Non-responsive hub

[Stu_The_K]

I know there are other similar threads, which I've gone through, but they seemed fairly old, so forgive me for starting a new one. I'm using a C7 I got in February running 2.2.6.139 now.

I have 24 Inovelli Red Dimmers, 5 Inovelli Black Switches and 5 of their Fan + Light. I also have an Aeotec Smart Switch 7, which is one of my most recent additions.

After this latest incident I gracefully shutdown and restarted the hub and went into the logs. I'm not seeing any errors. The only warning I'm getting is that my 2 Phillips bulbs are being controlled by my Phillips hub, but that is to be expected. I don't have any ghost devices in the Z-Wave table and nothing strange in my devices listing. (See below for my Z-Wave table screen shots).

Starting about a week ago my hub started to become non-responsive at least once per day. I would do a graceful shut down via Hubitat, cut the power for 30 seconds to 1 minute, restart it and all would be working for a while.

During this week I've done an exclude/include on all of my devices except one to remove security. The only one that still has security on it is the Aeotec Smart Switch 7. (I didn't do the exclude/include on it only as I seem I can't push the buttons correctly to get it into the mode. I had done a Smart Start on it originally).

I also converted all of my Rule Machine rules except one to Button Controller rules and one Basic Rule.

I did create 1 virtual device that I set the type as an Inovelli Red Dimmer to put into rules as a place holder if I was going to do an exclude/include on a device. However, I have removed it from all my rules, so I wouldn't think that should be an issue.

Here is my current Z-Wave table:

[lewis.heidrick]

The only thing that stands out is the LWR RSSI relative to your other devices for the Palm Room Table Lamp plug.

Overall though much better that I usually see with this problem. No clusters not populated and everything has routes, although you have several devices that are using a lot of devices to route. What does your home layout look like? Anything difficult to penetrate like concrete walls or an excessive amount of tile backsplashes?

What version of firmware are you using on all the innovelli devices? There are some known issues with the dimmers on versions prior to 1.48

[shawnx1]

How do your logs look any errors & are you using any user apps?

[Stu_The_K]

My home is a single story, 2,500 sq. ft. condo. I’m on the top floor and end unit so not totally surrounded. No concrete interior walls, but virtually all devices in metal gang boxes.

I couldn’t get final device that still had S2 security, an Aeotec Smart Switch 7, to go into include/exclude mode no matter how I clicked the button so I did a factory reset and was able to include it with no security. I gave it a different name then before.

After I did that I saw the old device was still listed in Z-Wave and Device tables. So I then did a “repair” from the Z-Wave table which removed it from there. But it was still listed on the Devices page. So I went into the device and did a remove from there which did remove it.

I then went and renamed the new device back to the old device name. I mistakenly right away reconstructed the Button Controller rule to have the switch that I want to control the plug turn it on and off. That failed and gave me errors in the logs but then I remembered I should wait some time before trying to do any automation. So I removed that automation and now I’m giving the Z-Wave mesh some time to settle down before I try that again.

[shawnx1]

@Stu_The_K

No concrete interior walls, but virtually all devices in metal gang boxes.

My other house has all MC cables and metal gang boxes, doesn’t seem to effect the zwave network as far as I can tell seems the same. It does affect my zigbee network in that house if using in wall outlets or switches.

[Stu_The_K]

So something very interesting happened today. After I got the last of my S2 devices set to no security I didn't need to restart my hub for a couple of days. I was cautiously feeling optimistic this morning when my wife told me the one switch wasn't working. I don't know if there is any issue with this switch or we just notice the problem there first as we use that one a lot and it is one of the ones not hooked up to a load.

I went around trying other switches and I was getting the same symptoms as usual: Anything that invoked a rule didn't work. (These are my Inovelli config button (7) pushes and switches, like the one mentioned, that don't have a load but control another light). But, there was one notable exception, and that was the switch that turns on my Hue bulbs. Since that switch isn't connected to a load that puzzled me.

While I was thinking about and looking at the logs, I saw that pushing this switch showed up in the logs, which seemed to indicate the hub as still responding. I also re-did the rule that controls that first switch and went over to try it when I noticed the light was off. My daughter, who was in that room, told me it had gone off a bit ago. I then turned it back on. It did come on, but only after about what seemed like 20-30 seconds. After that, it started working as it should, i.e. virtually instantly, and all the other switches were working too.

Even though there are 2 switches inside the same room as the hub I see very few paths on my Z-Wave table going through them and many, many more going through another switch, #17 on the table below, which is the first in the list and the first I ever installed. It is actually outside of the room the hub is in and on the far side of that hall. The 2 that are in the same room as the hub are 45 and 46.

As these are all wired switches they shouldn't ever be going to sleep, but I've definitely seen, and posted about before, situations where it takes a long time for a rule to react the first time but much faster after that.

I've already done a total mesh Z-Wave repair, but I'm wondering if I should do it again, or maybe, if there is a way to do it, one-by-one to sort of force a path. (Pushing repair one at a time from the Z-Wave table?) I'm not sure what that might have to do with this lag issue I've been seeing but I don't know what else to do.

Here is my Z-Wave table below. My hub is in the same room as 45 and 46.

[shawnx1]

I have repeaters in the same room as hubs sometimes they get used most times they don’t get used. I stopped looking at paths a long time ago, they will probably never make sense to you. My zwave network is really fast and reliable since I started using a separate hub for zwave & zigbee its probably not the reason why it’s fast but nothing else really changed since adding another hub, zwave devices are all in the same place just a thought.

[rob9]

@shawnx1

since I started using a separate hub for zwave & zigbee

Hmm. Did you disable zigbee on the z-wave hub?

I have very little zigbee on my Hubitat--just 5 buttons. Seems like that shouldn't be a huge issue. But I am rather desperate to figure out why my hub is so wonky.

[Stu_The_K]

As far as I know I don’t have any Zigbee devices, but I’m not sure how my Philips Hie bridge and bulbs work as they were given to me.

[rob9]

If you're using the Phillips Hue bridge--chances are the hub is interacting through their integration (pretty sure Phillips is Zigbee--but it's the Hue hub that is doing the "Zigbee" talking and the Hubitat is talking to the Hue Hub in some manner over TCP/IP).

My question was about whether or not you DISABLED the Zigbee radio on your Hubitat. I'm guessing not.

[Stu_The_K]

No I haven't. Would that affect the Hue bridge/bulbs then? If not, can you please tell me how to do that.

[lewis.heidrick]

All your hue devices are connected to the bridge and not direct connected to the hub, correct?

Settings, Zigbee details, and select disable from the drop down.

[Stu_The_K]

I've now disabled it as I clicked Disabled then the Update button:

Before:

After:

I think the bulbs are going through the Hue integration.

And from the above screenshot the Zigbee Info isn't listing any Zigbee devices.

I also went ahead and ordered 2 Aeotec Range Extender 7s to help beef up the mesh. They'll be here Thursday.

[rob9]

I was only asking, since you indicated a relationship between zigbee and responsiveness.

I was only wondering if your improvement came from turning it off (apparently not).

[erktrek]

I am using the Aeotec and Ring Alarm Rage Extenders. They both work well - though sometimes it takes a while (few weeks) for routing to sort itself out. I think I prefer the Ring a bit more as it has an internal battery and can detect power outages.

Amazon.com: Ring Alarm Range Extender (2nd Gen): Amazon Devices

[Stu_The_K]

I just turned off the Zigbee radio a little while ago. I went with the Aeotec as it seemed I saw a bunch of comments for the Ring about people having some trouble doing the include.

If turning off the Zigbee radio was to have an immediate effect it didn't. I'm getting the same baffling behavior in that I used the switch that fires a rule to turn on the light of an Inovelli Fan+light to 100% and it took about 30 seconds when I pushed it, but then turned off virtually instantly and then back on virtually instantly. I'm 1/2 wondering if there is something between the Inovelli Red Dimmers and the Fan+Light. I know a while ago I got a post from either Eric or Eric_M that they couldn't do an association between the two. I also saw something somewhere that I thought mentioned Inovelli might be doing a Zigbee conversion with the Fan+Light, so I'm wondering if the Fan+Light is really Zigbee and Inovelli is doing something to make it act with/like Z-Wave since everything else they have so far is Z-Wave. But, I'm doubting that as I've seen it happen with just a Red dimmer going to a load where it might take a while the first time to run a rule, but then run the same rule to the same lights much faster if I do it a 2nd time right afterwards.

[erktrek]

They are both good and you can always add more.. haha. The Ring inclusion usually involves putting a paperclip in the hole in the back to get it into classic inclusion mode. Annoying but not too bad.

Here's the relevant bit from Inovelli manual..

Technology Behind the Fan & Light Switch
There are two different wireless protocols that are used to make this fan & light switch. Z-Wave and RF. Z-Wave is what gives the switch remote (smart) control, whereas RF is what connects the switch to the module. In other words, your hub/gateway connects to your switch, where you can tell it to change the speed of the fan or the brightness of the lights. From there the switch sends an RF command to the module to physically make those commands happen at the fan itself.

Knowledge Base Redirect

edit: I really like the look and function of the LZW36 but havent installed any yet. I dunno if they are 700 series or even S2 capable. @Eric_Inovelli confirmed they are below!

[Stu_The_K]

I have 5 of them installed. They say they are 700 series. I had S2 on them but removed that along with all security on all of my devices as some suggested that might have been part of my issue. (Which, apparently, it wasn't since I still have it).

One of the reasons I went with all Inovelli for my switches is that they are the only ones I know of that make a 1 gang fan+light. I'm still finding some little quirks with trying to control the speeds between a dashboard button and the physical button and trying to use the dimmer to set the speed. I tried to create a virtual device to fire a rule that would set the fan speed to 33% for low but I couldn't ever get those to work - but that would be for a different thread.

[Eric_Inovelli]

@erktrek

I dunno if they are 700 series or even S2 capable.

Yup, both + SmartStart enabled

[erktrek]

I missed it when I read the fine manual. That's excellent to know thanks!