I had some Fibaro smoke detectors of which the battery level was not updated. I have filed a ticket at Homey for that and they’re looking into it. The strange thing is: a lot of those devices do send their temperature data and do send an alarm when tested to Homey. But if I replace the battery and click the button 3 times to update the battery level that works in most cases when very close to Homey.
When trouble shooting this issue I notices some really weird routes in the Z-Wave network. At that time I still had 2 Greenwave 6 node power nodes in the garage (so, behind a concrete wall) and 1 Greenwave 6 node power node in the attic (so two concrete floors away from the Homey). Apart from that I have a Coolcam power plug in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the bedroom on the second floor and one in the washing room in the attic on the third floor. I was expecting basically everything in the attic to connect through the Greenwave, the one in the bedroom and then to Homey. But what I see is the devices in the second and third floor (attic) in most cases connect directly to Homey or try to do so. For the multi sensors this is not an issue, but the smoke detectors lose their connection every now and then. Then hey beep and it is very hard to tell if the beep is from a lost connection or a low battery. Why is everything trying to communicate directly with Homey?
I removed the Greenwave power nodes from the Z-Wave network as most devices behind the power nodes indicated to be “unreachable”. Does anyone recognize that for Greenwave powernodes?
Some devices indicating to be “Unreachable” function very well. What does it mean?
I can only connect the Coolcam power plug that is connected to the washing machine to Homey if I have another power plug within a meter from this one and the dryer is out of the way. If not it is completely unreachable. It is not malfunctioning as it is working just fine closer to Homey. How can I improve this Z-Wave network? Would Fibaro power plugs be that much better? Should I add the Greenwave power nodes again and don’t care for strange routes and the “Unreachable” notifications?
Any idea on how to differentiate for a Fibaro smoke detector between “low battery” beep and “Z-Wave loss” beep? I know the color of the LED is different, but mostly you’re too late with that.
Most important: any advice to get a more stable and reliable Z-Wave network?
The last route taken is shown, not the route. It’s dynamic.
For battery powered devices: it can be in sleep mode. If zwave then wants to communicate with it, it says “unreachable”. Which is also the last status and not the status.
See also this post
• I’m sure one brand is just better or better compatible than others. I think trial-and-error is the way to go, swapping them for an other brand on an other floor maybe?
• Search on the net
• Or open a topic to request to people with flawless zwave networks or -devices, to show / describe their setup.
• Improve zwave mesh by adding router devices.
• Time how long a battery lives, schedule a reminder flow, and change it before the beep gets triggered
• Battery measuring @ Homey is app dependent, and can be very off to unusable.
I think this might help:
• 1st thing I think is you should add a bunch of router devices (all 230V powered zwave devices). I count only 4 of them in your overview.
• Inform about others’ zwave setup.
• Make sure Homey is center based, so all device routes are possible with the limit of max. 4 hops
• If Coolcam or Greenwave are acting funny, replace them for something better? Or change all devices to Fibaro?
I am aware of that, but even then I see routes that I really wouldn’t expect.
Routes like from Homey (center of living room) - Kitchen (front of house) - Garage 1 (other side of living room on other side of concrete wall) - Garage 2 - End point in the attic. (Again on the other side of the concrete wall.) With that completely ignoring the wall plug that is in the second floor perfectly between Homey and devices in the attic.
Another example is this one:
This is: Homey (living room) - Power plug second floor - Power plug first floor (5 meters from Homey) - Power plug kitchen - end device. The power plug in the kitchen is the only logical one as it is on a logical path from Homey to “Berging”
Other thing that I think are really weird is: Homey is able to communicate directly with a powerplug on the second floor. Yet the smoke detectors on the second floor and attic don’t communicate through that power plug. They either are connected to Homey directly or they’re not connected at all. Is that because for some reason the signal from power plug to other devices is not strong enough?
I’ve also asked Athom support about this. And you’re right: unreachable doesn’t mean they can never be reached. It just means that at the moment the device may be sleeping and therefore is unreachable.
This is not completely what I meant. I think Fibaro has just done a sh*tty implementation here. Why not do one beep every so often in case of an empty battery and two beeps in case of Z-Wave range loss?
What I have done now is the same way I had set it up in Domoticz: I have disabled the accoustic and visual alarm. This doesn’t mean the alarm doesn’t sound in case of fire, it is just an alarm of Z-Wave range loss. And in case of an empty battery it will still beep. Not the best workaround, but it is ok if I fix my Z-Wave mesh.
Other people and Athom support also mention adding routers. So, rather than thinking the Greenwave devices act funny perhaps I should just add them again and have the Z-Wave devices do their work. Athom support also advised me just to let it run and have some patience. Not overthink it.
Homey is really center based!
This would only be a solution if they never work properly, right? All devices that act weird seem to be working properly when closer to Homey.
I think I will start with using the Greenwave powernodes again. One is redundant in the garage, so I will move that to another room.
Next I will add some more routing devices. Perhaps even some Fibaro ones.
I was thinking of replacing the Greenwave and Coolcams temporary? z-wave = z-wave, but I’m very curious what happens if you add a few Fibaro plugs (or other 230V devices) on crucial spots.
You can also use other Z-Wave smart plugs, e.g. from NEO Coolcam, it does not have to be the ones from Fibaro. Or other 230 V devices as already mentioned by @Peter_Kawa.
As @Peter_Kawa mentioned was also to replace the devices that I believe to be less reliable with ones from Fibaro. That’s why I said it is rather expensive
@Peter_Kawa@DirkG i am also experiencing significant issues with my zwave network. I think it definitively collapsed and many devices are unresponsive to Homey. I am also relatively a newbie.
I have installed roughly 90 fibaro devices between Walli roller shutters and Walli switches.
The house is quite big but I thought the various Walli switches and Walli roller shutters would have acted as repeaters for the zwave mesh network…
My homey is not very centered because my lan cable is only on one side of the living room….still I thought the devices could have made the network work considering they are all fibaro!
As I am very new to this world could you advise on what devices to use as repeaters/routers?
Can you also please remind me how to get a view of my zwave network?
I already opened a ticket with honey support but any help would be appreciated?
Actually, i have a lot of routing devices (also fibaro), at least one in each room (fibaro dimmer behind the light switch). More than half of my zwave devices are routing devices. And i hardly have any concreet: it’s just stone and wood in my house, even a big part of my 2nd floor’s floor is mostly wood.
I also have in each room a aeotec (battery powered) quad mote remote.
And my house is very flat (just 2 floors/levels), but large (about 20-25 meters in length), but the signals never fail and responses are almost instantly.
Most of my devices are fibaro, and work perfectly in almost all ways, except battery status.
I indeed also have issues with the battery status of the smoke detectors, but also the few non-fibaro, battery powered devices, there battery status is just unreliable in Homey (also with the one hanging at about 3 meter distance from homey).
So, imho, i really don’t think that placing routers everywhere is gonna solve the battery status issues.
P.s. i did place a custom zwave antenna on my HP2019 years ago, just fyi.
P.s.2. Everything mentioned was and is about the hp2019.
Please note that the thread is from January 2022 when there was no Homey Pro 2023 yet. So the posts all refer to the Homey Pro (early 2019 or earlier).
But since you mentioned LAN, you seem to own an HP23, right?
The Homey Pro 2023 uses different hardware and it is still in beta. Please have a look at the HP23 firmware changelog (Link).
What firmware do you have installed on the HP23?
And could you please post a screenshot of the Z-Wave overview? (Developer Tools → Z-Wave)
Edit (start)
Do you use the “new” power supply with 5.2 V?
Did you tried already a PTP? Edit (end)
They are repeater.
It doesn’t matter which manufacturer the Z-Wave devices are from, they just have to be compatible with HP23. But they must be connected to the main power supply.
Hi @DirkG thanks for your kind reply. Let me go in order:
1- Yes I am talking about HP23.
2- i think the firmware installed is “10.0.0-rc.105”
3- I use the new 5.2v power supply
4- I never tried a PTP as described in the article you shared (i.e. I have not necessarily waited for 10 minutes before re-plugging the device). However I have executed several Homey restart + Fibaro app restarts (though i know understand they are not the same as PTP)
5- to be extremely fair my homey is not right at the center of my home at the moment because i thought that with all those devices it would not have mattered much where homey was located. But this is something i can fix eventually.
Here are the screenshot of the ZWave network. I am sorry I have to send many since I have 89 Devices…and this is the surprising thing…i have 89 Devices which (apart from smoke detectors) are all plugged to the electricity line. Each device is not more than 3 meters away from the next one because as you can guess i have replaced my entire house switches and roller shutters. My house is mostly wood and “gips” so no stone or concrete. The whole system has been working for one week withouth any issue and than it started to fall off progressively. First I lost one of the roller shutters with the message “transmit complete no ack” and then the others followed. The issue seems to be mostly with roller shutters which is quite annoying (I also opened a ticket to Homey). The lights are sometimes very slow but they do respond to commands. When you read “tapparella” on the list of devices that is a roller shutter
As you can see from this other picture I have a roller shutter still indicating the last power output in my homey although that roller shutter is not moving…but the status is still from 3 or 4 days ago…i.e. the last time it worked…this roller shutter is 3 meters just above where homey is located…
The additional issue at the moment is that when i try to remove the non-responding roller shutters from homey using the process described in the user manual, these go in block and do not respond anymore not even to physical command so i need to send them back to Fibaro for unlocking…which is super annoying…So i am looking for something that would help me fix the zwave connectivity, make it stable and let the devices start working again
as a quick update…i tried to send a test signal to this Tapparella Flavio 2 via the Zwave developer tool…it tells me that the node is reachable. I tried to send a basic On and it also told me that the transmit is complete. When I tried to Heal, i got a timeout message. Yet after these attempts i still cannot operate this blind via my phone and i still get the power from 4 days ago
I don’t understand that, sorry. What does “block” mean? Why do you need to send the devices to Fibaro?
According your screenshots.
There are several NodeIDs which are marked as Unknown Node (7 pc.) and several devices where the route is marked as Unknown (7 pc., all Taparella!?), that’s striking.
Please try to delete the 7 NodeIds which are marked as Unknown Node, not the “Taparellas”.
In Developer Tools → Z-Wave in the row of the faulty NodeIDs click on the right sight on the 3 dots and check if Remove is displayed white or if it’s greyed out. If it’s displayed white click on it and delete the NodeID. If it’s greyed out, click on Test until Remove will be displayed white. Then delete it.
Maybe you have to do it several times and maybe you have to refresh the browser.
If all Unknown NodeIDs are deleted, please perform a PTP and give Homey some time to reorganize.
I also had a z-wave issue. I woke up this morning and none of my z-wave devices responded. When I looked at the deverloper page all my devices were route unknown and unreachable,.
I have rebooted the HP2023 early 2 times, no improvement, power off for 5 mins, no improvement.
I send athom a update of my ticket about this and what to do now?
I then did a factory reset and restored from backup from yesterday and then all was back and functioning.
It looks like the issue started after the automatic backup that started at 04:05am last night and after that no more z-wave.
Zigbee was still working as normal, only z-wave had issues.
So either (my thoughts) the backup has corrupted some files , or homey ran out of ?? (memory??) and that caused the issue.
Hope athom will get back to me.
Thanks @Mike_de_Vries this is good to know…(about the backup). I have disabled automatic back-up just now.
Unfortunately i do not think i have still a back up from when everything was still working…maybe i found one from May 19th and i am going to keep that so if i would need to do a factory reset i can load that one.
In the meantime I am going to perform also all the steps that @DirkG has kindly suggested when I will be back at home tomorrow and then let you know. @DirkG I did not perform any firmware update!
The crazy thing is that i have two devices in the same room which are literally one over the other at only 3 cm distance and one is working while the other does not…
Anyway, i also opened a ticket with support but in the meantime thanks a lot i really appreciate your help.
@DirkG about the roller shutter going in “block” i have a video that describes the issue but cannot attach here. if there is a way i can share the video with you please let me know. This is something that happened two times on fibaro roller shutters. I got a message from Homey saying “transmit_complete_no_ack”. I was informed by support team that when that happens, it is best to remove the device and add it back again. I tried to remove the device following the instructions on fibaro manual for Homey (though this is not rocket science!) and when the removal process is complete the device gets into this frozen mode with blue light blinking and no operation possible…not even by pressing the buttons physically to take the blind up or down. It is also impossible to get into the device menu and also fibaro says that when the device gets into this state user needs to send the device back. I also tried to unplug and replug the device after days but when i re-plugged it was still in the same frozen state with blue light blinking.
For this reason i have currently decided that i will not try to remove any of the device for which i currently get the message “transmit_complete_no_ack” (unfortunately i still have few) until Homey clarifies what to do because i suspect there might be a bug in the software bit for removal process of the device.
