Zwave radio “crashing” (Zwave no longer responding)

Woke up to a similar issue described in this thread. I'm running a C7, latest release (2.3.1.142, with latest zwave firmware from the 2.3.1.x release). Hub was updated to 2.3.1.142 three days ago and hadn't been rebooted since the update.

Woke up this morning to zwave automation not functioning. Dashboards were loading but zwave devices weren't responding to input. Logged into the hub and went to the zwave section under settings. After an abnormally long page load time, the page did load but the zwave table was empty. I don't believe I've seen that happen before during my time with Hubitat. I rebooted the hub and things appeared to return to normal (zwave table populated corrected, zwave devices started working again, etc).

Shut down from the settings menu. Unplug power from HE at the wall (not the hub) for 5 mins and power back up. See if that helps (the power disconnect is key)

Also did you update your z-wave stack? This can be confirmed by going to settings))z-wave details and looking for the z-wave firmware update button at the top of the page. If it's not there you did. If it is there you didn't.

1 Like

Yes, I did update the Zwave stack / firmware with the initial rollout of 2.3.1.x (completed this prior to the update I performed 3 days ago to 2.3.1.142).

I understand a shutdown with power disconnect is best to ensure the radio is cycled. I was limited on time this morning before leaving for work, so once I saw the reboot corrected the issue, I disengaged. If I encounter the issue again, I'll perform a shutdown with power disconnect to see if that helps.

2 Likes

FWIW, I have not had this issue again since…

2 Likes

Glad you got it working! In case you do end up wanting to try the full power cycle, note that you only need to unplug for about 30 seconds (this is what staff have said and what is documented in Hubitat's Z-Wave manual). The "5 minute" thing has been floating around the forum for some time, but I'm not sure where it came from...

Either, of course, still requires a bit of time; just wanted to get this out there. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

So I have to mention because apparently Bryan never does the "pull power" thing.. and the staff seem like this is not necessary. Read through these comments..

I'm a tad confused by this of course...would like to present good/accurate advice to people if possible.

4 Likes

I think five minutes grew from the one minute that grew from the 30s. :wink:

Seriously, at my old company, if we had to tell customers to wait for X min/sec after doing something, we would always increase the time we tell them to cover for folks who were impatient/bad timers. :slight_smile: So if we wanted them to wait for one minute, we'd tell them two minutes. We found it significantly improved effectiveness of instructions that had timings in them.

I use the extra 4m 30s to chant myself into a calm state.

And I was going to post what @erktrek just did, that staff has said that it's unnecessary to reboot, but we users do seem to see that it does seem to help with some intermittent issues.

3 Likes

I should have mentioned that this shouldn't be necessary anymore given that if the Z-Wave radio crashes, the hub has a catch in place to automatically restart it now. There were some problems in the early days of the C-7 where fully restarting the Z-Wave radio was the only way out (because this crash happened). Given this change plus a few firmware updates that have happened since, these should be few and far between, if there are any at all, nowadays. (Though as long as you shut down properly, it shouldn't hurt.) But I suppose @bcopeland could comment for sure on what to advise.

But certainly, 10 minutes as mentioned in that thread should have never been necessary. It sounds like a compromise between 30 seconds for this and the 15-20+ minutes for Zigbee panic mode while not actually being either. :smiley:

6 Likes

Yup, I think somewhere along the way people have conflated zigbee panic mode with a hard restart of the zwave radio.

A 30 second power down should be amply sufficient for the latter.

7 Likes

I simply use 5 mins for z-wave as an abundance of caution is all.. Hey, it can't hurt... lol

2 Likes

@bcopeland I've now experienced this same problem tonight where my zwave table is empty after doing a restore both using local back-up and cloud backup. I've tried the soft reset and restore from latest backup and then power down and wait 5 min. and still table is empty. What are the next steps to get my hub restored with zwave devices all back?

@support_team

1 Like

Did you do a full reset.. you do realized restore does not restore the radios.. just the devices and rules etc.

Yes I understand basic restore only does devices apps, etc. However, I thought with Cloud restore selecting this option would also restore the Z-Wave devices

@support please advise what are the next steps to get my hub restored with Z-Wave devices back

We should be talking about what first steps should be taken when the Z-Wave radio collapses.

It sounds like you may have caused more problems trying to restore the cloud backup after having had recurring radio problems, which may have resulted in a corrupted Z-Wave database, from which recovery may no longer be possible.

Please send me a private message with your Hub's ID and we can further investigate to see if you can recover your devices, at this point.

4 Likes

I want to thank the @support_team for their fast response to my post. While it was unfortunate that I got caught with [URGENT] Z-Wave Cloud Backup Issue and had to re-add all my Z-Wave devices at least I now know why the loss occurred. More importantly this is the first opportunity I've had to use "Swap Apps Device" feature. This made the process of adding the Z-Wave devices back in much easier and faster than the old method of having to edit the DNI names Migrating a Z-Wave Network My entire HUB and automation are back-up and running without issue and everything backed-up per Release 2.3.2.127 instructions

10 Likes

Glad everything is working again!

2 Likes

Great to see things are up and running again, and have to agree that the new Swap feature is excellent. Also happy to see your "glass half-full" perspective on all of this - very nice!

4 Likes

sorry to bring up a zombie thread but I've now noticed that my C7 is dropping Z-wave (no z-wave devices report status changes) sometimes they still appear on the z-wave status page but sometimes they don't (this time they are not, but I'm not home to unplug until later this afternoon) I have noticed that shutting down and unplugging for a few min (try to do the arbitrary 5 min from @rlithgow1 as it seems to reset everything for 4-5 days than it starts again) I have checked for ghosts and don't see any, has anyone found a reason for this (z-wave mesh seems strong and automations run very fast usually until they don't) any suggestions would be great (don't want this causing an issue with the WAF as I try to get it reset before she notices (or complains about it)

What's happening in the logs and event logs?