No window or status adding a new device

[simplextech]

I've had very good luck so far with adding a lot of z-wave devices.  However tonight I'm trying to again add some devices and when I click the Z-Wave -> Add Include a device nothing happens.  The normal popup message does not happen.  

In the logs I see this.

Z-Wave device detected, retrieving info 7

That's it.  Nothing else.

I then tested an exclude and that is working normally.

Things tested to see if it corrects things

• Restarted admin console
• Tried from a different computer that had also worked before (same thing)
• Restarted the ISY - no change
• Power cycled ISY - no change

 

Ideas?

[lilyoyo1]

Did you exclude first?

[simplextech]

10 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Did you exclude first?

Yup... from different controllers even

And if you re-read in my posting the exclude function was working as it should with the normal messages.  The issue "was" the include never gave a message or statement that it was waiting for a device to include.

What is weird though is that in the log it kept showing it was trying to add a device but I had no idea what device it was.  So I went through and excluded all of the devices I added the night before.  Mostly sensors and a power plug that was asked about on the forum here....

After those were removed I left it for a while (went to eat dinner) and then things were "working" again.... the z-wave functions were then responding and working "somewhat" I then had several other weird things start happen with the z-wave side of things.

I did a re-scan of the controller (synchronize) and several unknown devices were added to the list including a node 01 which is actually always the controller itself.  So I have some interesting things happening.  Probably caused from all of the include/exclude/controller shifting I've been doing with testing.  

Part of the testing right?  Push it until it breaks!

[Michel Kohanim]

@simplextech,

Are you sure this device is not already included in your system?

With kind regards,
Michel

[simplextech]

5 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@simplextech,

Are you sure this device is not already included in your system?

With kind regards,
Michel

Yeah... pretty sure... as I pulled it out of the box O'stuff from the garage and wired it up.... I performed an exclude on it first from my HomeSeer system and the exclude went normal.  I then did an exclude from ISY and that was normal.  The problem then hit when I tried to do the include and there was no pop-up or any status that the ISY was doing anything.

I then decided to try some other z-wave commands and found that nothing worked other than exclude.  Synchronize, Heal, Info, nothing in the Z-Wave menu other than exclude would actually respond (do anything).  It was very odd.

I then excluded several sensors that I had included for testing and a power plug.  Interestingly after excluding those devices THEN the heal and synchronize actually responded?  Was the ISY overloaded by something???

A new interesting find is that now I have "random" devices showing up on any z-wave interogation.  Synchronize and random devices show up and are assigned to a parent device.  Such as my standard ZEN21 switch now has a "temperature sensor" as a child device?  A Switch with temp sensor?  Interesting.  Another weird thing is that a "color switch" appeared as a child for my ZEN15 power plug?  

I'm having lots of weirdness with the z-wave portion of things.  I'm suspecting some of it is from the controller shift that I did from a HomeSeer system during testing.  I have a batch of Insteon switches on order (in the mail) so when I get those to setup and test I'll be removing most of the z-wave switches and at that time I'm going to do a z-wave reset.

[gzahar]

9 hours ago, simplextech said:

A new interesting find is that now I have "random" devices showing up on any z-wave interogation.  Synchronize and random devices show up and are assigned to a parent device.  Such as my standard ZEN21 switch now has a "temperature sensor" as a child device?  A Switch with temp sensor?  Interesting.  Another weird thing is that a "color switch" appeared as a child for my ZEN15 power plug?  

If you read through the Zwave posts, you'll see that this seems to be fairly common and is attributed to what the Zwave device is reporting; even though the devices don't advertise or provide that functionality.  My Aeotec range extender reports a multilevel and color switch.  This may or may not be what you are experiencing.

If by random, you mean they are changing or disappearing/re-appearing, then that is something else.

[simplextech]

Just now, gzahar said:

If you read through the Zwave posts, you'll see that this seems to be fairly common and is attributed to what the Zwave device is reporting; even though the devices don't advertise or provide that functionality.  My Aeotec range extender reports a multilevel and color switch.  This may or may not be what you are experiencing.

If by random, you mean they are changing or disappearing/re-appearing, then that is something else.

I'll start with the Aeotec because it is essentially based on the same as the Switch/Dimmer plugin module.  My Aeotec "switch" also includes a multilevel device and multilevel color device.  The color for that is actually for the LED ring but the multilevel capability is there well because Aeotec are cheap and use the same chip/firmware for the switch and dimmer version of the plug.

What I'm finding interesting is how a temp sensor suddenly appeared for my Zooz ZEN21 switch.  Which I have had and used in several other controllers without this mystery capability ever showing up.  The same for my Zooz ZEN15 Plug... suddenly it has a "color" device?  Now perhaps on this plug it's one of those normally hidden to adjust the little LED color part that other controllers just ignore?  Dunno... but I've never seen it before and again used this with other controllers.  If you're seeing a pattern here I have almost every controller on the market in my test arsenal that we use for review of product and of controllers for use.  

One curiosity is that the devices didn't show up until I was having some weird behavior of the controller not doing things like a heal or synchronize and then when I removed some devices and things started "working again" then on a synchronize several devices showed up.  A few were phantoms still in the controller db but the others were associated with the above mentioned devices which were just weird.

[gzahar]

I assumed, as you mention, that these phantom capabilities are showing up because vendors are reusing designs and not disabling features that are not present in a new device.

Regarding other controllers, my expectation is they are hard coding the feature set for every device based on model (or something similar) whereas UDI (for good or bad) is querying the device and populating nodes based on the feature set reported by the device (whether the feature makes sense or not).  At least that is my understanding.  This is really above my knowledge level and I am just trying to report what I have read.

[simplextech]

19 minutes ago, gzahar said:

I assumed, as you mention, that these phantom capabilities are showing up because vendors are reusing designs and not disabling features that are not present in a new device.

Regarding other controllers, my expectation is they are hard coding the feature set for every device based on model (or something similar) whereas UDI (for good or bad) is querying the device and populating nodes based on the feature set reported by the device (whether the feature makes sense or not).  At least that is my understanding.  This is really above my knowledge level and I am just trying to report what I have read.

Bingo and I think the same thing.  I think the UDI is doing a full interrogation of the devices and just pulling everything... which good/bad dunno, but it can make things messy when weird devices (nodes) appear and well it confuses me.  Which was another reason I posted on the forum to see if others had seen this with similar devices or if this is known/common behavior from the ISY.

If this is known/common/expected behavior that the ISY is doing a FULL interrogation of the devices that actually makes the ISY a powerful z-wave test/debug system..... hmmm....

[Bumbershoot]

Not sure if this is what you're talking about, but the additional and seemingly spurious Z-Wave nodes creation requests can be suppressed with the following menu options: Z-WAVE | Options | Freeze ISY Nodes | Yes

EDIT: Recent 5.x.x series firmware

 

[simplextech]

@Bumbershoot now that option is interesting and may be what is needed.  It's still curious that a plain switch would be sending "termperature" command class information though.  I would suspect again cheap manufacturing of reusing the same firmware for several devices without proper device type checking on query for command class information.  I'm leaning towards this as I have several of these ZEN21 switches.  One of them has this "new" node created for it but none of the others did....

Interesting stuff.

[mwester]

I challenge the premise that the issue is the device that's sending the erroneous command and/or class information

My observation here, as I've gradually added new types of Z-Wave devices is that the erroneous types of information appear on devices that don't support them only after a device that *does* support that type of information is added.  As an example, I now have several devices that claim to report power consumption -- and they all appeared after I added the first device that actually did report power consumption.  The pattern has continued, where the bulk of the 'silly' nodes are actually valid nodes for other devices.

The symptoms lead me to suspect a controller-side problem -- possibly in the Z-Wave firmware (which is owned by Sigma AFAIK), or perhaps in the ISY, the likely culprit being buffer mismanagement that results in stale data becoming associated with a valid incoming report from a device.  Of course, that's just a supposition, but this is the sort of problem I've run into time and time again in the decades I've spent in comms and devices...

I also note that no other controllers seem to be plagued with this problem -- and the most likely place I'd expect to see this surfaced would be in the open-source z-wave forums, but a quick search for github issues related to this comes up with no smoking guns.  So... I am strongly suspecting a driver issue on the ISY to be at fault.

[gzahar]

There may be some of both going on then. The extra nodes I have are the only ones of their kind in my network. It makes sense that someone would repackage an existing design as a range extender as most all devices have this function. (I have very few Zwave devices and this is the only one reporting silly nodes) The multi level switch that shows up on mine responds to commands and reports believable fade status. I don’t think the ISY would be making this up if it wasn’t getting actual acknowledgments and status from the device.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bumbershoot]

52 minutes ago, mwester said:

  So... I am strongly suspecting a driver issue on the ISY to be at fault.

I suspect this is at least partially right, as the latest firmware has stopped this behavior in my installation.

19 minutes ago, gzahar said:

There may be some of both going on then.

I do think this is true as well.  This has only happened with specific devices in my installation.

Out of my 10 Z-Wave devices:

• 1 Schlage deadbolt
• 2 GoControl garage door controllers
• 1 HomeSeer 200 series dimmer
• 2 Aeotec 6 multisensors
• 1 Aeotec Gen5 siren
• 1 WaterCop water shutoff valve
• 1 Jasco fan switch
• 1 Sensative contact door switch

the only devices to display multiple and spurious nodes are the Aeotec multisensors, which report 7 nodes:

• Multilevel Sensor - correctly displays multiple data points
• Binary Sensor 1 - no data updates, "Status" reads "Off"
• Glass Break Alarm - no data updates that I've been able to successfully test, "Status" reads "Off"
• Intrusion Alarm - no data updates, "Status" reads "Off"
• Motion Sensor - data updates, "Status" toggles "Off/On"
• Tamper Alarm - data updates, "Status" toggles "Off/On"
• Tamper Code Alarm - no data updates, "Status" reads "Off"

I used to get spurious nodes appearing somewhat randomly on Alpha firmware versions, but I haven't see this in quite a while, I suspect since the 5.x.x series entered Beta.

[Chris Jahn]

Hey Guys,

It would be great help if anyone could recreate this problem (with a level 3 event viewer trace going) for a device that you are fairly confident is not sending incorrect status messages.  If its even partially a problem with the ISY then we would like to fix it.

[simplextech]

9 hours ago, Chris Jahn said:

It would be great help if anyone could recreate this problem (with a level 3 event viewer trace going) for a device that you are fairly confident is not sending incorrect status messages.  If its even partially a problem with the ISY then we would like to fix it.

I can do some add/removes again of the devices that had random nodes created.  However I've gone through tonight and added more z-wave nodes and everything is normal... so far.  I'll do a synchronize all with level 3 running and see if something weird happens

[simplextech]

I did have a few "new" devices show up again.  This time they were "Thermostat" devices.  The last couple of devices I added were Thermostats... but for whatever reason they were "grouped" with my Garage Door opener?  Seems a lo of weird items like to group to that device for some reason.  Motion sensor?  Glass break?  I was running a level 3 at the time that I was watching and nothing.  I stopped it and came back later and that's when I noticed.  I'll have to try a few more things.  I think I'm going to remove a bunch of the z-wave devices this next week and add a couple at a time and see.  I have too many currently to effectively monitor the logs for anything.

[palayman]

On 2/6/2019 at 8:03 PM, simplextech said:

The same for my Zooz ZEN15 Plug... suddenly it has a "color" device? 

The same happened for me. Both ZEN15 devices now have color devices.  Interestingly one has different colors than they other. One of them also added a "water meter" device.  All of the happened sometime after the initial install.