I have a very large Zwave and Zigbee deployment. ~122 Zwave devices, all but a dozen or so of those are wall switches and outlets (always powered - act as repeaters). I also have ~50 zigbee devices - mostly battery powered, but a few physically powered to act as repeaters.
That said, I am constantly seeing zwave dimmers (wall switches) that I turn on (and expect some automation) that never "report" their status! They are properly on my network and I can control them directly from HE - respond immediately when turned on/off, etc. But if I physically turn them on (or off) I never see an event in HE.
I suspect I'm going to be told to add a second (or third) hub and reconfigure my network - might be the answer.
But I thought Zwave devices always report status until the hub acknowledges their action. I have done zwave repairs (many times) and it doesn't seem to help.
Along the same line of question - these are all GE/Jasco dimmers/switches. Is it "better" to use the Generic Zwave Dimmer or the downloadable GE Dimmer (designed for zwave plus, I believe, and these are NOT the plus model). And, what is the difference between Generic Zwave Dimmer and Generic Zwave Smart Dimmer? Which should I use? Any hope changing the drive will fix the non-reporting?
As for the driver question... Z-wave plus switches and Dimmers should use the “Smart” version as it relies on the device sending status updates correctly.
The other driver assumes the device changed it state per the command issued, and thus updates the status immediately without waiting for a response.
Thanks on that link - yep, same issue. Has any "solution" been given? Looks like the only thing is to poll switches that are used in automations on a very frequent basis.
A Z-wave poller app was added to the firmware a while ago. It is specially designed for this exact purpose to minimize negative impact to your z-wave mesh network.
I personally have just about finished upgrading all of my switches and dimmers to Lutron Caseta.
