result. My automation is looping while any window is considered open or closed, each time it runs a different window or set of windows either stays open or closed as if the loop never sent them a command and never refreshed their status.
For example, my loft window opened but the device thinks it is closed and my other upstairs windows stayed closed even though the rule should have opened them.
Not sure if I missed it but what driver are you using? I had similar issues until I switched to the iBlinds V3 (Community Driver).
Hard to comment on the automation without seeing what you have for a rule(s) and what the logs look like.
I have had pretty good like using Room Lighting to control groups of blinds instead of trying to use rules.
As you stated, there can be some lag between verbal commands and when the blinds respond. Anything more than a half a second feels like a lifetime but they do respond.
You're talking with experts in this thread and I'm not that at all but I've used iblinds for years -- v2, v3, and v3.1 -- have eleven at the moment, and have had the same issues.
Sometimes iblinds respond immediately, sometimes after a delay of 30-60 seconds. And sometimes they stop responding entirely, even after repeated commands. (If that happens, reboot the iblinds unit; if that doesn't work, turn the switch on the battery unit off and wait several seconds before turning it back on -- I wait one minute, mostly out of superstition; and if even that doesn't work, recharge the battery regardless of what Hubitat tells you about the level of charge -- which, with iblinds, is a largely meaningless number anyway.)
These problems are, as far as I know, unfixable. I've used all the drivers from everybody; the community drivers are great but I can't say that I've seen them help the response problems. The problems can occur both with units that talk directly to the hub and with those that weave through the mesh. They are the same on C-7 and C-8 (I've not used C-8 pro).
I hope I'm wrong but I'm thinking its a hardware problem that fiddling with the hub cannot solve. Since iblinds development apparently stopped some time ago, I'm not hopeful of a solution.
Here are the logs for today, 7:30 is the usual automation which repeats 15 times as long as the blinds are reporting a status of closed and then sets them to a position of 50 which is equivalent to Open.
All of these should have opened at 7:30 and not 12-ish when I had to manually command them to do so.
I hadn't turned on logging at the rule, but I just turned that on today to diagnose the automation in the evening that are in charge of closing the blinds.
Idk if you noticed, but one blind is reporting 1% battery even though it is plugged in directly into the wall so I'm assuming there are at least two out of 10 motors with faulty batteries.
Yeah... I suspect the same thing. I wouldn't mind a little lag between commands since it is expected, but to have them fail entirely and randomly (i.e. one fails today, but a different one fails tomorrow or all of them work with the close but only some with the open) that is a pretty big deal-breaker.
Additionally, there's no efficient way of controlling them manually because the manual button doesn't "tilt" them it either opens or closes them completely.
Furthermore two of them seem to have faulty batteries since they always report less than 20% and are currently plugged in.
Conceptually, these are fantastic but they're failing me when put into use.
All the other advice above is very sound. Some of what you are describing does sound like it could be mesh related as well.
I'm thinking for the rule, instead of starting out with a refresh, issue the position commands to the blinds and then wait x time (maybe a minute) before you start the repeat while. You may also want to try manually issuing the refresh to a blind that says it is open or closed when it isn't to see if anything changes. In the back of my mind I want to say that refresh doesn't make the blind change it's mind and report correctly. If that is the case than the refresh automation won't help.
Agree with you here. For me it's not a big deal because in 2+ years I have probably pressed a button on the blinds maybe 6 times.
Try unplugging them send a command to them open, close, etc. and see if it changes (assuming the command works as well). If they never show 100%, I would contact them. I have had great customer support from them. They are very eager to make sure you are happy.
Check the above post by the Ambassadors. rlithgow1 asked to see the entire zwave details page. bertabcd1234 has good links. And as stated, trying to fix 1 device at a time is usually a good approach. If you are impatient like me and want everything working NOW, it can get frustrating. I have found zwave issues can sometime simply go away with a little bit of time.
You can do multiple screen shots in the same message. The reason I want to see the whole page is to diagnose your slow issues and seeing if there is something up with your zwave table. There isn't anything personally identifiable in it...
Here are all the devices in the z-wave settings page. I have no issues with any of them, the blinds I've installed in the past week or so and have been fiddling with these issues since then.
