At the risk of sounding daft, I'm wondering if someone can explain a few scenarios where one might want to poll a device. It sounds to me like it might be handy for checking in on a device like a contact sensor that doesn't report its status always. But I am admittedly uninformed here.
That's exactly what it's for, except it only works with dimmers and switches right now.
For example, I have several GE Z-Wave switches. They do not always report when they are turned on. The poll should pick that change up on the next 10 second poll. When picked up, apps and such that haven't learned of the change (since it wasn't reported) can then act on it.
- If you have Z-Wave dimmers and switches that report state changes reliably, they do not belong in Z-Wave Poller.
- If you have Z-Wave dimmers and switches that are inconsistent in reporting state changes reliably as they happen, put them in Z-Wave Poller.
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Thank you - I may very well have some Z-Wave dimmers and switches that are inconsistent in reporting state changes, but I don't yet know about them because they haven't caused any problems so far. I assume the first time I see an error I'll include them in Z-Wave Poller.
So far the only devices I occasionally have issues with are contact sensors. ie: a SmartThings Multipurpose Sensor on my fridge that periodically doesn't report when it's closed. That's Zigbee though.
Don’t “react” to a single failure. The tool more or less causes a non-ZWave Plus device to act like a ZWave Plus.
Before ZWave Plus, dimmers couldn’t return status because Luton had a patent. ZWave Plus gave manufacturers a means of returning status, and then Lutron let the patent expire.
If you have a ZWave dimmer, it needs to be added to Poller, unless of course you don’t care about accurate status.. and I bet there are many of those situations.
I have 16 Z-Wave non-plus dimmers/switches/plugins. None have been in crucial situations where I would've noticed, but I'll add them anyway.
Don’t “react” to a single failure.
Wait, are you sure you're in the right forum? 
Here's the criteria.
If you activate the device physically and the device doesn't update the driver state, then it could be a candidate for polling.
If you activate the device physically and it updates the driver correctly, then do not poll it.
There are many many non plus devices that report correctly.
Switches and plugs were never impacted by the Patent, just dimmers. For that reason, "There are many many non plus devices that report correctly."
To me, there's two obvious reasons for needing rapid status.... 1) the device is a Condition for a Rule or Trigger; 2) the device is displayed on a dashboard and it's important that it be matching.
I know I have many devices that fall outside of that, not least of which is I'm the only one around this house that even knows we have a dashboard. 
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Okay, this appears to be seriously slowing down my Z-Wave response time. Not 45mins after enabling Z-Wave Polling, one of my switches did kind of a power surge thing where the lights flickered for a second. It is now almost totally unresponsive to digital interaction. If it's reacting, there is a ~30s-1m delay.
Same behavior with all my Z-Wave switches/dimmers/plugs. Almost no response.
Nothing in the logs.
How many devices are you polling?
- I turned it off, and none of the devices work anymore. (or, there's an immeasurable delay) I think I need to reboot. EDIT: Didn't need to reboot - eventually it caught up.
Maybe I shouldn't be polling so many things at once...
Are you Polling via RM or using the new ZWave Poller app (new in 1.1.7) ?
Because the Poller app is supposed to spread those out across time. RM polling does all of them piled together.
The ZWave Poller app. Looks like it was updating every 10s?
I don't need to be polling this many devices anyway, and as you mentioned, dimmers seem the most likely candidate.
Still, if the Poller app was getting bogged down, and wasn't supposed to, maybe it should be looked at.
16 devices divided into 10 seconds = 625ms or just over half a second between.
Before I turned off logging:
I'm polling 23 devices. I had a few more in there a day or two ago but had a couple times when things ran with delays. Not sure if it's coincidence but I removed probably 10 devices from Poller and response improved. May remove more if i experience delays again. Have not had anything like what you are describing though.
I tried "Z-Wave Poller" with 10 older GE Z-Wave switches and dimmers this morning to see if the new app resolved the previous issues I had seen trying to use Rule Machine to refresh these device. After about an hour, I started to experience slow down type issues on my hub. After clicking the "Stop Polling" button in the "Z-Wave Poller" App, everything went back to normal.
I have reduced the number of old GE switches down to 2, to see if the problem comes back.
