I've completely migrated off ST at this point and been running pretty smoothly on Hubitat for about 2 weeks now. However I have a few devices including Zwave Smoke Detectors that go "inactive" in the device list after a period of time. If I click refresh the device instantly turns to "active". Can someone help me understand how inactive comes into play? And is it ok for a device to go inactive? Is this a battery saving mechanism? or something else? I've noticed from a few other threads that some folks have setup "refresh" rules. Is this ok? or not considered a best practice? Thanks!!!!
It is normal for devices to be marked as inactive, it just means that an event has not occurred for them in the last 24 hours. It is quite common to have devices go inactive that are infrequently used. For instance I have a side door that we never open, the contact sensor on that door is marked as inactive. If I were to go open it, it would flip to active.
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@chuck.schwer thanks for the quick response. So is it safe to say having a rule to "refresh" the device is pretty much pointless? Is there a way to determine if a device is Inactive vs not communicating back to Hubitat? 3rd party app?
Periodic refreshes will only shorten the battery life. Look at the Z-Wave information in settings. Check the dates here to see if it is communicating.
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@danfox52 thanks. Do different devices have different check-in periods? Or only check-in based upon going active for some reason? For example, my smoke detectors hadn't checked in for over a week. How do I know they are still properly connected?
My FIrst Alert Smoke/CO detector only checks in if I press the Test button on it. So I do it every month or two just to make sure it is still connected and the battery is acceptable. That's all I know to do. Pressing refresh in Hubitat doesn't seem to do anything.
Refresh on a battery Z-Wave device will do nothing while it's inactive, where as a Zigbee battery device will respond within 7 seconds or less while inactive.
All zigbee devices check into their parent for any messages every 7 seconds max per the spec, Z-wave wakes up based on the wake up interval set by the driver, or if none was set, the hub sets it to 4 hours.
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By "do nothing" do you mean not bring back any data? Refresh does make some of my Zwave devices go from inactive to active however based upon the info below this really doesn't do anything except waste battery. 
Correct
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Thanks all.. Super helpful information!
I have a similar situation, but pressing Refresh, or Configure does not make it active. Like you it can be controlled via the web interface, and works in Rules, but still shows as Inactive.
The problem I have with that is that after not having my hub on for over a week (due to needing to replace my HE power supply), not all zigbee/zwave devices will reconnect. I don't easily know which ones are giving false negatives, and which are just not connecting?? Frustrating to say the least.
Unfortunately pressing poll or refresh on all devices make it active. It depends on the drive and what they do when that method is executed.
I feel the same way. I wrote an app to poll and refresh as many of my devices as possible, but find that the virtual devices will always go inactive if you don't use them often. If anything these should just stay active. They are always online.
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