Physical Events Not Logging Consistently

I moved the iris above my sink to the wall above my shower. I will know how it works in the morning. Thanks for the recommendations.

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Has anyone else seen where if you call refresh on multiple devices simultaneously you’ll receive duplicate updates from a single device causing the update to take longer than it should? I sometimes see 5 updates for a single device right after another even though it’s only called once from rule machine. I had the same issue in webcore too until I added a 600ms delay between each refresh call. It’s like it’s sending the same zwave refresh packet more than once.

Yes, I do see duplicate updates for every refresh.

Yes I do as well. Every now and then a switch that I have on a refresh rule will turn on randomly too. Quite frustrating.

I'm seeing a lot of confusion about both some of the zwave standards and the Lutron patent in this thread. And I know smartthings never explained any of it, so just to add a little clarity:

  1. The Lutron instant status patents never applied to binary on/off switches. Only to dimmer switches which are physically manipulated. But it did apply to every RF protocol: zigbee,, zwave, Lutron, etc.

Zwave implemented this with the Hail commandset. If the Z wave device doesn't support hail, it isn't using the Lutron patent.

  1. There are two separate ways that zwave manufacturers got around the patent up until mid 2017: direct association and central scene. Direct association bypasses the hub and therefore in most systems the hub will get out of sync as far as what the status is for the devices. Central scene does report to the hub so status should be more reliable in the devices that are using that.

  2. Z wave direct association changed significantly with Z wave plus. Very significantly. See the following:

Note also that the hail command class was deprecated for the newest Z wave plus devices, and they should be using lifeline association instead. But because zwave is required to be backwards compatible, hubs should continue to support hail so the older devices will continue to work.

See Section 4.17 in the Management Commands documentation.

http://zwavepublic.com/sites/default/files/command_class_specs_2017A/SDS13782-5%20Z-Wave%20Management%20Command%20Class%20Specification.pdf

  1. when a message goes through a repeater, the fact that the initial action was "physical" rather than "digital" is often lost, but it depends on the exact model that does the repeating. This tends to mess up a lot of rules engines that are trying to trigger off of physical. It also means that you can get inconsistent results depending on exactly which repeater any one message goes through.

SmartThings recognized eventually that this was causing a lot of their customer support questions so they changed their stock device type handlers about six months ago simply to remove reporting anything as physical. (Without announcing the change). This at least produced consistency because it no longer mattered which repeater a message had routed through, but it did cause quite a bit of code to break.

  1. as those of you who know me from the SmartThings forum know, I hate polling, so I'm not even going to discuss the multiple issues involved in that. (Which also apply to refresh)

  2. if we think of devices as falling into good/better/best, the GE switches are in the good category.

If you want an efficient zwave network with full Synch, choose Devices that use central scene commands.

If you want to use the older (now discontinued) GE models, you'll either have to do a lot of polling or a lot of planning to get everything working through the right repeaters.

If you have changed your network configuration, which is what happens when you only move over a few devices at a time, you can expect that you may have different results if you are relying on physical reporting from older GE switches.

  1. while the homeseer switches which offer double tap (which fall into the "better" category) use central scenes, the newer GE devices do not. They rely on the new Z wave plus association capabilities. That means if you want to sync them with the hub, you have to include the hub in the correct Association group and even if you do that if it's more than 1 hop away you may lose some information.

GE Switch association matrix (model 14294)

https://products.z-wavealliance.org/products/2105/assoc?noFilename=True

Not sure if any of that is of any help, but I thought I would mention it. :sunglasses:

@patrick @mike.maxwell

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Yes, we have two drivers intended for use with these types of devices, they also have button capacities.

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I am not a fan of polling, and right now it breaks the hub for me, but hopefully that will get fixed soon. It seems to me that using a periodic rule to poll is flooding the system, so maybe needs a delay in between if not already doing that. I would like for the dashboard to properly tell me the state of my dimmers and switches so if I need to poll then I will. All my dimmers (3) and switches (8) are old and at least for now, not planning on replacing any of them.

Thanks @JDRoberts for the clarification! Every piece of information is helpful.

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@JDRoberts what switches/brands would you put in the better and best categories? Some of my GE switches continue to present issues and I am willing to switch out the most often/automated ones. I am would assume Casata are “best” but the investment is high given the hub cost. Do Zooz or Dome report better?

It's all somewhat subjective, but I personally would put Zooz and dome at the high-end of the "good" category.

I would put a Lutron Caseta at the high-end of the "better" category because while they are extremely while engineered there are a couple of features missing altogether. But there are other people who would put them into the "best" category, and that's justifiable as well. You start getting into aesthetic choices here. If you need a switch that operates without a neutral, they're going to jump into "best" for you. Anyway, I really like these, I'm just saying that people do argue about where they fall. :sunglasses:

I used to put Cooper at the high-end of the "better" category, but since they haven't come out with Z wave plus versions, they have fallen to the low-end of the better category. Excellent features, good design and engineering, but it this point it's older technology.

Some Leviton models are at the high-end of the "better" category and some are at the low-end of the "best" category. Well engineered, lots of features, and frequent technology updates. Biggest drawback is always cost with these, they are significantly higher price than other devices with almost the same set of features.

Homeseer is definitely in the better category, but people are going to disagree as to where they fall within that category. It again depends a lot on what features you're looking for.

I personally would put inovelli at the high-end of the better category. Very nice features, they just lack some of the design pizazz, including color options.

I personally would put the Fibaro micros at the low-end of the "best" category. Amazing feature set, well engineered. But there are other people who would drop them down because they don't have the longevity of Lutron, and I can't really argue with that. It just comes down to what's important to you.

So as I said, there's a lot of subjectivity in these rankings. :sunglasses:

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Awesome thank you!

BTW, I'll admit the Zooz marketing annoys me. :rage:

They don't use central scene commands, so they try to make that sound like a good thing by saying:

Based on universal command classes - supported by most Z-Wave controllers

Meh. Newer controllers support central scene commands, saying "We aren't using the newest technology so our devices work exactly the same even with older generation controllers" may be seen as a plus by some shoppers, but personally I see The way it's worded as intentionally misleading.

JMO

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Ok. So I've tried to use refresh on my Leviton Decora Smart Dimmer (No. DZ6HD) and the device never refreshes in Hubitat. If I click the ON button within the device, it updates fine. Is anyone else having this problem. My GE switches refresh fine.

That indicates that the dimmer isn't reporting its status (or at least doesn't respond to the refresh command). When you click refresh, Hubitat asks the switch for it's current status and updates the displayed switch state when it gets a response. When you click on, Hubitat sends an on command and also updates the switch state, regardless of whether the dimmer actually turns on or not.

This depends entirely on the driver implementation.

For hubitat's zwave switch and dimmer drivers, only Generic ZWave switch and dimmer have been implemented this way, this driver is specifically for devices that aren't capable of self reporting.
If a self reporting device is used with this driver, you may see two events in the live logging.

If you see two events in the live logging (when Enable descriptionTextlogging is enabled), then your device appears able to self report and you may have better results using the Generic ZWave Smart series.

Both the smart and the central scene driver series only send events when the driver reports.

The Leviton should report status changed physically via the hail command. That would be different than most other Z wave switches.

https://products.z-wavealliance.org/products/1910

@mike.maxwell

TIL

Interesting. Is that documented somewhere?

I have a few of these Leviton dimmers. They are great on their own, but do not update state if turned on or off from a slave dimmer or switch. because of this I have switched to Homeseer dimmers.

@bravenel

Hi, It seems the Generic zwave lock logging for refresh does not get disable by the switch as well?

Also is there a way to disable the RM logging for the refresh rule triggered?

image

Debug logging for devices is turned on initially when the device is installed, it should turn itself off after 30 minutes, it will also turn off if reenabled via the web ui.
The bigger issue here is why are you you polling the lock every 10 seconds, or at all for that matter?

I can guarantee that polling a secure device every 10 seconds is not going to increase system responsiveness.

@mike.maxwell
I find that the lock does not always report when it is locked or unlocked. A refresh always brings it back in sync.

I had a webcore piston running to refresh it every 5 minutes which was working, however this meant any automations triggered off it could be 5 minutes late. Including the front door is unlocked announcements. I am trying to get away from using webcore, so I setup this RM rule.

I was reading through this thread and thought the suggested solution was to refresh these devices every 10 seconds or so.

The lock is pretty far from the hub, however I have several zwave repeaters in place. Z wave repairs do not resolve issue even though everything seems to come back clean.