I switched to ZwaveJS recently and for the first time ever a rule fired. It's one that is triggered by physically turning off the little switch on an Eaton Z-Wave Outlet. I wrote that rule years ago but it didn't work because Hubitat never got the event. It works now. Thanks!
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I wonder if anyone is still using those old GE/Jasco Z-Wave (before Z-Wave Plus models were released) switches and dimmers that always were a problem due to not sending status updates when manually changed at the physical switch? Those were the devices that resulted in users adding polling to make sure the status was updated properly.
I wonder is Z-Wave JS is any better with those old Z-Wave (non-plus) devices? Has anyone tried them with ZWJS on Hubitat?
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I got rid of all but one of mine. It's used to turn on the cellar lights when the door opens. It is never operated manually, so the lack of status updates doesn't matter.
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I still have some. Zero issues on JS. I should note that other than needing to poll/refresh these, I never had issues with them on Zip. I don’t even use the built-in polling. I simply have a rule that does a refresh on these periodically.
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Do they properly report physical/manual status changes without polling on ZWJS?
No, because that’s not in the Z-Wave spec for those devices. JS does not matter.
Some platforms found creative ways to make those old devices report instantly. That is why I was curious about ZWJS. Thanks for testing it!
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I thought it was individual devices that found ways around it, for eg, by sending a HAIL to the controller, triggering it to poll the device?
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Well, to answer my own question definitively... I still have one old GE/Jasco Z-Wave (non-Plus) switch.
- I paired it to my C8-Pro hub as my one and only Z-Wave device using the original Z-Wave Zip Gateway software. As expected, the physical/manual status updates were non-existent. Issuing a REFRESH from the Hubitat Device page did update the status correctly (i.e. polling.)
- I then changed over to the new Z-Wave JS software, let the hub reboot itself, and then started testing. This time, the hub did receive an instant status update for every physical/manual change I performed directly on the old GE Z-Wave switch!
Thus, for anyone that still has early Z-Wave (non-plus) switches and dimmers from GE/Jasco, I would highly recommend using the new Z-Wave JS software on their C8-Pro hub!
Tagging @bcopeland. FYI - not sure if you were aware of this 'perk' of the new Z-Wave JS software. Nice work!
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Wow! Wonder how that works?
Not sure. I tested it on Home Assistant running Z-Wave JS UI a few years ago and noticed the instant status updates worked properly on that platform. That is what gave me some hope that Z-Wave JS on Hubitat might also work.
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Based upon a comment here (post by Raman325, bullet point 4), it looks like it is polling the devices behind the scenes.
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I believe this was due to a patent issue. I recall it was called "instant status" when the device reported back on a device initiated change. That patent eventually expired, so now its not blocking the inbound status update. So devices older than approx 8 years or so might not report status and need to be polled.
...." Lutron's patent US 5905442A. This patent, which expired in 2016, prevented other manufacturers from implementing instant status without infringing on Lutron's claims"....
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I really don’t believe it is using polling. 
The status updates are instantaneous. There is no perceptible delay whatsoever.
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Yes, I am aware of the history. But good information to share for others! Thanks.
As I mentioned above, it appears Z-Wave JS figured out some sort of non-polling workaround to receive instant status updates from these old devices. The updates are truly instantaneous.
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There's lots of references in Z-Wave JS about adding polling, and the authors specifically not wanting to implement manual polling:
How do I configure polling? · zwave-js/zwave-js-ui · Discussion #293 · GitHub
Even though they added the ability:
Support polling · Issue #1163 · zwave-js/zwave-js · GitHub
feat: add pollValue API to perform get request for a specific ValueID by AlCalzone · Pull Request #1479 · zwave-js/zwave-js · GitHub
But it looks what is they figured out is that some devices send a Hail message when manually activated, and then Zwave-JS turns around and polls the device (only once, via the above code) when the Hail is received:
[bug] Nano Dimmers by Aeotec does not report back to the controller when switched manually · Issue #1287 · zwave-js/zwave-js · GitHub
[feat] Implement Hail Class (and collect examples for use in doing so) · Issue #1298 · zwave-js/zwave-js · GitHub
From the 1287 thread, this response:
kpine on Jan 5, 2021
The Hail class has no meaning as defined by the Z-Wave spec, it is application specific. However, I believe a few devices were using this to circumvent "instant status" patents, or something like that, so several hubs treat this as a message to poll the device
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I have a few of these old GE/Jasco switches/dimmers also and have some additional observations:
One of them is an on/off switch that has a remote switch wired to it (like a 3-way, but the remote switch is a momentary on/off, not a normal on/off switch). That one reports instantly when operated from the main switch, but not from the remote.
The other one is a dimmer. It reports level 2 and "on" when turned on although it ramps up past level 2. When I turned it off it reported level 89 and still reported "on" as it ramped down to zero. It appears to be refreshing the device right after the button is pushed but before the device has reached its final state.
So I'm keeping polling for the switch, and I'm going to try a rule for the dimmer that says "when level changes, delay 3 seconds, then poll/refresh". That way I won't be polling 24x7 but should still get the correct status after each physical press.
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