Phantom Device Problem

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1

I upgraded my system from a C-8 to a C-8 Pro recently (May 14, 2024).
Following directions I moved all data from the C-8 to the C-8 Pro.

At some point issues began to arise. I am not sure when or what I did
that may have caused the problem.

I now have 45 physical devices (Compatible Device List) and 50
'phantom' devices, those marked 'Discover' in the Z-Wave Details
section.

Each of the 'phantom' devices shows some version, under 'Stats':
PER: 0 RTT avg: 1ms LWR RSSI:
xxdB
Neighbors: 1, Route Changes: 0

All show a Route 01 -> nn (where nn varies). The 'nn' hex value does
not appear in any of the valid devices. Ten of the 'phantom' devices
are marked 'S2 Authenticated'.

I have seen no way to eliminate these devices. Am I in a position
where I have to reset the device and start from scratch?

2

It’s always a first step to do a full shutdown, unplug power from wall, wait ~30 seconds, plug back in, wait for startup and then check again.
That is how to restart the Zwave system. Reboot alone doesn’t.

3

Did you try adding a device as Long Range with Smart Start? That has been known to cause this when the pairing fails. As said above, a shut down with a 30 second power cycle usually gets rid of them if it is something like this.

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4

I have never installed a device using the Smart Start. I shut the system down and left it unplugged for > 30 minutes. When it restarted, nothing had changed, the phantom devices are still present.

I had a similar problem quite a while ago with an ADT system. I quickly abandoned ADT for more than one reason but it also produced a similar situation.

I am beginning to think this is a flaw in the design of ZWave. There should be a way to purge these devices. I have no idea whether the radio code even contains APIs for this purpose.

I would try Zigbee but the cost is far too high and I have no idea whether it suffers from similar issues.

At this point I will reinstall my "old" C-8, get a new license and try to move the devices, one at a time, the the C-8. It will be interesting to see if I can do this without generating the phantom device problem.

Thanks for the comments.

5

Good news is if you fire up the old hub, it should pick up right where it left off.

Before doing a drastic manual migration if you don't have any subscriptions I would first try doing a full reset on the new hub from diagnostics (may need to do it twice to clear both radios per one other user recently). If you do have subscriptions you can reset both radios and then a soft reset. Make sure the Z-wave radio is empty on z-wave details.

Then just try the cloud migration again, once complete check the z-wave details to be sure everything is in order.

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6

I reset the C-8 and it is registered with cloud support. I am concerned about loading the content of the C-8 Pro; it is the one with 50+ 'ghost' devices. It has been my assumption that doing the restore will bring all of the 'ghost' data along with the good data.

The C-8 has no apps and no devices currently. I have installed all of the drivers and apps that are in the C-8 Pro.

7

Sorry did not realize it had been a while already since you migrated, and that you had already reset the old hub.

In that case there is no benefit of going back to the old hub.

I would suggest looking at this post on how to remove the ghost nodes

8

I ordered a UZB stick. I will give that a try. The 'built-in' options do nothing. I tried 'refresh' a few times and once I got a remove option but it did nothing.

The status did change to 'Not responding'. A refresh changes the status to 'pending' with a 'remove' option. Selecting 'remove' spins resetting the status to 'Pending' with the options 'Refresh' and 'Remove. It is a loop; back to 'Pending' with the same two options.

This is not the most impressive software I have used.

9

Another option is if you already have a cloud back of the c8, you can just re restore to the C8