[Solved] I have likely done something.. Z-Wave devices gone from stick (Resolved - just had to have patience)

I am not sure what happened but this morning I awoke to find no z-wave devices in the Z-Wave details section - which I assume means gone from the DB on the stick. Devices are listed in the device section so HE still knows about them.

I've been adding a bunch of devices like Zooz switches and dimmers and Aeon multisensors for my upstairs reno but have been having trouble pairing things. Probably have created ghost devices etc because some would not finish initializing and I would try and exclude manually (via Aeon stick) etc. Have rebooted/shutdown hub multiple times, relocated stick to other USB port etc. No go..

Not sure where to go from here.. restore from backup? Will that fix the stick?

I will also say that for me this is going to be a bit of a nightmare if I have to recreate from scratch. I have a bunch of different devices each with their own exclude procedures. The Zigbee ones are fine but some of the Z-Wave are behind the switch types. Recreating rules I've created and forgotten about because they just work etc. WAF is at an all time low this morning.
I do have an Aeon stick so excluding devices so that will help.

One issue this brings up is how we can manage large number of devices. Things are easy if you only have a couple but as you get over 100 (I have about 121 + some virtual stuff) it becomes much harder. Mostly it's just finding the devices you need to futz with. Device selection lists become unwieldy etc.

Have pinged support but not sure how responsive they will be over the weekend.

Again I think it's something I did but I wish I knew what it was so could report back.

It's a mess, nothing works except the Zigbee stuff.

Have you tried rebooting the hub?

Also, for long lists of devices, there is a search field at the top.

@bravenel: It would be awesome if devices could be assigned to "rooms" for the sole purpose of grouping them into containers. Having the ability to filter the list by a "room" would really help with large device counts.

Mmmm.. I did that earlier and nothing happened. Just went to check the details and the devices are back??

They weren't there for a long while this morning. I wonder if I have something that's slowing things down (I do NOT have WC installed!!!!) anyway woooooooohoooooo!!!!!!!

I am SOOO glad I waited and didn't overreact (other than drama) like I usually do.

In terms of the search - yes have used that. It would be nice if we could have another column like category/group descript or something and a filter. I use the column sorting a lot but it would be nice to isolate a group of devices like "upstairs" or "utility room" etc. These would just be labels/tags attached to the devices. Tags would be ideal so you could have multiple groupings as needed. Also dropdown tag list for filtering..

I have 250 devices, and don't even use search. I understand the problem! Everything takes time, and we have devoted a lot of time to the UI, and there is yet more to be done. @SteveV, a rooms organization is on our list to do, and is not a small undertaking. Once you have rooms, you want them to have more capability than just organizing a list of devices.

So I think a simple tag field in the DB would do the trick. You could assign your own tags via a comma separated list in a text box on the device page and then on the device listing page provide a dropdown list of those tags. Something like that. The tags etc don't have to do anything other than provide isolation in the device listing page itself. Just an additional management tool to help.

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Also those tags could be used to filter things in other areas were device selections happen. That is another pain point for large # of devices.

That is one thing my internet gateway (Untangle) does. They just made a capability to add "tags" to a device, then added "tag" as a filter that can be used most places in the system.

That way, they don't get requests from users - Can I sort this way? Can I sort that way? Can I arbitrarily group these devices together and do something?

Once they added the "tag" attribute, and added that into rules, etc - similar to groups - all that ended. Oh, and each device can have multiple tags.