Let me start off saying I don't think I'm seeing a problem with my Hubitat Hub.
So, I've had issues with my Z-Wave mesh acting up since switching from SmartThings to Hubitat a year ago. My mesh is basically the same setup I had with ST but I can't say if back then I had issues with the mesh because of the "normal" cloud delays of ST. How would I know the cause of the 2 to 5 second delays I often saw?
After switching, my first indication of an issue would be slowness of a rule to execute or not working correctly. Checking the logs I found multiple events logged for a device showing turned On or Off five or more times in a row. This would sometimes cause a rule to trigger multiple times. From the community I learned this is often cause by congestion on the mesh caused by misbehaving devices. This led me to Zniffering where I discovered a dimmer that would never communicate faster than 9.6 kbps (replaced). I factory reset a couple of light switches that were stuck communicating at 40 kbps. I even found a better centralized location for the hub that brought up its neighbors count from 5 to 11. Heck, I only have 19 Z-Wave devices. Things are looking good no strangeness in the logs and rules running as they should and fast. All devices are running at 100 kbps. Everything is great! But not for long.
I only have three battery devices so 16 repeating devices. All light and dimmer wall switches are GE Z-Wave Plus with most of those being newer Enbrighten S2 versions. Everything is Z-Wave Plus and nothing older than 18 months. The multiple events in the log returned after 3 or 4 weeks of running great. I broke out the Zniffer where I saw I had a couple switches running at 40 kbps that were being used to route traffic. I went to the breaker panel and cycled power to these switches with them coming back online at 100 kbps and once again everything is running great. But it doesn't last long.
So, I see this repeat itself sometimes after a week sometimes I get a month before I notice a rule not acting as it should checking in the logs I see those multiple entries then Zniffing reveals one or more devices not running at 100 kbps. Sometimes a device is stuck at 9.6 kbps but usually 40 kbps. It is not always the same devices that are acting up. Always a GE device but then again 12 of my 16 repeating devices are GE so not sure that means anything. Sometimes after resetting slow devices I would run a Z-Wave repair then study the traffic. My town home is single storied less than 1400 sq ft with few walls and no more separation between two devices than 12 feet. I would think a good candidate for a strong mesh. The routing after the repair mostly made sense looking at the proximity and likely interference between devices. What I find strange is when I later Zniffer looking for the misbehaving device the routing has changed and devices that were in direct communication with the hub are now routing through a slow running device.
Were I always seeing the same couple of GE devices acting up I would buy replacement from a different manufacturer then see if those worked any better. But that is not what I see. What most confounds me is when a repeating device gets stuck communicating slower than 100 kbps and it is routing traffic when previously it routed none. I can't help but believe the really issue is Z-Wave and it is not the consumer grade product that we have been led to believe.
Now that that is off my chest, I'll go flip a couple of circuit breakers then again enjoy everything work well for ?
