Two-way feedback for lights?

Since switching from Wink recently I've been really happy with Hubitat. The stability is such a relief. Everything turns on and off just as I would hope.

However, as I look to fine tune things a bit I'm noticing something. That is, for some of my switches, if I turn one on at the switch, my dashboard will show that the light has come on like I would expect it would. However, for some other switches, they don't. I turn it on at the switch, but the dashboard doesn't change even if I refresh it. Is there a process I should follow that might help me gain two-way feedback on a consistent basis for these switches?

You're not giving us quite enough information... Zigbee devices or ZWave?

Vintage is another factor. Years ago there was a patent, owned by Lutron, that was 'feared' by many manufacturers. It covered the flow of status FROM a device back to the controller. It was a specific patent, but a lot of manufacturers didn't want to 1) pay the license or 2) fight it in court. The result is, many, maybe most 'smart' switches didn't report status, they had to be polled. ZWave Plus came along and 1) the patent expired and 2) an alternate method was available. Even though it's not a Hard Line between ZWave and ZWave Plus, it's often enough that it's become a Rule-of-Thumb. ZWave needs polling, ZWavePlus does not.

Several ZWave Plus specific drivers don't support the Refresh command specifically so they don't show up in the poller app. So you can't impact performance by both polling and getting status automatically.

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Very sorry. These are all Zwave switches. I do have Lutron, but none are connected to the Hubitat so no concerns there. I suspect you are exactly right, probably the ones that are working are Zwave plus, but the ones that aren't are just Zwave. I guess I need to see if I can turn on POLLING on the DEVICE itself....right?

There's a Polling App. Got to Apps in the left menu, click Add BuiltIn App and 2nd from the bottom is ZWave Poller

You'll then have an app that allows you to pick which devices are polled. But remember, you won't find every device. If you've selected a "smart" driver for your devices, thinking they are all the same, you've prevented yourself from being able to find that device in the Polling app.

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Also be aware that it's been years since those ZWave devices were built. The clear advantage of modern ZWave Plus devices is well known. We understand around here the forces that want to continue to use those expensive devices, but you will find, like so many of us here, that it's not worth it. Start with verifying the devices are in fact ZWave not ZWave Plus. Then evaluate if there's somewhere in your home that they can be moved. Are there places you'd like to automate where the family aren't likely to use the physical switches? Put these old devices there. Porch lights for example.. if the lights just came on automatically, no one would be reaching for the physical switch, perhaps. If the automation turned the lights off at the usual time, again, no one would reach for the physical switch. If they did and turned it off, would you be looking at the dashboard before the automation turned it off?

My example above is trying to work out the logic of getting the people in your home to expect automation, to trust it and thus have no need to reach for the physical switch.. ever. Rather than poll that particular switch every minute to see if the physical was touched, simply turn the light on every 10-20 mins. It was supposed to come on at sunset, for example, and go off at 10pm. Turn it on every 10-20 mins between sunset and 9:30 and then off at 10PM. Eventually the people will quit touching the switch :smiley: On every 10-20 mins is FAR lower impact on the hub than polling every minute.

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@JPW - I want to expand on two points made by @csteele

100-series Z-wave devices date back to 1999. 300-series Z-wave devices date back to 2003. So your z-wave devices are ~20 year old technology.

In WiFi terms, 802.11a and 802.11b were introduced in 1999 and 802.11g in 2003. Yet it is highly unlikely that many of us have homes that rely on 802.11b/g routers. Apply the same criteria to your z-wave mesh. Upgrade the most critical aspects of your mesh, while relocating vintage devices to places where issues like "instant status" doesn't matter, as @csteele recommended.

I have about 30 z-wave devices left in my home, but all of them are relegated to places where the devices are solely controlled by automation, so I don't have to tax my mesh by polling these slow, out-of-date, devices.

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Thanks for all the input here. I was able to install the Zwave poller and the main light in question was reflected there. I enabled polling, but the issue persists. I then checked to see how old this switch might be. It is a GE / Jasco version and I bought in December of 2014. So old, but maybe not that old.

I do remember trying to configure this switch and having trouble with Hubitat finding it. Eventually, I just chose the Generic Zwave inclusion and that worked right away, but maybe that is my problem. I'm wondering if I should do an exclusion, remove the device, and then attempt to re-add it again using a GE or Jasco product. I don't think the actual product number shows up on Hubitat, but I could probably try some others. I believe this is the switch itself: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013V58K2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

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That is unfortunately a Z-Wave switch. Even though Z-Wave+ (500-series) chips became available in 2013, Jasco still sold old stock on Amazon and elsewhere, which is understandable, but still kind of shitty. Several other vendors did the same thing. With the net result that 8 years later, customers think they have an 8-year old switch, when in reality it is closer to 20-year old tech.

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Yea, I see your point. It is actually worse because my family really doesn't do much with this light. It is just something I noticed that I thought I might have done something wrong around, but this is not an "end of the world" scenario. As you said, just turning it on and off from the dashboard gives me confidence to know what the status of the light is. It may not be worth pursuing this much more just to try and obtain perfect feedback for each and every light.

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Hopefully this helps..

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