Zigbee is my savior right now, since it keeps working. But, I have spent a few hundred in the past week getting Zigbee replacements for important Z-Wave automations... Things like outdoor lights on at sundown, Christmas tree on, chicken coop opened/closed, additive pumped into whole house humidifier every day, and so many other things I am not used to having to do on my own any more. lol
Also bought about 100 bucks worth of Shelly WiFi items to play with soon, too.
But, with all the existing Z-Wave devices I have, and the 20 or so Zooz switches I bought on Black Friday - I need Z-Wave.
Yeah there is clearly something off about your system. Wish I could offer more assistance.
I like Zigbee especially for locks & motion sensors - seem reliable and fast. Of course there are issues with Zigbee too depending upon the device. My current plan is to migrate the Zigbee devices on the C-4s to a single C-5 I have on hand. The radios in the C-5 & C-7 are the same.
I did start a ticket - and looking to send another follow up to that again, I see I missed that the ticket was closed.
I opened it Nov 25, they wrote to me on Nov 30, I wrote back a few times over the next couple days, and didn't hear anything. I guess I missed that they did get back to me on Dec 08, and they closed the ticket Dec 10 since I didn't notice. Ooof. Looks like those messages were lost in the jumble of community messages, but 2 days seems kinda quick to close it out, all things considered.
Saw plenty of people saying the email support was slow, especially around now, so that is why I went looking for help here. Oh well, I'll start another.
So, my life winds up with problems that all too often can't be explained - work, health, friends/family - and many times they just seem to work themselves out just as mysteriously. I am now going to add Hubitat to that group.
As of my last note on Monday, nothing was working all that well on the Z-Wave side, and nothing made sense and nothing seemed to help make it better. I sat down on the couch that night and since I am a glutton for punishment I brought my little old work box with two new Zooz switches in it over there to try pairing. These switches had probably been included/excluded over 50 times already to no avail, and I had made no changes to the system or settings that day...
I try one switch again that night - it goes right in. Try the other - it goes right in too. WTF? Each day I have added a few more devices, generally without issue. Some battery powered devices will still not go, but I've gotten new-in-the-box things, devices that used to work with Hubitat, and now some SmartThings orphans to all go in.
While I'm excited it's working again, I'm going to wait a while before adding much else as I still don't trust it. And hopefully it will map some better routes to improve the stats on the fringe devices.
Thanks to everyone who tried to help and offered ideas!! While I am convinced the firmware updates broke it - I have no idea what fixed it.
Any happy ending is a good ending. Regardless of how it happens happy that it's happened for you. Agree that you should let it sit for several days before making any changes let Roots settle in let rudings that need to be done possibly happen.
Yeah - that is why I am hoping it finds better routes over a few days. many of those devices are in the "middle of the neighborhood" and should not look that lonely. Only that shed door contact sensor is really alone, since it is now out at the shed, and even that has a few neighbors it could reach much easier than the Inovelli switch it is routed through. The Inovelli switch itself is only about 25 feet from the hub on the same level, so it doesn't seem like it should have so many hops.
On that list - 18 are mains powered and by specs should be repeaters, and only 5 are battery powered. I will be adding a bunch more switches in time, and then more battery powered devices, too.
While everything has been working fine and I hope it stays that way, I found something interesting...
When I started getting Z-Wave devices back, the first four were a pair of outlets and a pair of door sensors. These came in way before the rest of the items eventually started working, and it didn't make sense why they were the only ones that worked at the time.
It was also pointed out in this thread that as more devices came in, that these original 4 didn't really find any neighbors. As of yesterday these devices still just had 1 or 2 neighbors, even though they are physically near all the others that now have 25 or so neighbors each, and these 4 have had plenty of time map themselves.
So - As a test I excluded and re-included one of these original door sensors that had just 1 neighbor as of yesterday. Within a half hour this device had 26 neighbors.
While I really can't explain why many things have worked the way they have with my C7 so far, this one seemed odd to me. I intend to exclude and re-include the other 3 to get them out of that walled off neighborhood they seem to be in.
Yeah it really seems slow to change longer than the "48 hrs" I read somewhere. I really hope this is addressed or explained in detail at some point. Sounds like a chipset thing but dunno. Of course you probably don't want devices hopping all over the place over short periods of time destabilizing the mesh either.
True. I figured the mesh would incorporate all devices over time and 48 hours or so would have seemed reasonable. But 3+ weeks seems a bit excessive, especially now that I see that device with so many neighbors. Just wish I knew what went so wrong in the fall so I never have to go there again.
