And now there is a new weirdness .. I'm sitting here working (not on Hubitat things), and the compressor in my garage turned on. There are tons of things that I have tried to turn on/off testing the C8, however, that module is not one of them ... it hasn't been commanded since long before the C5 was shut down.
I don't recall ever having a device randomly turn itself on in the entire time I've been using zwave. I've had devices fail to respond to commands, but never had one imagine a command ...
@support_team do you want these logs before I disconnect the C8, or do you have anything else worth trying? I'm getting no where and now there seem to be gremlins in the system.
Ok ... this is tiresome. things were dead all morning ... and now they work again. I have done nothing, changed nothing ... literally nothing. The only things that have happened since this morning ...
Failed attempts to open blinds via Alexa
Failed attempt to turn off a randomly on module in my garage via dashboard
Failed attempt to turn on/off a couple lights via Alexa
(I'm not counting any updates from switches with local loads being manually activated)
Then I walk through the kitchen 10 minutes ago ... motion sensor turns on the lights (to my surprise) ... I go back and test all of the failed things from earlier that didn't work all morning and everything is good. Now I'm going back to wondering if the C8 is just faulty.
Possible, just not the most likely. The symptoms you describe in this particular message.. was bad, now working, nothing changed.. is what I associate with a "busy" Hub. In effect, it's busy waiting for timeouts, or the ZRadios queues are full, etc. It's busy working on more than a few tasks that are failing. The failure is handled, as in the case of timeouts, or by getting to the end of the ZRadio queues, and so errors aren't generated.
You said much the same in the message above this...
I don't know if you have an open Ticket on this, but I'd suggest asking Hubitat to look at your Engineering logs for hints there. Remember, the engineering logs are rarely as specific as the exposed system logs. They are full of deeply esoteric methods that aren't terribly useful without the full source.
I get that, but it isn't the hub so much as the just the zwave module here. zigbee is not affected (from what I've noticed), network and cloud devices are not affected and rules and commands that are attached to those seem to process just fine even while the zwave mesh is unresponsive. And while I get the prospect of timeouts, retries, broadcasts etc. slowing down or even saturation the mesh network ... I'm hard pressed to imagine it killing communications for hours (minutes, maybe) unless something is creating a storm ... the packets must have a TTL (or equivalent) don't they? The mesh has to be smart enough not to pass messages in circles forever .. no? This is why I'm wondering if it's the radio on the C8 that is actually not responding during the "dead" times.
I have 2 switches using zwave associations with each other ... during the next "dead" cycle, whenever that occurs, I can try to remember to test them specifically. Is it save to assume that a saturated mesh would block the association messages as well, and therefor they shouldn't work?
Over 90% of my automation is based on zwave, so that's been the focus here. I've just gone through the thread and though I swore I mentioned that the zigbee side appears unaffected, I didn't spot it anywhere, so I apologize if I did failed to make that clear once I realized it (if it matters). I only have like two lights and some contact sensors on zigbee, so I noticed by accident at some point that still worked.
As far as the hub goes "busy" wise, it has now been up 1d 13h 17m 17s and the largest process offender is an LG TV integration driver that has consumed 133 seconds of that total uptime which crushed the second largest offender that used up 24 seconds. So, if the hub is busy (which it very well could be), I don't think it's doing anything user facing.
This happened for the first and only time right before I posted that. That was the point I was ready to give, and just put the C5 back in. I have not contacted support outside of this thread. I was kind of hoping that @bobbyD might hop in with some guidance at some point.
I finally had to bail on the C8 as it was getting insufferable, and had to revert to the C5. Unfortunately, upon shutting down the C8 and powering back up the C5, none of my Zigbee devices are accessible anymore ... so am I screwed now?
On the bright side, all of the zwave issues that came with the C8 have gone away, but at the moment, it doesn't feel much like things have improved.
Just reset each Zigbee device and re-pair it to your C-5 hub one by one. They will snap right back into their previous 'devices' on the hub. Do not remove these devices from the C-5 hub. Do not edit any of your Apps or Rules. Just reset and re-pair each Zigbee device and your C-5 hub should be back up and running.
Also, I would recommend that you RESET the C-8's Zigbee and Z-Wave radios if you ever try to power it back up. Otherwise, it will once again try to control both the Zigbee and Z-Wave mesh networks.
Not the best answer in the world, but could be worse, I guess.
My intention is to get the C8 running … but I need some determination of what went wrong during the upgrade. If it is actually faulty, I need to figure that out … but the Hubitat people are MIA here.
As mentioned at the start of the thread, unlike a lot of people, I don’t just depend on the hub for convenience features anymore … there are basic things in my house that can’t happen without it - like turning on bedroom lights and/or opening blackout blinds. I just need it to actually work.
Pretend you run on the C-5 for a few days or a week before deciding to try the C-8 again. You take another cloud backup. As before, turn off the C-5 and power on the C-8. It will come up, fully ready to 'take over' anything it finds. Resetting the C-8 as described by @ogiewon prevents that. The C-8 would be, almost factory fresh. (A soft reset in addition, would make it even closer to factory fresh... only retaining hub registration.)
In contrast, it might be interesting to do a LOCAL backup and restore from the C-5 to the C-8. That would get all the rules and apps onto the C-8 and NONE of the devices. Then, using HubMesh, mirror some or all of the devices to the C-8. Disable rules and apps on the C-5 allowing the C-8 to do all the work... but using the C-5 as the Z-Device handler. In my mind, it's a divide-and-conquer approach to stressing the C-8 cpu, memory, while leaving the radio work to the C-5.
Zigbee is remarkably easy to migrate. The hard part in my mind is finding all the manuals with the magic incantations (button clicks) to get a device into Pairing. I also grumble at climbing ladders to get to my Zigbee in-canopy fan controllers.
I'm quite clear on the ramifications here, and be it this C8 or a replacement .. it will be "factory fresh" before another attempt is made regardless of what form that attempt takes. I have significant concerns about my C8's behavior in this attempt, and I'm a little leery about putting any eggs in that basket again without some answers.
This thread has been open for 5 days and over 54 entries during which time I dealt with the issues and family inconvenience hoping for some deeper diagnostics. @support_team and @bobbyD have been tagged multiple times and I submitted two warranty requests to the online form suggested earlier trying to get someones attention (the second because I never got an email confirmation to the first, and figured maybe I typed it wrong .. notably, no acknowledgement of the second either). So far, not one person that may have been able to provide deeper insight has bothered to poke their head in anywhere, and either assist, or just point out that I'm an idiot in someway or another (I don't mind being called out as an idiot, but I don't think that's the case here). This bothers me. I'm grateful for the attempts to help that I received from you and others, but clearly, the problem needs more understanding (or access) to the inner-workings to nail it down. But all I've gotten is crickets.
Indeed, and that is my issue as well ... the zigbee stuff is not sitting out in the open, nor is it easy to access or in-cant; so while the process might be a bit less painful than with z-wave - it is exactly that; a process. It needs a lot of time that I don't really have to spare right now. I specifically pay for the Hub Protect service so that I never need to go through this process, and on it's first time out I'm seeing no value in it. It worked towards the C8, which was great ... but when that fell apart, there was no support, no response, and no backing from HE.
Without those things, frankly, I'm not sure how much more interesting Hubitat is over Home Assistant (or other alternatives) - That stuff is part of the appeal here - they're invovled. I'm not trying to instigate any type of conversation on the merits of one over the other .. I'm just pointing out that these are some of the things that sway people, myself included, in Hubitats direction; and in this instance, I'm seeing no benefit. I'm not trashing HE here, and I'm not going to take my devices elsewhere anytime soon; however, the level of confidence I've had in HE over the years to continue recommending them/it to other people has taken a pretty big hit. Just for perspective on that, last year I bought several C7's to give away as Christmas gifts, but its decreasingly likely that anyone will be finding C8's in their stockings this time around.
Sorry for the troubles. For some reason we didn't receive your cases. I am looking at that issue, first then I'll be looking at your hub and send you a private message with our findings.
For those on this thread, bobbyD did pull the engineering logs about a week ago, and his assessment boiled down to "its super odd" and "rather interesting", at which point he attempted to pull in more help. Unfortunately, that was the last communication I got despite several bumps since then.
If an actual root cause/solution is ever identified, I'll post it for the record, but right now I've got nothing.
If @bobbyD and the team is investigating, and trying to figure out a root cause of your "odd" and "interesting" troubles, they may not know the answer within a week. Even if they do know the root cause, it may take more than a week to code a fix. Maybe it even requires a fix outside of the Hubitat firmware itself?
