gduprey Posted July 18, 2020 Posted July 18, 2020 Howdy, I have a client who has managed to get themselves into a situation where they have two similar Zwave devices responding to the same ZWave ID (ie. both binary switch type devices send reports as ZW085_1). I'm pretty sure they used the "Replace Zwave device" feature (which is a freaking fantastic addition in version 5) to replace a device with another and later realized the found the device (likely with a dead battery). Replaced the battery and now both seems to control the same device node in the ISY My initial reaction was to use ZWave Exclude to remove the "duplicate" device, but I was worried that in addition to remove/excluding the duplicate device, it might remove the ISY ZWAVE node, leaving the other device in a zombie state. There are a number of programs and other things that are also depending on the existing ZWave node ID, so I have to avoid anything that would "lose" that node ID. Any thoughts on how to disassociate the duplicate device without losing the existing ZWave node ID? Thanks, Gerry
jec6613 Posted July 18, 2020 Posted July 18, 2020 Exclude both, re-add, then do a find/replace in the programs.
gduprey Posted July 18, 2020 Author Posted July 18, 2020 Can't do that - as mentioned, the node ID is critical. It's not just the ISY programs, but a pile of external/third party things that depend on that ID as well (as exported from the REST/WebSocket interface). Gerry
Michel Kohanim Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 @gduprey, I really do not think that's possible. i.e. what happens if you unplug one and then the other? If your assumption is correct, there should be no errors. And, if no errors, then you can simply remove the unwanted one and factory reset it to be used later for something else. With kind regards, Michel
gduprey Posted July 19, 2020 Author Posted July 19, 2020 Howdy, If you are saying it's not possible to have two with the same ID, I'm 95% certain it went like this: 1) The added a ZWave battery powered door sensor and it was assigned ZW085_1 in the ISY 2) At some point, the battery in the unit died and the homeowner thought it was broken 3) They decided to replace it with the same kind of unit and used the ZWave->Replace Device 4) the old unit, having a dead battery, did not respond and the ISY added in the new unit and re-used the ZW085_1 assignment 5) Later, the homeowner figured out that the original device just needed a new battery Now, watching the device communications in the ISY event viewer, changes to either device (open/close) both are reported and both are reported on the same ZW085_1 device. The node in the admin console also shows state/status for whatever device reported last. They are effectively duplicated. So now I need to un-tangle it. Being simple battery powered devices (Ecolink door sensors), they have no way to do a factory reset. They claim that when they are disassociated from the network, they do a factory reset, but there appears no way to force a factory reset. So the next obvious thing is putting the ISY into 'exclude' mode and excluding JUST one of them, but I worry that the ISY will do that and then remove the existing ZW085_1 node, even though there will still be the other one existing and reporting back. And given that there is a bunch of stuff tied to the actual node ID, I can't risk that (the amount of work to fix this in the ISY and all the connected stuff would be very large). Can you confirm that the ISY would always delete the ZW085_1 node if i did use the exclude option (i.e. wouldn't be handling the other instance of the ZW085_1 node)? This is totally the fault of the homeowner and I think the ISY is doing everything right. I just need a way to untangle this (so the duplicate sensor can be used form something else) without reassigning the zwave node ID. Gerry
simplextech Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 Do NOT use the ISY to remove the duplicate device. Doing so will remove the "good" device as well. Get another controller. Any controller. Use the other controller to perform the exclude of the "other" device. This will remove the Z-Wave network from the DEVICE but it will not change anything in the REAL Z-Wave network controlled by the ISY.
gduprey Posted July 19, 2020 Author Posted July 19, 2020 Ok - solved. I had an unused ZWave Z-Stick unit sitting around. Since any ZWave controller can disassociate any ZWave device (including those not previously added to that controller), I used it to disassociate the duplicate door switch. Worked great - switch is now ready to re-associate and is no longer responding/sending data as the other/duplicate ID and the correct/valid/original switch is still reporting to the ISY using the original ZWave ID. Gerry
gduprey Posted July 19, 2020 Author Posted July 19, 2020 1 minute ago, simplextech said: Do NOT use the ISY to remove the duplicate device. Doing so will remove the "good" device as well. Get another controller. Any controller. Use the other controller to perform the exclude of the "other" device. This will remove the Z-Wave network from the DEVICE but it will not change anything in the REAL Z-Wave network controlled by the ISY. Like minds! My thinking exactly - I just forgot I had an unused Z-Stick around. Worked great! Gerry
Michel Kohanim Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 @gduprey, My question is: if both responded at the same time, for the Z-Wave dongle, they were one and the same. Couldn't you just unplug one? With kind regards, Michel
gduprey Posted July 19, 2020 Author Posted July 19, 2020 Yes, I could unplug one (well, remove the battery) and honestly, nothing "bad" was happening, other than two devices both reporting as the same to the ISY. But the home owner, having realized their mistake, wanted to use the "extra"/duplicate unit for a new, different door and purpose. In order to do that, the existing "two devices, one ZWave ID" had to be "broken" so the duplicate could be added in as a new one. And that scared me because the ISY would (quite understandably) not handle removing the device without removing the ZWave ID node in the ISY. So, if I was throwing the duplicate device away (or moving it to another house), I wouldn't have had to do anything. But to disconnect the duplicate so the homeowner could re-use it was initially tricky. Fortunately, the spare Z-Stick did the trick. And to be clear, in no way do I see what happened or the issues with duplicates or deassigning duplicates to be any fault/responsibility of the ISY. It fairly warned the user when using the ZWave->Replace Device to make sure it was the right thing, it did it's best to check and I cannot imagine expending even 5 minutes trying to build in an ability to "disassociate without removing ZWave ID" or anything close. Just needed a way and in the end, it was pretty easy because I had the spare Z-Stick and the way that any controller can reset a ZWaves device internal assignment. Gerry
simplextech Posted July 19, 2020 Posted July 19, 2020 1 hour ago, gduprey said: Fortunately, the spare Z-Stick did the trick. I keep an Aeotec Z-Wave stick around for this. It's perfect for doing excludes of devices when this type of incident happens or for quickly excluding new/unknown devices.
Michel Kohanim Posted July 20, 2020 Posted July 20, 2020 @gduprey, Got it, thanks so very much for the details. With kind regards, Michel
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