steve-elves

I've had Z-Wave devices for 7 or 8 years, so no doubt there are some from each series - or, st least, 500 & 700 for sure. I suspect that you are absolutely correct in your analysis, if for no other reason than the random nature of the problem. I've ordered a couple range extenders, and hopefully they will solve my issue!

I don't, but I have a couple that I might be able to move. Thanks for the idea!

Thanks, Guy! I should have been clearer in my explanation. I have about 6 WiFi thermostats (NuHeat brand) plus 4 Z-Wave ones. The WiFi thermostats are updated properly - it's only my Z-Wave thermostats, load switches, and lights that are intermittently functional. I like your idea for using variables to check the operation of individual program commands.

Thanks for the input. I, too, had more-or-less discarded the idea that UPS's could be the fault, but one should never be too quick to eliminate possible solutions when the problem isn't obvious. I think I agree that faulty or weakening Z-Wave device(s) may be the issue. Some of my Z-Wave units are getting a bit old now, and (just like me) they likely aren't functioning as well as they used to. The layout in my house is sub-optimal for good RF communication, and my EISY with Z-Wave dongle is in the basement alongside my PC. I've got a couple of older Z-Wave repeaters, but I long suspected that they aren't really doing much. I think I will go ahead and order a couple of the Zoos range extenders.

Thanks for the input. I more-or-less ruled out the UPS as an issue simply because the problem only occurs with Z-Wave devices - not WiFi or Insteon ones. That led me to conclude that there was a communication issue rather than noise. You have reminded me that noise can be insidious in its effects and I shouldn't rule it out offhand. I will take your suggestion and do the experiment if I can't find another solution - I don't want to remove my controller from the UPS unless I have to, as we are in a rural area that is subject to power outages and sags.

I'm pretty much at my wit's end, and the usually-stellar support folks at UD are running out of ideas as well. They suggested that I run it by the equally-stellar folks in this here forum. My home system has an EISY at its core, talking to 45 Z-Wave devices (holding 219 values or "nodes" according to the ST Inventory plugin), 20 Node Server nodes, 27 Insteon devices, and one Brultech GEM. The system contains 125 programs that use 40 State variables and 45 Integer variables. I use UD Mobile to access the system locally and remotely, in addition to program access through my Windows 11 PC. Both the EISY and HA boxes (as well as my router and switches) are powered through relatively-new battery backup UPS's. I haven't added any new devices to the system for a couple of months. I have configured Home Assistant in a mini-PC with the UD Integration; I am passing information from 96 devices in the EISY to my HA for display purposes only. At this point, I haven't configured any automations in HA that read or write to any device in the EISY. Everything worked more or less flawlessly until mid-February this year, which is when I installed the latest update to IoX (v.5.9.1). That, too, seemed to work just fine, for the first 10 days or so, and Michel assures me that the update is almost certainly NOT at fault. Suddenly, my heating programs (which turn Z-Wave and NuHeat WiFi thermostats down and turns the Z-Wave heavy-duty relay that feeds power to my electric water heater off in the evening, and turns everything up and on in the morning) was failing to write the appropriate setpoints. I verified that the programs had indeed actually run on time; the commands were simply either being ignored or not sent. When I looked at the various devices in the Admin Console or on UD Mobile, the data fields were blank and I couldn't send new setpoints or query the devices. I could go to each physical device and manipulate it locally, but they were not responsive to commands from the EISY. I tried several different methods to bring things back to proper communication. Several reboots, restoring of a recent (but post IoX upgrade) backup, "healing" the Z-Wave network multiple times, changing the comm speed of the Z-Wave network from 10 to 15 (default) to 20 and back to 15, disconnecting the HA box entirely, etc. I made sure that any Z-Wave devices that appeared in the configuration in the Admin console but that were disconnected in the field (such as some Christmas light controllers) were disabled in Admin. I removed two or three obsolete devices that were configured but were actually nonexistent. None of these fixes have been permanent. The last time I did a network heal was on the 15th or 16th of March, and the system worked perfectly for about 6 days - then, last Saturday, the "heat up" programs in the morning ran but the thermostats and hot water tank remained low/off. Having only lukewarm water for my wife's morning shower is NOT a great way to start a day! UD has looked at my Event Logs and Error Logs and all the Z-Wave logs, and couldn't turn up any obvious answers. I'm hoping one or more of you people can give me some ideas as to how to further troubleshoot the issue! Thanks in advance.

My version of IoX is currently 5.9.1. When I signed in via java on my PC this morning, I got a "Warning" prompt that suggested there are update packages available. Clicking the release notes link brought up a web browser page that suggested that I use UDMobile to upgrade the OS to 3.9.0_9. Couple of strange things: First, the font on the "Warning" popup is different from the usual font in my Admin Console Second, the "upgrade" is to a lower number Third, there is no mention of this "upgrade" on the official UD web page Fourth, the release notes say to use UDMobile to upgrade the OS, but the "Warning" prompt says to click the Upgrade Packages button on the Configuration tab in the Admin console. These discrepancies make me a little nervous. Any suggestions?

Thanks for sending these, Techman - they are going into my reference bin for sure! I think I confirmed that my issue was pretty much a self-inflicted wound - I had configured my Z-Wave device incorrectly, and it was trying to send a message containing the status of a binary input every 30 ms! Of course, that totally bogged down the network very quickly to the point that none of the other Z-Wave devices could communicate. Even worse, the power demand really ramped up the temperature of my EISY! Once I figured out what was happening, I deleted the bad actor (and some no-longer-existent devices as well), rebooted, and everything came up working as it should (whew!). I corrected my code, and now my little home-baked Z-Wave device is happily allowing me to do my own garden irrigation control!

I have an EISY box with a Z-Matter Z-Wave/Zigbee dongle, on a home system with about 42 Z-Wave devices (no Zigbee, plus about 25 Insteon devices). I was attempting to create a microcontroller device to control my garden irrigation valve solenoids and measure actual water flow using a YF-S201 turbine flowmeter; the device I was programming is a Z-Uno microcontroller. I've used them before with no particular issues - they hooked up to my ISY/EISY and have performed reliably. This time, however, the EISY Z-Wave control started to become flakey and then pretty much quit entirely. Even with the new device disconnected and removed from the configuration, now all my existing devices won't respond to commands (either manual or programmatic) and statuses are all either missing or static. I've rebooted the IoX and the EISY a couple of times, but I've been reluctant to factory reset the Z-Wave dongle. I noticed that the EISY box itself got very hot before I disconnected the new Z-Uno (over 56 °C!), now it's cooled down somewhat, but still my Z-Wave appears to be almost dead. When I click on some simple lights, they MAY turn on - sometimes after 5 minutes! There's a similar wait to turn them off if they go on. I think something is seriously broken, but I'm not sure about the best way to start troubleshooting. The long delay to respond could be a symptom of excess Z-Wave network traffic, so I'm hoping there is a diagnostic already built-in that could shed some light on it. The Z-Wave network speed was set at 10; I reverted it to the default of 15 with no noticeable improvement. Any suggestions would be gratefully received! I'm loath to purchase a new dongle without knowing that it is the culprit, as they're $175 here in Canada!

Thanks a lot! I'll give it a go.

Does anyone have any recommendations for data logging hardware or software that can pull and archive data from the EISY? I'd like to keep track of things like electricity usage, irrigation tank level, irrigation water flow readings, and weather data. It would be nice to be able to pull the information and display it graphically or use for further analysis. I've got a couple of spare Raspberry Pi boxes sitting around that could be useful for data storage, especially if paired with an SSD. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I looked into solar for our house, but we're deep in the forest on the east side of a hill on an island off the West Coast of Canada. Given the size of our roof and the amount of sun we get, the best we could do is about a 25% replacement of our electric use, with a payback time of > 50 years if we had blackout coverage for 3 days. Not really worth it, I'm afraid.

Hah - brilliant! Thanks a lot - I'm now getting the feeds that I want. I think the only difference from what I had was the "Port" setting - I had tried 80, but not 8080 as I didn't see that as a choice anywhere at hand. Much appreciated.

Can you point me to some instructions as to how to configure the EISY to grab the information from the GEM? I have set up some State Variables in the EISY and I've identified the ones I want from the Dashbox. I set the parameters in the GEM to use some kind of ISY protocol (don't quite understand what that choice actually did...), but now I'm kind of stumped. I assume I have to tell the EISY that variables will be coming from the network, but beyond that I'm kind of lost. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. (BTW, Ben at Brultech recommended you as a good resource for this!)

Thanks for the reply. I think I'll use the Dashbox, then. Out of curiosity, do you happen to know why the Zigbee on the Gem can't talk to the Zigbee on the EISY?