Z-wave exclusion

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.

Also tried resetting the Z-stick and trying to include it then, but to no avail.

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.

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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.

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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.

file a support ticket to support@hubitat.com
Tagging @bobbyD
If necessary, they can give you an RMA, or they may be able to look at internal logs and see if they can spot something. What you are seeing is not how the hub should behave. Sorry you are having this bad experience.

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Thanks, I am open to even nuclear options at this point. Not being able to pair the Z-stick is the least of my problems. I am frequently finding that lights will stop responding, that Alexa will say devices aren't responding even when they are, Alexa will say "I'm not sure what went wrong" when turning on/off certain devices (usually fans), there are often delays in issuing a command via Alexa or the web interface and the device responding, the Leviton devices don't update properly in the dashboards (I'm told this could be fixed with a firmware update but that's one of the reasons I was trying to pair the Z-stick).

I've had all of these problems ever since I purchased the Hubitat in May of 2020. I've had to constantly trouble shoot and attempt fixes and most of the time the fixes were only temporary.

Well, I've not heard back from anyone yet regarding further diagnostic steps or getting an RMA number. The last thing I was told to do was to remove the Z-wave poller, which I did. That was several days ago.

Tagging @bobbyD

I got a replacement Aeotec Z-stick gen 5. This time I made it a point to exclude first before trying to pair it. I press the button that makes it blink in blue and then press inclusion mode in the discover devices section.

Unfortunately, I'm getting the the same problem - my Hubitat isn't picking it up at all.

Am I doing something wrong, or is there something inherently incompatible about this device with Hubitat (I assumed Hubitat should pair with anything that is Z-wave), or could this be part of my other problems with Hubitat dropping devices, becoming unresponsive, etc?

At this point I'm not sure what to do. I was on board with the idea of pairing this to find and eliminate those stranded ghost Z-wave nodes or whatever, but I can't even get to that point.

In order to get the stick to go in to pairing mode with my hubitat, I had to put it in to a PC and use the silicon labs software to pair it.

What I have is Simplicity Studio 5.

When I plug the Z-stick into the pic, the LED on the stick blinks from blue to red to yellow. I'm not sure what that means, but I know that blinking blue means it's ready for pairing mode.

I think I got the software to recognize the stick and after detecting it on COM4 a bunch of buttons ceased to be grayed out. However, I don't see anything that looks like an option to put the stick into pairing mode. Do you know how it would be done using that software?

OK, never mind the above. I think I added it... I found an option for "Network Management" and within that menu I selected "Learn Mode" and then ran the Hubitat discover devices dialog, and then it discovered something it simply named as "Device" just like the other user said.

But I don't see any other sign that the stick was recognized. It's still blinking red-blue-yellow.

Thanks for this write-up. I think I may have done one thing wrong. I paired the stick before I made sure that the Version details filled in properly. Is this going to cause a problem, and should I start over? Because right now I can't get those version details to fill in no matter what I do.

Red-Blue-Yellow is simply the sign that it's plugged in vs battery. Only on battery will the Action button do anything. While on USB power, it's expecting to be used by a program/tool to put it into Learn, as you've discovered.

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OK, never mind what I said before. I more or less followed that write-up, this time tried to exclude and include again and made sure the device version details filled in properly. But what I'm getting is a little different from the write-up by @danabw.

For starters, I seem to have two PC controllers in the upper left hand screen of COM4 Network Management:
1 Pc Controller
164 [S2] Pc Controller

I'm including screenshots so you can see what I am seeing. The bottom line is that the bottom left screen doesn't look the same as danabw's write up.

Note that the lower left screen does not have devices listed by node number, so I'm not sure what I am looking for.

I'm not sure which PC controller I'm supposed to be selecting, and what I'm supposed to be selecting in the lower left hand screen which does not match the one in the write up.

You are supposed to have two.. one is the Hubitat Hub (node 1) and the other is the new secondary controller you just added.

If you are trying to clear out 'orphaned' nodes, you have to identify them.

Open the ZWave Details page and compare the numbers in the left column to the numbers in the PC Controller. You're looking for devices that exist in PC Controller but are missing from ZWave Details.

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