Z-Wave Sniffing, Zniffing And You: A Guide To Pulling Packets From Thin Air

@csteele will this impact how quickly they respond?

1 Like

That is an excellent question! I use mine for basement lighting so it's not as critical but worth knowing.

As an aside (not to derail things too much) - there is a bug in your MS6 driver that detects the firmware version...fails to report an update. I only know this because of the beta testing I've been doing with @bcopeland.. :wink:

1 Like

The manuals say that Battery vs USB affects several things, how often you can do an update, 5 min on battery, etc. I don't remember them all of the top of my head but I think RH% situations benefit from USB to get reports often enough to make a bathroom fan responsive to rising humidity.

1 Like

9.6k will happen and it isn't necessarily a problem unless everything is 9.6k. You really want to take the time to watch and try to understand your network. I have found that it is useful to start your capture and then operate anything you think might be questionable. Stop the capture and save it off with a descriptive name. With a saved capture, you can spend the time exploring the conversation between the hub and individual devices.
You can select up to 10,000 rows and copy / paste then into a spreadsheet if that helps. You can also use the filter function to make it easier to isolate just the device(s) you are wanting to understand more about. Do them one at a time so you get to know how they route.

2 Likes

Question:
Will this software show me if I have any "phantom" zwave nodes?
Or, do I need the z-way stuff for that?

Not really.

Sometimes you can see the controller talking to a device that doesn't exist. The controller can repeatedly send various discovery type messages and don't get a reply. The Zniffer is not joined to any one network, therefore it doesn't know what devices are stored in the controller's DB.

Z-Way or a secondary controller and the Z-Wave PC Controller (also available from silabs.com) software is better for that. It can request neighbor lists, routes, etc.

1 Like

I have this..

I use the Aeon Z-Stick to join whatever network I'm trying to debug and then it, selected in PC Controller, tells me what the DB is at that moment.

Both USB sticks are plugged in at the same time, on different USB hubs, to keep them a foot or more apart. One stick is permanently a Zniffer, the other moves around.

That’s cool, I’ll have to try that. I’ve just been using my Z stick to do OTA updates.

Wanted to report back - Zniffing is working out extremely well so far... Over the last few days troubleshooting (and hitting a low point) things are now improving again....

Long story made short(er) - relocated my hub to the main floor, I excluded all my Aeotec MS6's, ran a repair and let sit overnight. Tested this morning speeds were up. Have started adding MS6's back in one at a time. Speeds still holding.

A side note: have been beta testing @bcopeland's awesome firmware updater driver and while it works really well some devices may need to be excluded and included again. This may have in fact contributed greatly to my woes.. Thanks to zniffing I was able to confirm my recently updated zooz outlet was only responding at 9.6, after re-inclusion 100. Similar possible issue with my MS6's..

4 Likes

Are you adding them back USB powered or battery?

FYI I opened a support ticket with Aeotec today for this issue to see if they have any ideas. Still waiting for a response.

3 Likes

I figured I'd go with usb.. carefully. The 2 I hooked up seem to be okay. The third one had issues so removed it. Also relocated a repeater to my basement just in case.

Also cool - let me/us know about what they say..

1 Like

Hello.
I seem to be having some difficulty in setting up the Zniffer that I got from Mouser.

a few questions:

  1. I used the OTW Firmware update of the PC Controller program to flash the UZB. I pointed it to the right file, and it says completed.
  2. However, in the Zniffer program, I point it to COM6, (correct), it says COM 6 Busy, and obviously it's not setup correctly.
    Is there another way to flash the UZB?

That's not in the directions for correctly flashing a USB firmware. You should have downloaded the PC Programmer and used that to flash the USB stick. So I'm not really sure what you actually flashed. You may want to read the first post of directions again.

@jeubanks:
Sorry, I didn't read the directions very well.
Now I'm in....zniffering... or whatever the proper verb is...
Thanks.

4 Likes

This tool has been fun to play with being stuck at home. I’ve removed 3 old Zwave outlets that were running slow and replaced them with sonoff WiFi. I also moved my Aeon HEM V1’s to my 2’d hub - seem to have a TON of CRC errors on them, even on a hub by themselves. Any ideas there? If I unplug the HEM’s I rarely get CRC. My understanding is that CRC errors means the Z-wave sniffer isn’t able to see the whole conversation - is that true?

I also have routing errors for my water valve controller. Is that bad if it doesn’t happen all the time? It’s a Zooz Z-Wave Plus Valve Control ZAC03 and using the Generic Valve driver. It’s literally I’m the same closet as my network gear/hubitat so I believe lots of things are seeing it before to route through than Hubitat. I wish you could turn off routing functions of some z-wave devices.

Correct.

If the device is still communicating then there's no problem :slight_smile: If you see this in excess and continuously then time to look at the devices involved in the route.

You can manually changes device's routes but Z-Wave repair typically undoes these changes.

If you remove that node it is often better than manually changing the routes. A higher node number seems to not get used as often as main path.

Also, several people have mentioned problems with HEM G1. Good to see that's consistent.

Is that Zooz battery powerable? If so... Exclude it and join it again with batteries only. Then power it afterwards with the lines adapter. If you join devices as battery powered they won't ever repeat even after you lines power them.

Thanks; I just worry if it’s having issues routing, I might have issues with my zwave locks routing through it - the whole reason I bought this gadget is because of these stupid Schlage locks. Hoping removing the HEMv1’s fixes my issues.

Nope; it’s plug only.

When did you remove the HEM? When did you see the route error? Probably close in time frame?