Totally frustrated with the Z-Wave mesh

Which is better to run

Simple Lighting or Motion Lighting?

I too had to re-pair about half of my Zigbee bulbs after the 130 release...Maybe the code didn't change but something happened. I have also had similar unreliability with a motion triggered lighting setup. I have a z-wave motion sensor that triggers one GE Z-Wave switch and some bridged Hue bulbs that works great sometimes. I've experienced similar unreliability with my door sensors and garage lights. I haven't had time to troubleshoot further but I feel the frustration too.

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Same here had to repair my Zigbee bulbs after 130 release.

I also noticed a small lag in Simple Lightning which wasn't there before. I have Iris & Hue motion sensors triggering both Z-wave inwall switches and Zigbee ZHA inwall switches so it seems to be more related to app delay rather than radio protocol.

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I just moved to Motion Lighting app. Going to try that app out for awhile and see what happens.

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I suspect that your Zigbee network is not setup well. Those are the symptoms of that. How many wired repeaters do you have? Bulbs make awful repeaters, and often cause big problems in Zigbee networks when there are not adequate real repeaters. Most likely the view that 130 caused this is just projection, and connecting two things that are not cause and effect. That is, your Zigbee network has issues, you updated to 130, and it still has issues ==> blame 130 (erroneously).

You are going to need to do troubleshooting at a more basic level to determine why your system isn't working as you want. It's not the app, it's something much more fundamental that is going on. Do you have a lot of Zigbee bulbs? Do you have enough powered repeaters?

See this article: https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=How_to_Build_a_Solid_Zigbee_Mesh

And this: How to Build a Solid Z-Wave Mesh - Hubitat Documentation

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No blame, just stating problems. All my wired Zigbee stuff are bulbs but I sure do have a lot of them evenly spread out on the two levels. I do have a bunch of Leaksmart stuff too but I assume that the valve in the basement doesn't repeat, or at least isn't too helpful of a repeater. Mostly GE links, some RGB Lightify bulbs and even fewer Hue bulbs/strips run through their bridge.

My lockups have continued all summer despite me taking my installation down to near bare bones. I threw out my Wink Relay and it's HE app. I removed Chromecast. The only "sketchy" app I have left is the MyQ app, which I have not removed yet. Recent health problems haven't left me the time or strength to dig too deep into fixing these problems. I just reboot and get another day or two of smooth operation.

I do notice the HE is VERY picky about installation location. I have a Remotec ZFM-80 for my waterfall that is not 20 feet away, although on the other side of an exterior wall, and if I move the HE one inch it works move it back and it doesn't. I may take someone's earlier PoE suggestion to reposition my hub eventually.

This sounds like a classic bad mesh network. Have you tried adding real Zigbee repeaters? Pretty much any powered outlet serves as one.

I suppose I could look into it but I don't need need anymore controlled outlets at the moment. 7 of the bulbs I had to re-pair were in the same room with the hub...

Devices do not necessarily connect to the "closest" hub/repeater. If they did that it would defeat the purpose of expanding your mesh outward.

I think this is also part of the frustration. When I've had had a stable z-wave/zigbee mesh under Wink/Smartthings for years and a stable network under Hubitat for months. To just be told, "Oh you got a bad mesh...".

Part of the reason why I just deleted my support thread to ask for user experiences. Ultimately I knew I was on my own and I am glad I figured it out on my own.

[edit] I know there isn't much the Hubitat staff can do to troubleshoot these kinds of issues. Mine was fixed by changing drivers. But it would be nice it there was more information that could be attained without a sniffer.

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I know that there aren't many zwave tools out there (for reasonable prices).
However, when I get a chance, I'm going to try and get an XBee and the XCTU software. from what I've heard, that's a good diagnostic tool.

By the way: to Hubitat Management:
You might want to consider getting in the business of selling such tools at reasonable prices. There is clearly a need for them.

You've been here 7 months and I'm sure, like me, you've seen: "I've had a stable z-wave/zigbee mesh under Wink/Smartthings/Vera/HASS/... for months/years" more than a few times. :slight_smile:

I'm also sure we don't know the exact reason for it being true.. but there are certainly ways in which SmartThings (specifically) obscured it. We know that they poll their devices, need it or not. This has the very real effect of reducing the Z-stuff radio bandwidth. You can only put useful packets on a SmartThings Z-radio network between poll packets. Remember, it's not just the poll packet that ST sends, but the reply too. ST may want to defer a poll to get a useful packet out, but it's got to wait for the reply from the previous poll to clear the airwaves. The benefit of Hubitat NOT polling indiscriminately is that those slices of Z-radio airwaves are available for more devices.

My point is.. Hubitat's use of Z-Radio airspace is probably quite different from others.

My next point is about Z-stuff deployment. When I was adding devices to SmartThings, it was 1-3 at a time, over many months. When it came time to switch to Hubitat, I did all 85 devices in a day. I was successful, but that's at least in part to the fact I've had 5 different manufacturers of Hubs over time. Now I've got just under a hundred devices on my first Hubitat Hub and another 75 on my second Hubitat Hub. All 3 of my Z-Radio meshes are stable... but that's a subjective response. If I deployed a couple of Aeon Repeaters, would I see an improvement??

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I too had very slow Z-Wave response after upgrading from 2.1.3.128 to 2.1.4.129 and 2.1.4.130 came out right then so I tried upgrading to that but after a day Z-Wave was still very slow so I ended up going back to 2.1.3.128 and haven't had issues since (other than trying to pair a new Z-Wave device which got stuck initializing and the hub kept seeing it in the initializing state until I rebooted my hub).

OK, I realize that you think rolling back to 128 changed something. However, what you aren't aware of is that there were no changes between 128 and 130 to Z-Wave or Zigbee. Those builds have identical code for those. The only changes made were documented in the release notes.

I think our mesh issues are coincidence and not necessarily linked to a specific release. I've been having issues with both Zigbee and Z-Wave for over two months, and I'm working through the issues with BobbyD. Hopefully we come up with something, and I won't have to leave out all the cool integrations like Chromecast and HubConnect. Fingers crossed.

I did have another Z-Wave sensor die last night. I always find they've gone offline at the most inopportune time. Luckily I also have wall buttons, so I can usually make things work until I climb up on the ladder and power-cycle the zig/zw sensors by yanking batteries. It's about one device per day.

So far I have not found a monitoring app that really helps me, because they report devices as offline simply because they haven't had any activity. Though maybe I have a much larger issue if my devices are not all reporting in within an hour or two. I set it to 4+ hours and I have dozens of devices showing up on the report each time.

.128 has been great for me too. All my repeaters have stayed connected and all my battery powered zigbee devices have been firing no issue. Like they said before, if there is nothing in the release notes that you need / want changed you dont Need to update.
For me I need to update so I can fix some broken scenes, but I am dreading the day. Will probably do it on the weekend just incase I need to fix it all up.

You have a misconception about the risks of updating. What you're suggesting belongs in the category of "forum myth", not fact. We will always note when things are done to Z-Wave or Zigbee functionality in the release notes. These change pretty infrequently, and have been stable for quite some time. When we do make changes, it will almost always be to correct a problem.

It is always a good idea to update to the last release of a major release version. For 2.1.4 that is build 130. Build 130 is the most reliable and bug free build of 2.1.4. It is what we are shipping on new hubs. There is no valid reason not to update to it.

And yes, no one is going to force anyone to update. But spreading misinformation is not good.

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all of my experiences are not myth, they did happen.
My experience of .130 was documented in my thread. Like I have said, I have to update because I need to fix my softwares broken scenes.

It seems a few people are having issues with "stable" (+ 6 month) battery powered Z setups with repeaters on their hubs on .130 I think saying "we didnt touch it" might be reassuring that it wasnt updated so its not broken - but neither was Scenes and it has a bug it in.

Im not spreading misinformation, I am replying also to try and help people with their setups, but im also open to the fact that something could be broken.

I want my/other peoples experience to be great, I hate being frustrated with things not working, but the fact of the matter is on .128 all my automations are firing as required with no issues, on .130 they didnt. I didnt add anything new to my setup - just updated it.

Yes, the bug pre-existed 2.1.4.

Please take a little time to try 130 again, and see if things work or not as before doing that. If they break, we would definitely want to take a close look at what breaks and why. Make a backup before trying it. This would be a big help to us and others.

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