Trouble adding z-wave devices all of a sudden

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1

Just raised a support ticket with the following, but maybe one of you fine fellows can cast a little light on this one. It's all very odd, because it's been working perfectly up until today:

Hey gang.

So... all was going pretty well, until I tried adding a bunch of new zwave devices this afternoon.

The first paired without too much trouble (an Aeotec Multisensor 6), but the second, identical sensor refused to. The discovery wheel goes around and around, and nothing gets found.

I moved on, and tried a contact sensor (also Aeotec). No dice.

I rebooted the hub. Still no dice.

Powered down the entire hub, and restarted it, and it was prepared to pair the contact sensor. But another, different Multisensor won't pair with it, either.

So... it's looking (unscientifically), like I can add at best one zwave device per hub proper power-cycle. That's not as designed, I'm sure, and it's not as it's been until now.

Sadly, though... I can't find anything in the way of diagnostics for this sort of thing... and being a command-line sort of person myself, that's rather frustrating.

My username is 'hubitat@ourhouse.org.uk'. Is there any guidance you can suggest, or diagnostics you can get to that I can't already see?

In terms of additional information, I've tried pairing these things at the outer reach of my systems, but they also fail to pair when they're literally sat on top of the hub :wink:

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Best Regards,

Jules

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Hi Jules, did you tried excluding then pairing?

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Hi vjv.

Yes. I'm afraid so. Excluding by exclude mode on the hub, and by proximity to a minimote, too.

However... I've literally just worked out what I think was going on, and if I'm right... It's a horrible interface thing that either needs fixing, or MUCH better documentation of what's going on.

So... take a hub. Boot it up... and make sure there are NO web browsers open pointing to it.

Go add a new z-wave device. It'll show up. Stick that window in the middle of a stack of tabs somewhere on your mountain of open web browser and forget all about it.

If I'm right... that tab will stay open for eternity... but because it's already added a device, it's not actually looking for any more.

That would be fine... but any subsequent tab that you open will ALSO not look for any more. It'll give you the same details for the first one you found... but from browsing the fora... it looks like unlike the Zigbee adding... z-wave adding doesn't let you add more than one device at a time.

The zombie, forgotten about tab, though... seems to prevent any future tabs (or even, different browsers entirely) from correctly discovering devices. Probably in perpetuity.

I only found it because I finally got fed up and binned all my browser windows, collapsing 30-40 tabs across 3 monitors worth of browser windows, and suddenly it's all working again.

Anyway... it'd be interesting to see if anybody else can reproduce the problem, but it's certainly troublesome, and took a good chunk of my afternoon up ;(

-- Jules

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I think that's great work... sorry you had to do it though, but I'm thinking.. wow.. that's a big deal. Thanks for letting us use your afternoon that way! :smiley:

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Hmm... interesting. Any thoughts @patrick ?
Trouble adding z-wave devices all of a sudden

6

Don't leave 30-40 tabs open? And close your pairing window when done? :grinning:

Every person I know that leaves up dozens of tabs gets bit by it sooner or later - and most often over and over as they don't change their ways. But whatever.

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Hehe. WEll... 'Close the pairing window when done' is thoroughly good advice. In fact... I'd suggest it would waste less of support's time in the long run if it was written in large letters. The UI problems are legion with it, unfortunately... the throbber saying that it's 'looking for devices' continues to spin, despite the fact that (if I understand it correctly), it's stopped looking for Z-wave devices, and will never detect it again until you get rid of the thing that's saying 'looking for devices'. Worse than that, as described... it'd stop ANY other device or any other person from discovering devices until it's closed.

I have to say, though... having just stopped running a business that develops web-based software... sooner or later... ANY rough edge in the software is economically sensible to sort out - every time you end up with a way to get a surprising result, you'll transfer more than the cost for the development team to sort the problem out into the support teams. UI problems are among the knottiest to identify and resolve, too. I'm afraid to say that UI and User Experience experts and software testers remain among the least valued part of a professional development team, but their input not only adds hugely to the way that software is received, I firmly believe that they save money in the long term.

As for the too many tabs thing... whilst I agree with you in theory, in my experience, and I can only really talk about this in an professional setting, tab-itis tends to be largely the domain of the employee with an overly broad remit. If you're only trying to keep an eye on one thing at once... of course you don't want a lot of tabs :wink:

-- Jules

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I had an Aeotec recessed sensor that was "stuck" on initialization 2 days ago on my main hub. I did not have additional admin pages open fortunately. Was freaking out a little because was worried about creating ghost devices etc and did not want to have to redo everything again. I let it sit on the initialization page while I contacted support. After a time and before support responded (and the impatience/ADHD kicked in) I pressed the pairing button again on the device and initialization finished! Not sure this would work in every case but it did in mine.

I've become a little paranoid about ghost devices since I had to reset my main hub - they can really impact performance and for now it seems the recommended fix is a factory reset. Be careful when aborting the stuck initialization!!

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Ghost devices can be removed via Third Party Tools. (Third party means Support probably won't recommend them.) OZWCP and Zensys Tools can both perform the task of deleting device from theRadio Stick's DB. Both tools are a pain to build and a pain to use. That would be the second, and larger, reason Support doesn't recommend them. :slight_smile:

In case it's not clear, you have to shutdown the Hub, and move the USB Radio stick, do the work, put it all back.

OZWCP is a *nix tool while Zensys Tools need Windows. I have both, running on virtual machines with no particular problem. I also have OZWCP on a RPi - so it's always available.

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Well, you don't have to use a zstick at all. The process csteele mentioned only used the Nortek stick on the HE.

I do use a zstick, but you can do it all from the Nortek with a little hub downtime.

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Sorry about that other post - I meant to say yet another screwup was when I ran the Zensys stuff on the stick and messed up the hub.

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I started by Joining a 2nd Aeon ZStick to Hubitat. That gives me a copy to plug into OZWCP or Zensys Tools to learn the tool. When I'm done, or when I need to try again, learn more, I can use those tools to clear/reset them and join it again to Hubitat (creating another ghost, but that gets fixed as soon as my learning is adequate :slight_smile: )

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14

Interesting thanks! Also may be an excuse to pick up yet another hub for "experimental" purposes :grinning:. I do have 2 Aeotec sticks - one of which maybe a little flaky.

Have to say upgrading to 2 hubs has really been a good idea so far. Network seems better and any severe issues have been isolated to one hub so I don't have to reset everything and start over.