Z Wave Three Way Switch Doesn't Report Correct State

[roger89]

Hi,

I just migrated a GE Z Wave three way switch with 2 Add-ons switches from SmartThings to HE. I can use dashboard to turn on/off. But if I physically turn off the light from one of the Add-on switches, the HE hub and dashboard think still it's ON when the light actually was off. In smartthings, it never happens like this. I can turn off the light using any Add-on's, and smartthings would update and report the correct state of the lights.

Is there any way I can fix this? Is it because of the driver? When I added the switch to HE, HE automatically picked "Generic Zwave switch".

How can I fix this?

Thanks

[pseudonym]

Are these Z-wave Plus devices? If not, they won't report physically events.

Edit: I think there's a Poller App but don't know much about it.

[roger89]

@pseudonym

Are these Z-wave Plus devicies? If not, they won't report physically events.

I checked the product package, it's NOT plus. I also checked, if I hit refresh button in the Device page, it will show correct off state. Why is that? How can I make it to report correct state?

[roger89]

@LibraSun

..in which case you may need to install/invoke the "Z-Wave Polling" app and include that Device in the app, so you get its current status updates more quickly.

I just realized, if I hit refresh button in the Device page, it will show correct off state. Why is that? How can I make it to report correct state? If so, how often do I need to Poll?

Please advise.

[aaiyar]

@roger89

Why is that?

Due to a Lutron patent, which expired around the time z-wave+ entered the market, z-wave switches do not report their status to the controller unless polled.

Some manufacturers, like Leviton, got around that by making their z-wave switches issue a "hail" command to the controller upon a state change; in response to the "hail", the controller would poll the switch.

@roger89

How can I make it to report correct state?

I would generally recommend replacing z-wave devices, especially switches/dimmers, with modern z-wave+ equivalents. 300-series z-wave is now 20-year old technology. 500-series z-wave+ is now 10-year old tech.

In the interim, there is built-in Hubitat app called z-wave poller which you can install.

Bear in mind that z-wave polling comes at two expenses:

1. It is additional load on the hub's CPU. Hubs that offloaded their processing to the cloud (like ST) could comfortably spend CPU cycles on polling z-wave devices. Hubitat doesn't do that, so polling comes at an expense.
2. Polling will make your z-wave network more busy, potentially slowing things down.

[pseudonym]

I don't believe you can make it report its correct state, you can only ask it what its state is (i.e. Polling app). How often is up to your use case. For me, I think I would be okay with knowing every 2 minutes but only when I'm turning the light off when motion becomes inactive for a certain amount of time. Otherwise, every 10 minutes would probably be fine with me.

[aaiyar]

@LibraSun

Hubitat UI is not realtime, in the sense that a switch's "On" or "Off" status -- as shown on its Status page -- will often lag behind, or seem never to change even when you know it has.

I disagree. The UI updates as soon as the device in question reports a status change.

[roger89]

@aaiyar

It is additional load on the hub's CPU. Hubs that offloaded their processing to the cloud (like ST) could comfortably spend CPU cycles on polling z-wave devices.

Just curious why ST get to spend CPU cycles on polling 'comfortably', and HE can't?

[aaiyar]

@roger89

ST get to spend CPU cycles on polling 'comfortably', and HE can't?

Because all the other processing on that platform is done in the ST cloud. Hubitat doesn't do that.