jmwhite5 Posted January 3, 2021 Posted January 3, 2021 Context: I have an ISY on 5.3.0 w/ z-wave 500 (6.82.01) (upgraded 5 months ago). All of my z-wave devices are Z-Wave Plus. Scenario: I moved my ISY to another room. I started getting a bunch of Z-Wave error messages (devices not responding). Right away, I plugged in a couple additional Z-wave modules to strengthen the mesh. That helped. But I kept getting sporadic "devices not responding" error messages. So I started to click on "Update Neighbors" on the problematic devices. It helped and I was getting fewer error messages. This morning, I woke up to a couple more error messages and I started paying attention to the routes and neighbors tables and noticed incorrect neighbors tables (i.e. direct links to ISY, when I suspected it was an old link). I systematically updated all neighbors for all devices (about 12). I'm now hoping that my problems are solved. So my question is: I moved my ISY 2 days ago and I was under the assumption that the z-wave network was "self healing". Is this true? What is the recommended procedure when Z-wave devices are moved around? Are we supposed to manually Update Neighbors on all devices?
simplextech Posted January 3, 2021 Posted January 3, 2021 2 minutes ago, jmwhite5 said: So my question is: I moved my ISY 2 days ago and I was under the assumption that the z-wave network was "self healing". Is this true? What is the recommended procedure when Z-wave devices are moved around? Are we supposed to manually Update Neighbors on all devices? Z-Wave Plus has "self-healing" functionality. It is not instant. It happens when a device communication fails. The failure will trigger an explorer frame and response to find a working route for that device. As you experienced and can tell this can be a long and painful process if you have lots of devices. The routes will also change as other devices become aware of their new working routes causing another round of explorer frames from devices that were previously working. Think of it like when you move and you issue a change of address to the post office. For quite a while some mail is not delivered to your new house and then even for weeks/months/years! your mail still gets delivered to the wrong address sometimes. Until of course you issue another change of address or call up the postmaster and say...dude... WTH! In FW 5.3 the full z-wave repair is now gone. For better or worse. So yes when doing a huge move that will disrupt and break all of the routes you will need to go to each and every device and perform an update neighbors. Then after you've gone through every device. Do it AGAIN! to then force each device to update it's information based on the new information that the neighbor received when you finally got to that device. This still is not fool proof and some routes will change again. However going through this process you won't have to just sit and wait and have lots of "errors" to either deal with or ignore. 3
jmwhite5 Posted January 3, 2021 Author Posted January 3, 2021 2 hours ago, simplextech said: In FW 5.3 the full z-wave repair is now gone. For better or worse. Thanks @simplextech. Very helpful. It seems to me that the "Heal Z-Wave Network" option still makes sense in spite of Z-Wave Plus self-healing. The self-healing addresses robustness when small changes occur, but doesn't address drastic network topology changes very effectively. So I'm throwing my vote for bringing back the "Heal Z-Wave Network" option (or something equivalent).
simplextech Posted January 3, 2021 Posted January 3, 2021 1 minute ago, jmwhite5 said: So I'm throwing my vote for bringing back the "Heal Z-Wave Network" option (or something equivalent). You need to go lobby the Z-Wave Alliance. They made the changes in the Z-Wave Plus V2 specification. There are negative effects of having the full z-wave repair bazooka approach as it totally cripples the entire network/controller during the process which can take hours often many hours to fully complete and prone to failures. I think the change in the specification to do device based "healing" or optimization (depending on wording of control system) makes some sense in not taking out the controller for long periods of time. Downside as you've experienced is that it can lead to a lot of work to manually "heal" the environment after doing such a drastic change to the mesh. There's a few odd things the Alliance changed and forced in the new certification. Some I do not agree with, but I'm just a poor member without voting rights. I didn't pay the premium for voting rights. 1
DennisC Posted January 4, 2021 Posted January 4, 2021 3 hours ago, jmwhite5 said: Thanks @simplextech. Very helpful. It seems to me that the "Heal Z-Wave Network" option still makes sense in spite of Z-Wave Plus self-healing. The self-healing addresses robustness when small changes occur, but doesn't address drastic network topology changes very effectively. So I'm throwing my vote for bringing back the "Heal Z-Wave Network" option (or something equivalent). Try right clicking the device and look in the menu for something "neighbors". This will update the association.
jmwhite5 Posted January 4, 2021 Author Posted January 4, 2021 3 hours ago, simplextech said: You need to go lobby the Z-Wave Alliance. They made the changes in the Z-Wave Plus V2 specification. There are negative effects of having the full z-wave repair bazooka approach as it totally cripples the entire network/controller during the process which can take hours often many hours to fully complete and prone to failures. I think the change in the specification to do device based "healing" or optimization (depending on wording of control system) makes some sense in not taking out the controller for long periods of time. Downside as you've experienced is that it can lead to a lot of work to manually "heal" the environment after doing such a drastic change to the mesh. There's a few odd things the Alliance changed and forced in the new certification. Some I do not agree with, but I'm just a poor member without voting rights. I didn't pay the premium for voting rights. I see. So to build on that Z-wave spec improvement, would it make sense to build an ISY feature that would walk the Z-wave nodes and refresh the neighbors table of each device? Essentially just automate what I had to do manually? (could be called "Update All Nodes Neighbors"). It could run several times in a row (up to a maximum) until all tables have stabilized (i.e. last refresh doesn't yield any changes).
simplextech Posted January 4, 2021 Posted January 4, 2021 12 minutes ago, jmwhite5 said: Essentially just automate what I had to do manually? (could be called "Update All Nodes Neighbors"). It could run several times in a row (up to a maximum) until all tables have stabilized (i.e. last refresh doesn't yield any changes). That could work and would be nice. I would include into that DO NOT try to update battery devices. IE exclude battery devices. 1
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