My HE was pretty screwed up after a failed Cloud Recovery of Long Range (LR) devices. I can no longer add LR devices, and the rest of the network is exhibiting strange behavior. I have been advised to perform a Zwave Radio Reset, and then re-include all of my devices. Not having done a ZWave Radio Reset before, I am not sure how to go about doing this. Would really appreciate a step-by-step of the process.
First. Where is the ZWave Radio Reset function located? Seems to have moved from wherever I saw it a long time ago.
How do I keep as much of my Devices, Rules, etc. as I can?
Go to every Z-wave device and edit the DNI, add _OLD to the end
This is CRITICAL to avoid DNI collisions when adding new devices
Add something to device name like "OLD" for example
This is needed to tell devices apart in Swap Apps Menu
You will know it is all done because on Z-Wave details, all nodes will be blank for the device
Reset Radio, reboot, confirm z-wave details is clear.
Exclude or factory reset devices (all now or as you go, does not matter).
Pair devices one by one and follow next steps.
Go to Settings >> Swap Apps
Swap from Old to New paired device.
Find old device entry (confirm by DNI having _OLD, not by device name!)
Also confirm "In Use By" list should be blank since we just swapped to new device.
Remove the old device. It should just remove quickly after clicking the button, if it starts exclusion mode you are on a new device entry, STOP, do not force remove!
I assume that performing a ZWave Radio Reset removes the relationship of the physical device from the Hub, but the physical device will still think it is already Included. Where/when in the process do I Exclude the physical devices?
Should this step be?
Exclude each physical device and then Include, one by one, and follow next steps
That is probably a "best practice", but it is not a required practice when adding new devices. Or is it??? I have noticed lately that I sometimes can not add even brand new/reset devices unless I Exclude it first. Has something changed?
It's highly recommended to avoid potential issues.
I try to do it every time (sometimes I forget). It's a free and cheap way to ensure that the device is in its initial state, and that your hub can reach/talk to it at the location where you have it.
As Nike would say, just do it.
Oh, and regarding new devices...I think it's more than likely "new" devices are sometimes returned...vendors and Amazon aren't always doing the right thing, and/or they are making mistakes.
The reason I consider it a requirement is that the process of Excluding is 80+% of the process of Including. Same path to and from the device. If there's something flakey along that path, an Exclude will fail and NO GHOST IS CREATED.
I thought I had reset/exclude in there somewhere but must have deleted it when I was shuffling things. I just added it in there right above the pairing step. It can be an exclude or a factory reset, either will work. Exclude has the advantage of testing the communications between the device and hub.
I really have not been in the habit of doing an Exclude before I do an Include. But it sounds like it is best to do it. This is one of the many things that Hubitat could do to improve the User Friendliness of the Hub by incorporating the best practices of advanced Users to help us Un-advanced Users. When starting the ZWave Inclusion process, just provide a brief statement that "It is recommended to first perform a ZWave Exclusion on a physical device just prior to performing a ZWave Inclusion on that same physical device".
Just trying to be extra cautious here before I begin this ZWave Radio Reset process.
I assume that I do not need to do anything for existing Devices that do not use the ZWave radio, correct? That would include Zigbee devices, my Konnected board which connects to my alarm system, Hubitat Information Driver, etc.
There may be reasons..."Customers don't read" (sadly true) and the more text on a screen the less they read (sadly truer). For those who do read, customers wondering "Is something wrong w/Hubitat - why does it need an extra step?" and negative comments/reviews from "experts" saying "Including devices on Hubitat is slower and more trouble-prone because they need an extra step for every device."
All of that may be true, but is a fatalistic way of looking at the problem, and frankly reeks of Bravenel-thinking. It is probably also true that the Advanced Users are already using this practice and therefore won't be slowed down, and Un-Advanced Users will continue to suffer problems Including devices and creating Ghosts. Frankly, I would like to see Hubitat go one step further and actually perform an automatic Exclude on every device before it then performs the Include. The time increase to add a device is absolutely inconsequential in the overall operation of a Home Automation system and the increased reliability of the HA system warrants that time.
I never exclude before I try to include. If the include wont work for some reason I factory reset the device. Last resort would be testing an exclude to see if that works.
Mostly I just use SmartStart now anyway, which on a new or reset device just includes it as soon as you turn it on.
That has always been my method. But as part of this ZWave LR debacle, I performed factory resets on 9 Zooz devices of 3 different model 800 devices. In most cases, and as later confirmed by Zooz, they still required an Exclude before they could be Included. An automatic Exclusion prior to the Inclusion would have saved me a lot of grief and time.
Seems unlikely, factory reset should do MORE than an exclude does. Exclude should remove the hub/node info and possibly reset some of the settings (not required). Factory reset should be doing that and also resetting all settings back to defaults, as if device was fresh out of the box. Sometimes I feel like Zooz support just shoots from the hip in hopes it will work.
This seems like the best solution. It there are times a user would not want to exclude, have a small checkbox to exclude the exclusion so advanced users can select that when needed.
