Good Afternoon,
I have two rules setup.
1st rule, when i double tap my porch lights, my backyard string lights and side yard string lights turn on.
2nd Rule, when i double tap my porch lights, my backyard string lights and side yard string lights turn off.
It seems to take a while at times to turn them on or off. In the attached log, I see re-sending supervised session and then about 30 seconds later the lights show they are turned on then turn off (since i double tapped the button to turn off).
Can anyone help me understand what is happening? This is driving me nuts. I've added a repeater but this hasn't helped resolve the issue.
Thanks,
Craig
First need to know what Hub model you have, what device(s) these are, and what Type/driver are you using.
If your hub is C7+ then post a screenshot of the entire Z-wave details page.
FYI, the re-sending supervised session I suspect is that the device is not responding properly to an S2 encrypted supervised message, so the driver has a built in re-try mechanism. The fact that this is happening frequently says there is a problem with your zwave mesh or possibly just that one device is out of range or having issues.
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Thanks for the reply! For encryption, is it necessary?
Hub - C7
Version - 2.3.6.134
Sideyard String Lights connected to: Minoston Outdoor Dimmer Plug
Link: ( Minoston Z-Wave Outdoor Dimmer Plug, Outdoor Smart Outlet Switch, Z-Wave Hub Required, Weatherproof, Built-in Repeater, Work with SmartThings, Wink, Alexa, Black(MP22ZD): Amazon.com: Tools & Home Improvement)
Driver: Generic Z-Wave Plus Dimmer
Backyard String Lights connected to: Enbrighten Z-wave Plus Plug
Link: ( Enbrighten 14298 Z-Wave Plus Plug-In Outdoor Smart Switch, Gen5, Black - Amazon.com)
Driver: Generic Z-Wave Plus Outlet
How long was the hub up when you got that screenshot? If you look at the route changes for your Side Yard String lights you can see it is off the chart compared to the rest. This tells me the device is struggling to communicate and constantly re-routing to find a better path but it does not seem to be able to find one.
The device is paired with S2, so comms are encrypted. If it is necessary is up to you. I was not even aware the stock drivers had implemented supervision retries. I tested it out on some of my drivers and found it just caused more issues than anything else, usually if the devices doesn't respond the first time its never going to respond in my experiences.
You could try the driver Minoston has posted which I do not think does the supervised retries, I think it may actually make it worse as it seems the reties may be helping in your case? Firmware/Drive | Minoston | In reality these are just some basic user created drivers that Minoston has grabbed from gitHub and posted on their site (not sure if they communicated with the author or not).
I suspect though you may need a strategically placed repeating device between that plug and the hub to get it working better.
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Thanks! It's been up for only an hour or so. I've tried to run a repair on that device but that didn't seem to help. The dining room extender is about 25 feet from the hub and the minoston plug is about 20 feet from the dining room extender. It's pretty close. In looking at my zwave graph, the range extender in the garage connects to the backyard string lights and then the side yard string lights. I'm wondering if this route is causing my issue.
I honestly never thought that map would be useful to troubleshoot anything but here we are, that is actually very insightful on what I would call a weaker mesh.
Those "connections" just mean those two devices know the other one exists and are on speaking terms, nothing more really (called neighbors). They may never route through each other because it is never the fastest route when pinging for a route change.
The Side Yard light is the worse problem, I would focus on that one first. 26 route changes in a hour is very significant. You can see that it does not even have the Dining room lights or extender as a neighbor. Its two seemingly best options are BY Porch and Under Cab, both of those also have no direct route to the hub. This is a lose-lose situation.
Looks like both your dining room and garage extenders are neighboring with a similar group of devices. Maybe one of those could be related to be closer to the back/side yard area but close enough to the hub so it can be a one hop route?
For comparison my mesh is pretty rock solid (the stragglers are unpluged/disabled right now).
You can see the map is pretty useless except just to brag with. This is what you want it to look like.
I have 0 dedicated repeaters also. House has a 1300sqft footprint.
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This is a great picture. How can I improve my mesh network? I guess i was under the assumption by adding my extenders, this would be the fix to build a strong mesh network.
Looking at your image again, it looks like it is pretty solid besides a few stragglers like the two problematic devices you are having issues with. If you were to drag those extenders into the circle more it would start to look more like mine does.
I would definitely say look at the locations of your extenders and see if you can rearrange them to get better coverage in the back/side yard area. Consider that if you have any metal boxes/walls/siding between things its going to greatly reduce the range.
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Thank you. In moving the extenders around, can I just unplug it and move it? Or do I need to re-run a repair for the devices to try and learn a new path? (I believe that's the point of a z-wave repair).
I would just unplug and move it first, let it get settled for a little bit. Then you could try doing a repair on the problematic device. It may take it a day or two to really get settled in.
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Just confirming, it can take a few days for a z-wave device to "learn" a new path correct? I know zibee has a "self-heal" but z-wave takes longer if not mistaken.
It just depends really. The problem device may not discover the new routes right away (or ever sometimes). You might be able to move a device, do a couple repairs and everything is working fine. Or, they may try and hang onto the old routes for a while.
You could try doing a global repair as well, but if you mash on the repair too much you can cause even more issues sometimes (temporary issues only).
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Good to know. Thank you! In looking at the Z-wave details, i happened to notice the "route" for the backyard string lights appears to take 4 hops. Could this be a problem as well? I'm assuming the stronger the mesh network the less routes but i'm not sure.
A direct route will show two nodes, the device and the hub. So if you see 4 nodes it is a 2 hop route.
IMO anything over 1 hop should be avoided unless you have a very solid but spread out mesh then 2 hops could probably work fine as well for edge devices that are far from the hub.
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Thanks for the help. I'll move some of the extenders around and see if that helps, along with trying a z-wave refresh on the specific device after a few days. Worst case, I end up getting a few more extenders and hopefully that resolves this issue.
If you have any dumb light switches you want to upgrade those also make great repeaters (unless you have metal boxes). That's the core of my mesh is all the light switches.
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Thanks for the info! I still have a bunch of dumb light switches. I will definitely change them.
Sorry one last tip along those lines, unless you really want only on/off I would suggest dimmers in most locations. Sometimes you end up only using 100% but the cost difference is usually minimal or the same, so I opted for dimmers in most locations.
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Agreed! I have a few switches that i'll replace with dimmers for sure. I removed the minoston device from the rule i was using and my backyard string lights work perfectly now. Not sure if it's the device that just doesn't have the best signal. The other GE device is right next to it. I'll keep an eye on zwave map and see if anything changes over time. Thanks again for the help!
Just checked. In moving the extender closer, the string lights have 5 paths now instead of 3 like yesterday.
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