We don't know what's good/bad with your ZWave Mesh. We have all focused on you saying you did Force Remove in a context that implies you didn't know the problems that MIGHT cause. So now we're all focused in on those potential problems and how to cure them, without knowing you actually have them
Force Remove is ideal when you hear a Bang/Pop and all the lucky smoke comes out of a device. The device goes into the trash and you replace it. The replacement uses the next NodeID available but that Dead Device is still in the Hub's DB, as well as the ZWave Radio's DB inside the hub. To clean that up, you do a Remove, which starts the Exclude process, but the device is in the trash and cannot respond. Force Remove pops up and you click it. Overnight, the hub will detect the failed device and clean up the Radio's DB. It does this exactly the same way as the PC Controller process... "Is Failed" followed by a "Remove Failed" But Remove Failed also does an Is Failed and unless it finds a failure, remove will NOT occur. This is a protection feature, obviously.
What goes wrong with Force Remove on the Hub is exactly what I described above.. the device is somehow responding. It's not in the trash, it's alive and well. It responds during the Is Failed cycle and thus Remove Failed is not allowed to proceed. Some of this is the result of caching and the device will seem alive but isn't. Using the Z-Stick and PC Controller allows YOU to click Is Failed a dozen times.... if needed to get it to mark the device as failed (red).
But at least we're all agreed that if I was able to add the devices to Hubitat, then the problem is NOT a failure to exclude properly from Wink, right?
Also wanted to add that if price is not an object, then I would recommend like Aeotec stick over the UZB3 as @csteele suggested. I had purchased a UZB3 to flash and use as a zniffer when I had z-wave issues. Never got around to that because using PC Controller I discovered the stranded nodes, and deleting them resolved the z-wave issues I had.
I did end up ordering the Aeotec, just because at this point I'll spend any amount of money of if it means getting this fixed, and it seems to have some additional nice options. It will be here Monday, hopefully I will have more updates then.
Ghostbusters, heh, nice. I'll reference this when I get the Aeotec stick Monday. Everyone is referring to PC controller software so I guess I'll have to use my wife's PC laptop or get a Mac emulator working, which I've never had good luck with in the past. Would be nice if there was Mac software.
It turns out there is a Mac installer for the software so I installed it on my Mac and otherwise followed the directions which were mostly identical. After installation and restarting the software, I plug in the Z-stick to my Mac... and nothing happens.
Apparently I'm supposed to see it under System Preferences/Network but I don't.
By chance has anyone attempted this with Mac before? I'm trying it on a different Mac now, and if that doesn't work, I'll try it on my wife's PC laptop.
While Simplicity Studio installs and runs on a Mac, I believe the PC Controller software (which is now built into Simplicity Studio) is still Windows only.
OK I have the Aeotec Z-Stick Gen 5. If I understood this correctly, all I need to do is press the Action button once and then put my hub in Inclusion mode. The Z-stick is not supposed to be plugged into my PC when I do this, right?
Because when I take it unplugged right next to my Hubitat, and start inclusion mode on both Hubitat and the Z-stick, it doesn't see it at all.
Tried that... but nothing is excluding. I assume pressing the action button and putting the Hubitat in exclude mode is all I needed to do. I've been able to exclude other devices that did not fully add, but I haven't been able to add anything last few days, this Z-stick included.
I have a couple of these Aeon Z-Stick Gen 5's and I've joined them to every one of my 7 hubs at one time or another. They joined reasonably easily. I can't remember which hub I've got 'the spare' connected with at this moment, so that must mean I can take a shot at joining it to a hub.
So you have the C7 then? I have the C5. Would that make a difference?
Or maybe the problem is the same as whatever is causing me to not be able to joint anything right now. I've tired to join four other Z-wave devices recently, and all have either failed to be picked or or they get picked and get stuck eternally on the initialization step.
Tech support finally reached out to me today in response to my email last week. They said that, "either Z-Wave Poller is running too often or your hub's Z-Wave radio may have a malfunction. Based on the logs, the Z-Wave radio appears to be overwhelmed by a significant number of events. I recommend removing the Z-Wave Poller to see if that improves the performance."
I found a Z-Wave Poller under Apps and removed that, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference in terms of the issue of adding devices.
If you have two problems, not just one, the ZWave Radio is reset by powering off the Hub (from the wall, not the fragile little micro USB). Give it a good 30 seconds of power off before power on, then go directly to Discovery.
Truth be told, I have a lot of problems with Hubitat. I've run lots of Z-wave repairs, updates, hub reboots, hub shutdowns. I should have known to try to the shutdown option after having to do something like this almost every few weeks. Anyway, I took your advice on this - I shutdown the hub from within the web interface, then I unplugged the hub for 30 seconds, then plugged it back in, waited for it to find a new IP address, then tried to add the Z-stick.... no luck.
However, I had 5 other Z-wave devices that I was previously unable to add, and I was able to add 3 of them all of a sudden - Yay! And then next I know, in addition to the two other devices that refused to add, three other devices suddenly became sluggish and partially unresponsive. facepalm
This is a typical day for me when I'm trouble shooting Hubitat problems....
I think I'll try shutting down and restarting Hubitat again.
OK, will I restarted the Hubitat again, and this time I was able to add another problematic switch. But once again, I can't add the Z-stick Gen 5. I've tried doing it 6-7 times. I've practically placed the stick on top of the Hubitat, but I get nothing. Even when I try to exclude it first, I don't get the typical "unknown device excluded" message.
The only thing I can think of at this point is to exchange this in case I got a defective one. The existing network is still messed up. Lights frequently are sluggish to respond or don't respond at all. Or they do respond despite Alexa saying they aren't responding (when I access via Alexa). So I figure I could probably use this Z-stick to fix the possible problem that was mentioned earlier.
