Remotec ZRC90 dropping with low battery

[cjcharles]

Hi all,

I love my ZRC-90 and have used it since smartphones with great success, having stacks of macros in important places, primarily bed!

However it really bugs me that when the battery dies it drops off the network, and a battery change does not bring it back. I have to fully unpair and repair it to get it to appear again. I've tried various button combinations on the back to avoid this process but so far unsuccessful.... Using default device handler.

Has anybody else experienced a similar thing or have ideas to avoid?

[Rxich]

Did you check if the device has a refresh button under Z-wave details

[cjcharles]

There is a refresh button on zwave details, but it doesn't seem to do anything and just ends up in pending state. I also tried a repair but that didn't help either.

Is there any good debugging location to work out what is happening on zwave as to why it has lost connection? E.g. can hubitat hear it, but it's discarding information due to security? Or the device is using the wrong channel since battery change or something?

[Rxich]

So when you hit the refresh button are you pressing the learn button(L) on the back of the unit? If all goes well the device should slot back in to the hub.

and it's not security or channel issues

[cjcharles]

I tried that (but not close to the hub) but didn't have any luck so resorted to full removal, but obviously now I'm in an even worse position as no amount of excluding and factory resetting seems to be allowing it to be it included.

So funny (/really freaking annoying) that I've done this 5/6 times before over the life of Hubitat ,and whilst they've all been a bit fiddly I've never struggled this much!

[cjcharles]

When do you change battery? And what is your process when you do, to keep everything working?

[Rxich]

So these are the Hubitat instructions, which I couldn't get to work

Inclusion instructions

1. Select the Start Z-Wave Inclusion button.
2. Press L & R buttons simultaneously until the LED lights up. The LED will keep flashing slowly.
3. Press the program button. The LED will flash 1 time, then remain off if the device was successfully included.
4. If the LED flashes 6 times rapidly, then remains off, the device has failed to be inclusion.

Factory reset instructions

1. Press and keep holding the R button for a minimum of 10 seconds.
2. Release the R button and then click 3 times on the same R button within 2 seconds.

Make sure that the device has been excluded and/or reset to factory defaults. Hubitat Elevation® can only discover one Z-Wave device at a time.

[cjcharles]

Pressing all of the buttons (1-8) after pressing L+R did finally get this enrolled! Im not sure if it was a specific button, but I hadnt been pressing any of those and was just relying on a million different combinations of the L+R buttons.

Not sure how this is different when I do a battery replace (rather than full enrol) but I have to say those instructions helped because of their mention on program button (whatever that is other than 1-8 Im not sure)

[Rxich]

Not to generate more aggravation, but the device should not fall off when the battery is changed. I've seen devices fall of after a battery change with Zigbee but never with Z-wave.
If the z-wave details screen looks good and the device is working, I suspect if you pop out the batteries, it should stay connected once they are reinserted.

This is what "healthy" connected devices look like

EDIT- so in order to confirm my observation, I just re-paired my ZRC-90. I confirmed the Z-wave details looked good, and validated every button press. I then removed the batteries for about 20 seconds, when replaced the device was still connected and works fine.

Your device data section should look like this:

I believe your issue was a fluke, unless you have another Z-wave device on your network that is dropping messages or otherwise performing incorrectly.

Are you brave enough to try ?

[cjcharles]

Ive never had the Remotec ZRC-90 show the repair option, only ever refresh (unlike all other devices on my network).

That said I dont think a quick battery removal is a problem, the problem comes if I dont use the device for a week or so and hence don't notice it isnt working - when I eventually change the batteries it doesnt come back. I have successfully changed batteries before without it dropping off the network permanently. Im sure I could solve this by remembering to change the batteries more often for freshly charged ones, but I kind of wanted to understand what was going on!