Ghosts are almost always followed shortly after in the Z-Wave details list by the actual device they represent. In the case of the two ghosts below, 119 and 123, they may be the same device, Trophy. Try killing power to the Trophy switch (don't just turn it off, but kill power to the switch itself) and then hit Refresh on those two switches and a Remove button should appear, then hit Remove. With luck you'll be able to get rid of both of them.
If that doesn't work, then I'd also kill power to the two "SPECIFIC_TYPE_POWER_MULTILEVEL" swiches just a bit lower in the list and try Refresh again on the two ghosts to get the Remove button to appear.
interesting, i thought the hub could handle quite a bit more than this. I'd be totally happy to split into two hubs. the house is nearly 6000 sq feet anyway.
I've done the shutdown, power off by unplugging, and power back up, but the ghosts don't die. I'll try danabw's suggestion when I get home and see if that kills them, otherwise, i'll have to fire up "overly complicated" studio and destroy them that way.
From what I understand, the Z-wave limit is 232 nodes and that includes the controller. There are a few reserved nodes on the C7, so you are approaching the limits here with your 200+ nodes.
A house of that size, and with that many nodes would likely benefit from being split into two (or more) hubs. I would think simply for ease of use, and not losing everything in the event of a controller failure, it would make sense to divide up your Z-wave stuff a bit.
With that many nodes, I would surely be subscribing to the Protect service so you have a backup. I would be hating life if I had to go back and rebuild all this!
The limitation isn’t the hub’s processing power. It is the congestion of a relatively slow serial network with a large number of devices (zwave at best is 100 kbits/s).
I’d recommend about 80 zwave devices per hub. With an equal number of zigbee and/or virtual devices
I actually have just around 100. I've been at it for about 3 years in this house and have removed some devices, and then added them back in different locations months or years later, and just plain tried a pretty good number of devices. It seems that if you added and removed a device 200 times, then next time you add it it would be device number 201. In any case, its not as many as it looks.
That being said, I'll order up a second hub.
For sure, I signed up for Protect service pretty much as soon as it launched. I also try to make intermittent backups that I keep on my Synology.
When it comes to dividing up devices between hubs, any recommendations on how to do that? By zone? put the east end of house on 1 hub and the west end on the other? Can 1 hub run automations with devices from both hubs? If traffic on the zwave network is the real problem, can you keep all of your automations on the master hub and just focus on offloading zwave tasks to slave hubs?
You guys sure have given me some more to do projects! I'll get to work on these things and report in. I think i'll have to fish some ethernet cables through the house this weekend to put a new hub or two into the most node rich areas of the house.
While one Z-Wave controller can handle up to 232 nodes, as @neonturbo mentioned, that limit goes down the more bandwidth sucking devices are connected to the radio. Secure devices (S0 more so than S2) and power reporting devices are known to be bandwidth thirsty. Besides splitting the mesh, limiting the amount of events that the radio receives, is another way to push a controller to the 232 limit.
now, it does sound like migrating devices to these will just plain be a lot of work, but there does seem to be a decent guide on this forum:
since it sounds like zwave bandwidth is the issue and not processing power, it seems like i might as well have each hub responsible for a zone of zwave devices
People here have over a 100 devices on z-wave and things are fine. Some rules of thumb
Pair all devices with no security except for locks and garage door stuff
If you have a zooz 4-in-1 sensor, either leave it on the c5 or get a z-wave stick, pair it as a secondary controller then use that to pair to the c7 without security (otherwise it will bring down your mesh) If you have the 700 series chip, simply click skip when prompted for security. USe @jtp10181 's driver. Do the same for the zen25 double plug and turn off all power reporting for it so it doesn't spam your mesh.
One thing you need to be careful of, is if you have a failed Z-Wave pairing, STOP! Check your settings>>z-wave details page. If a ghost was created (you will see nothing in the routing column), it needs to be removed first. If you don't remove it you will start having problems with your mesh including pairing new devices. After removing the ghost, factory reset the device and attempt to pair again. Rinse and repeat. This is one of the biggest keys to having a healthy mesh.
Before adding any devices, update the platform on the c7, THEN update the z-wave firmware. You can find this button at the top of your z-wave details page. Once updated the button will disappear
My house is only 2100 sq feet and I have it on two hubs, soon(ish) to ad a third for cloud integrations.
When I had a C4, I had to reboot at least every two weeks. Since it migrated to the C7's , the only time I reboot is when I pick up and update, or on the rare occasion that I have to reboot my router (that maybe twice a year).
Hub Mesh or Hub Connect are your goto's for that. I've used both, and find hub mesh a bit easier to use. Hub Connect also works very well and @csteele was great about helping me to get it all set up.
On the Main hub, I've created a virtual switch and Virtual dimmer
I use settings/Swap App Device to reassign a device, ie Bedroom Lights, to the Virtual Dimmer
Then, I remove Bedroom Lights from the main hub. So far this has ALWAYS ended up being a force remove.
Then, from the new hub I do an exclusion and zwave add.
Add Bedroom Lights
Enable Hub Mesh
Main hub, add Bedroom Lights to the Linked Devices
Main hub, settings/Swap App Device to swap Virtual Dimmer with Bedroom Lights: Slave Hub
Clean the ghosts up. Make sure you update the Z-wave firmware. If you have to exclude and include try doing it without security. If you need new switches or devices buy Zigbee ones instead of Z-wave.
firmware is updated on both hubs. not getting any NEW ghosts on the old hub, which is good news
I think the problem may be that since i’m building out from the 2nd hub, I now have devices that are still connected to the 1st/master that are so far away that they can’t be excluded from it b/c they are out of range.
ultimately, i think i’m going to transfer all my devices over to the 2 new hubs, leave my apps on the 1st/master and then will reset the zwave radio on the 1st/master. Over the years I’ve added and removed SOOOO many devices from that hub that its zwave database is probably swiss cheese.
So far, i've only moved about 10 devices to the slave hub and am already seeing marked improvement in reliability. Far fewer failed actions and much less lag when executing commands from the dashboard. Really seems like your recommendations for additional hub(s) were 100% spot on.
If it ain't there, then you already have any available updates.
