Trouble with Z-Wave

[ArunGupta2014]

For last week or two, I am having problems with the Z-Wave part of the ISY. The Z-Wave devices do not turn on/off as per schedule, when I go to the admin console, clicking on any Z-Wave device just hangs. Sometimes I get invalid request dialog box, sometimes the message appears System busy, do not make any changes to devices etc. The Z-Wave motion sensors fail to trigger the lamp. If I power cycle the ISY, then it works for 1-2 days, then same problems start again. I have done heal, repair, synchronize multiple times, but nothing helps.

 

There is no problem with the Insteon devices.

 

What could be the problem?

 

Thanks,

Arun

 

[stusviews]

Have you tried excluding and then adding back a Z-Wave device? If you do that, than it's a good idea to exclude the device twice.

 

BTW, Z-Wave will assign the next available number. Any number that's ever been assigned will not be re-used.

[danbutter]

I have started to see the same issues over the last couple of weeks. It seems to hang more in the evening, but that may just be when I notice it more.

I'm wondering if my PLM is dying and that is causing issues.

Anyone have a dying plm cause zwave issues?

[Teken]

I have started to see the same issues over the last couple of weeks. It seems to hang more in the evening, but that may just be when I notice it more.

I'm wondering if my PLM is dying and that is causing issues.

Anyone have a dying plm cause zwave issues?

 

Not related . . .

[ArunGupta2014]

Have you tried excluding and then adding back a Z-Wave device? If you do that, than it's a good idea to exclude the device twice.

 

BTW, Z-Wave will assign the next available number. Any number that's ever been assigned will not be re-used.

It is not happening to a specific device. All devices miss the scheduled on/off. There is a general Z-Wave unresponsiveness till I power cycle the ISY. Then it works for few days, then back to being unresponsive. Excluding 30 Z-Wave devices and adding them back doesn't seem to be a good solution.

[danbutter]

Not related . . .

Common sense would say no, but with this type of stuff nothing seems to follow logic.

The reason I mentioned it was because I tried to turn off a zwave device that wouldn't respond and when it didn't respond I started to try other zwave devices. I went to reboot ISY and unplugged the PLM first. When I plugged it in again (not yet having unplugged ISY) things that I had tried to control started to come on/go off.

Probably coincidence, but hard to tell sometimes.

 

Anyway I am seeing the same thing where thete is a general slowdown with zwave only.

Really only started to notice over the last couple maybe three weeks.

Gonna have to start looking at admin console when I notice something not responding.

[stusviews]

It is not happening to a specific device. All devices miss the scheduled on/off. There is a general Z-Wave unresponsiveness till I power cycle the ISY. Then it works for few days, then back to being unresponsive. Excluding 30 Z-Wave devices and adding them back doesn't seem to be a good solution.

 

My suggestion was to try with a single device only. Another suggestion is to use a repeat statement. I do have a couple of Insteon devices as program responders that require that, although they work flawlessly as program triggers.

[stusviews]

Common sense would say no ...

 

HA does not use common sense.

[ArunGupta2014]

My suggestion was to try with a single device only. Another suggestion is to use a repeat statement. I do have a couple of Insteon devices as program responders that require that, although they work flawlessly as program triggers.

 

Is there a possibility that the Z-Wave card is going bad? It is two years since I got it.

[G W]

HA does not use common sense.

Neither does HC.

 

Sent from my SM-G955U1 using Tapatalk

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ArunGupta2014,

 

Can you please let me know

1. How you reboot ISY? By unplug/plugging back in?

2. What firmware version?

3. Have you done a heal?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[ArunGupta2014]

Hi ArunGupta2014,

 

Can you please let me know

1. How you reboot ISY? By unplug/plugging back in?

2. What firmware version?

3. Have you done a heal?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

1. Yes, unplug the ISY power, wait few minutes, plug it back in.

2. Firmware version 4.55 Z-Wave, 5.0.10.

3. Yes, I have done heal, repair and synchronize. However, when the ISY is running slow, heal does not even start as an be seen from the event viewer. I have to power cycle the ISY and then everything runs fine for few days. Heal starts to work and finishes successfully.

[stusviews]

Do your firmware and UI match? If not, then that's a problem in and of itself.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ArunGupta,

 

Why would ISY run slow? Can you elaborate please? Or, better yet, when this happens next, open the Event Viewer, change the Level to 3, let it run for 10 minutes, and then save and send us the contents to support@Universal-devices.com.

 

I suspect you have a program with infinite loop which burdens the Z-Wave dongle. That's why reboot fixes the issues.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[ArunGupta2014]

Hi ArunGupta,

 

Why would ISY run slow? Can you elaborate please? Or, better yet, when this happens next, open the Event Viewer, change the Level to 3, let it run for 10 minutes, and then save and send us the contents to support@Universal-devices.com.

 

I suspect you have a program with infinite loop which burdens the Z-Wave dongle. That's why reboot fixes the issues.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

I did create a program which ran in an infinite loop between sunset and 10:30 PM. It kept changing the LED strip light colors. Since that program was stopped at 10:30 PM every night, I did not expect unresponsiveness to persist after 10:30 PM, but that was not the case. The schedules which were supposed to turn off certain lights at midnight also failed. Even next day, the z-wave devices would not respond to commands till ISY was restarted.

 

I suspected that program was causing slowness and shut it down. The slowness still persisted. Then I restarted the SmartThings secondary controller also (power off, batteries out). Since then, the problem has not shown up. It has been two days. If it happens again, I will take the event viewer capture.

 

So, is it not possible to write a program which keeps changing LED light colors as it will overload the Z-Wave card?

[ArunGupta2014]

Do your firmware and UI match? If not, then that's a problem in and of itself.

 

They all match.

 

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ArunGupta2014,

 

Of course you can have infinite loop programs as longa as they give the device enough time to be retried or respond. So, if you do something that keeps turning things on/off every 2 seconds, most probably you are going to have problems because, all it takes is one or two devices to be unresponsive and then everything goes into the queue while ISY waits. And I have seen too much Z-Wave traffic does indeed impact a few Z-Wave devices to the point that they have to be rebooted.

 

I still don't understand why SmartThings fixed the issue. The only explanation is that some of your devices still have routes through SmartThings. But, even that I cannot explain.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[ArunGupta2014]

So, here is the program. This is for one LED strip, there is a second identical program for the second one. Are these two programs saturating the Z-Wave controller? Any better way to do what I am doing?

 

If
   - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition')
 
Then
        Set 'LED Strip Light Dim SW 1' Off
        Repeat 1000 times
           Set 'LED Strip Light Col SW 1' Warm White 0, Cold White 0, Red 0, Green 0, Blue 255,
           Set 'LED Strip Light Dim SW 1' 30% in 30 seconds
           Wait  30 seconds
           Set 'LED Strip Light Dim SW 1' Fade Down in 30 seconds
           Wait  30 seconds
           Set 'LED Strip Light Col SW 1' Warm White 0, Cold White 0, Red 255, Green 0, Blue 0,
           Set 'LED Strip Light Dim SW 1' 30% in 30 seconds
           Wait  30 seconds
           Set 'LED Strip Light Dim SW 1' Fade Down in 30 seconds
           Wait  30 seconds
           Set 'LED Strip Light Col SW 1' Warm White 0, Cold White 0, Red 0, Green 255, Blue 0,
           Set 'LED Strip Light Dim SW 1' 30% in 30 seconds
           Wait  30 seconds
           Set 'LED Strip Light Dim SW 1' Fade Down in 30 seconds
           Wait  30 seconds
 
Else
   - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')
 
 

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ArunGupta2014,

 

The only issue I see is that some of the lights in question are still dimming (at a rate of 30 seconds) when the other commands arrive. Other than that, it's fine. The main question is the role SmartThings is playing in all this.

 

With kind regards,
Michel

[ArunGupta2014]

I cannot say how these hubs interact with each other. If I see the problem again, I will capture the event logs. This morning a schedule was missed. The decorative lights were timed to go off at 2:05 AM, but they were still on in the morning. In the three years that I have had ISY, I have never seen it miss a scheduled ON/OFF. Now all of a sudden, everything has become unreliable. It has happened after I added the second Aeotec LED strip light. Not sure if there is a co-relation.

[stusviews]

An easy test is to disconnect the second Aeotec LED strip light for a day or two.

[ArunGupta2014]

An easy test is to disconnect the second Aeotec LED strip light for a day or two.

 

That is what I am planning on doing. I just wanted the system to stabilize. Have another question. Does adding more Z-Wave devices improve the reliability or does it create a problem for the controller in some way, like controller has to maintain larger memory structures or something like that?

[stusviews]

Adding Z-Wave device that repeat (battery powered devices don't) certainly increases the range and reliability of the Z-Wave mesh (as it's called).