Has anyone had problems replacing their zMatter dongle?

My current zMatter stops working after a few weeks and I power cycle eISY to get it working again. It's happened about 3 times now so I decided to replace it.

I've tried with two spares I have that were working last time I checked them and in both cases they were not able to communicate with any of my devices. I either get a message that device is "not awake" (most of them) or err=1 (a few). Most of my devices are AC powered and therefore always awake. Not a single one works.

Here's the process I followed:

1. backup zwave

2. backup IoX

3. power off eISY

4. swap out zMatter dongle

5. power on eISY

6. restore zwave

7. restart IoX

8. power cycle eISY (after restarting IoX didn't result in things working)

I tried this with 2 different spare zMatter dongles. I also tried doing a factory reset on the 'new' dongle before step 6 (restore zwave). This deleted all zwave devices in IoX so I did a restore IoX then restore zwave again. Same outcome.

I do see in Event Viewer that the zwave restore was successful. I also tried letting things settle after startup with new dongle and after the restore to make sure it wasn't just a question of time or resource contention.

I can put the old one back in and everything works fine. I worry I'm living on borrowed time with the old one and would like to be able to replace it.

Am I missing a step? Is the restore zwave function broken?

Any help would be appreciated.

Edited Friday at 06:02 PM5 days by johnnyt

any chance you have the antennas swapped ?

1 hour ago, bgrubb1 said:

any chance you have the antennas swapped ?

I checked them and they're correctly connected, i.e. Red = Zigbee // Yellow = Z-Wave.

I moved an instance 2 weeks ago from a polisy to a eisy (internal zmatter to different usb zmater) 2 weeks ago and the restore fuction worked - no issues.

I did have to do a reboot after installing the usb to get the zmatter as showing active.

did you open s usb to confirm the antenna wires are connected ?

Check the eisy configuration tab and make sure zwave is still checked.

So I started the process over making sure antennas were connected inside and in the right place (Red = Zigbee // Yellow = Z-Wave.) I also made sure Zwave was ON in the config tab and even tested both dongles after doing a factory reset using my spare eISY and a spare Zwave device. The test included verifying that things worked consistently including at a fair distance on the other side of the house two floors away while both my test and prod eISYs were running right next to each other. One of my dongles, although recognized enough for the Zwave menu to appear in the AC, stopped communicating during my testing and I could not get it to work so it's been relegated to my e-waste box.

Using the now proven fully working 2nd spare dongle, I went through the restore process in my original post (after doing factory reset while it was on my test eISY) and the same exact problem occurred. The new, restored (spare) dongle refused to connect with any of my prod devices. It reports them all as 'not awake' and there's no status being reported to the Admin Console. This after a "Restart IoX" then, when that didn't work, a reboot, Also this is with "Query at Restart" enabled in config tab, and I followed it with a manual Query All a good 5 mins after system stopped being busy due to restart. (I also had disabled 95% of my programs to minimize resource contention.) I can see from the event viewer and by using Xray function that the restore worked and the dongle has all my prod devices in its memory.

I really don't know what to think. Did I miss anything?

How likely is it that my spare dongle is defective even though it's working fine using my spare eISY?

@johnnyt I would suggest opening a support ticket to see if there is something in the logs that UD sees causing the dongle to go offline or not available to the eisy.

How old is the eisy? It might be possible that the power supply has gone bad and not delivering enough power to give full support to the ZMatter dongle (just a guess, probably not likely).

Have you tried a different USB port?

https://www.universal-devices.com/my-tickets

22 minutes ago, Geddy said:

@johnnyt I would suggest opening a support ticket to see if there is something in the logs that UD sees causing the dongle to go offline or not available to the eisy.

I opened a ticket about a week ago and included several logs from my initial attempts. The lack of a reply lead me to post here. I just added explanation I posted here around my second session of trying to replace it. Hopefully I do hear from someone.

28 minutes ago, Geddy said:

How old is the eisy? It might be possible that the power supply has gone bad and not delivering enough power to give full support to the ZMatter dongle (just a guess, probably not likely).

Have you tried a different USB port?

I was an early adopter of eISY (also of Polisy). I remember being advised to replace the power supply for the Polisy and I did that. Is it really an issue with the eISY too?

With respect to both the power supply and USB port, I have to wonder why one dongle would fine but not another. Would different dongles bought at different times have different power consumption?

One thing I thought of doing was swapping out the complete set (eISY and dongle) but that's a big pain / last resort as I believe different eISY h/w comes with different portal and plug-in licenses. I would need to get all that stuff transferred over and (I think) do a fair amount of configuring, although I've never done it so I'm not sure.

7 hours ago, johnnyt said:

Is it really an issue with the eISY too?

Not a “known”/common issue, but a simple step of troubleshooting to look into. Especially when it comes to powering a peripheral accessory. It also depends on your power situation. If you have “dirty” power it can impact the life of the power supplies for anything.

7 hours ago, johnnyt said:

I opened a ticket about a week ago and included several logs from my initial attempts. The lack of a reply lead me to post here

I would go back to the ticket and update asking for help. It might have been missed. Unusual, but can happen.

7 hours ago, johnnyt said:

One thing I thought of doing was swapping out the complete set (eISY and dongle) but that's a big pain / last resor

Last resort for sure. I wouldn’t suggest that unless UD Support suggests it. Best bet is to work through the support ticket process. No other posts of issues similar to this so can’t really suggest options here.