Z-Wave unreachable issues

[Goshawk29]

First off I am new to homey pro experience and learning the different nomenclature like App Store etc so apoligize in advance if I confuse things.

My main purpose of purchasing homey pro was I wanted to migrate away from my Vivint security system and homey offered z wave radio, zigbee, and IR all in one in their hub.

I have slowly and methodically migrated things over to homey, all these devices worked in Vivint and they were not Vivint specific equipment. Have GE light switches, Jasco/GE outlet plug modules, Remotec outlets, and kwikset door locks.

SO far it has been a nightmare experience in z wave area. I love homey pro app, home automation and possibilities of just having one device for all my needs but z wave setup has caused issues and looking for help/advice. I have been emailing support for months now and can’t seem to find any issues in my setup.

My setup is as follows, 1400 sq ft single story home. Homey pro is located in center of home, kitchen which is open floor layout to dinning room, living room, hallway. Bedrooms, there is only one wall to go through which is the room causing me major issues. The wall is traditional wall, no metal, just plaster.

I have outlet modules in that room that lose connection, and a door lock that becomes unreachable too.

Is there is limit on radio signal homey pro uses? I ask this because I can just simply add the devices where they are are located to my Vivint hub. Where with homey I have to move the hub basically within a few feet for it to see the device. When I move homey back to where I want in located in kitchen, it loses connections with those devices. It appears Vivint panel has much stronger z wave radio than homey but can’t prove that.

I added a lock to homey but it losses connection. I add it back to Vivint and works great sigh. I have trouble email into kwikset app developer so what they say but so far at a lose for range of z wave capabilities. The lock is node 74 and it jumps off of node 2. Those 2 nodes are literally 2 feet apart so should be working.

As a last resort, if I was to nuke my entire z.wave network and start from scratch, do I have to go and “exclude” every device from homey before starting over? Security etc?

Any ideas? I am at a complete loss. Developer app shows reachable, but homey app says unreachable.

[Peter_Kawa]

As you don’t share the ideas of Support:
No ack = no acknowledgement from the device. Homey somehow can reach it, but the device hasn’t always the same reach to Homey and can’t deliver it’s ack.

Distance issue, or too much walls, glass.

Also note Homey’s zwave reach is rather small, I’d put several router devices near Homey (1, 2 or 3 mtrs), to increase reach.

Also look for “chatty” devices, some update values every sec, which can ruin your mesh.
On top of my head, Aeotec sensors could cause massive traffic with default sensor update settings.

[Sharkys]

On the first view, you have problem with Node71. I would suggest to remove it (remove unknown nodes) and pair it again - you also would need to manually repair your flows, eg. using script (ensure you note down the device ID prior removal) : [HOW-TO][Pro][Cloud] - Tool to FIX (advanced) flows after removing and re-adding devices

Also it’s not clear from your list,which of those devices are NON-battery, so they can act as routers. If you have lack of routers and higher distances from Homey, then issues may arise as Peter mentioned.

Als you can try to build ZWAVE map to see or to troubleshoot further.

[HOW-TO][Pro][Cloud] - Z-Wave Route map

Hi, I saw this thread and was inspired to create a script which can do this for you. I made 2 variants: Zigbee Variant Zwave Variant Instructions: Run this script in the WebAPI playground: (make sure to empty the text area first) const main = async function () { console.log('Starting main function...'); let state = await Homey.zwave.getState(); let data = await Homey.zwave.runCommand({ command: 'getNetworkTopology' }); let failed = Homey.zwave.runCo…

[Goshawk29]

Node 71, the one with just simple name of z wave device is actually working now. I am able to control it. Turn it on and off from the homey app (either web or iPhone). On the developer page, when select test, it says node 71 is reachable. On developer page when I send a test frame, get transmit_complete_ok. When I try to heal, get request_timeout. But once again I am able to control it via app so I am at a lose as to what is going on. I will try remove and add it again and see what happens. And this is the outlet that is located within 2 ft of the door lock to help as a repeater.

All my devices are powered except the single door lock. My devices are either a plug in wall outlet, or a hard wired z wave wall light switch. GE Smart Fan switch model 12730, or GE 12729 Z-Wave Wireless Lighting Control Smart Dimmer Toggle Switch. Outlets are GE Z-Wave Wireless Smart Lighting Control Lamp Module 12718 or Remotec ZDS-110NA and ZDS-220NA

Strange part is some days when I reference the developer page, some nodes that were working, say unreachable and have to test and heal them. I am just totally confused.

This is an interesting routing and not what I would expect based on location of devices

[Goshawk29]

Support recommendations were extremely vanilla. They looked at my network and said they don’t see any issues with z wave hardware/network. Had me power cycle the homey pro, check for metal surfaces etc, and still have issues.

When you say homey’s zwave reach is small…what kind of range are we talking? My house is only 1400 sq ft and single story.

Newbie question, how do I look for “chatty” devices?

[Peter_Kawa]

Hmm OK.
Didn’t Support point to the KB pages? This one is quite useful, answers your questions:

Common Z-Wave error messages

_

@Goshawk29

When you say homey’s zwave reach is small…what kind of range are we talking

The usable/reliable range can be as low as a few meters. Just (temporarily) add a router device near it, to increase the range, and to see if that makes a difference.

[loy80y]

thought i’d chime in on my experiences with z-wave on homey.

I’ve been having issues with z-wave in particular and upon reading what is noted here specifically regarding the range it wouldn’t surprise me that the range could be as low as a few metres.

weirdly enough I’ve had a lot of issues with my aeotec trisensors being stuck on motion detected or no motion detected. this requires me to re-insert the battery to restart it. when its stuck on motion detected and I don’t check it for a period of time it drains the battery quite a bit. I’ve added repeaters in places where I thought it would be close enough but I suspect the device would rather try and connect directly to the homey pro hub. I believe i read that somewhere generally about z-wave devices. not sure if applies in this case.

I’ve also got aeotec multisensor 6s in my house and even though I’m getting tx errors they seem to function fine and don’t require me to re-insert the batteries to restart them.

I do also have some aeotec temperature and humidity sensors which definitely had to add a repeater in between. I would have thought it be ok when the homey pro hub is just directly below it while the sensor is upstairs in the bathroom. so I suspect the range on the homey pro isn’t as great.

the locations of these devices have always been there even with my previous aeotec hub. i didn’t come across any issues with my aeotec hub. sadly I don’t think there is an official app to add my aeotec hub to homey pro.

I’ve logged/sent an email to aeotec support and all they could say is add more repeaters and heal my devices as it looks like they are too far. Even though i have some repeaters close by it wont connect to them at times. They also told me that my aeotec smart switch 6s arent really good in terms of range which was funny coming from aeotec support.

Luckily enough I have 2 more repeaters from Aeotec which i’ve added to the devices that I’ve had issues with so fingers crossed.

i did move one of my aeotec trisensors right above my homey pro. essentially the hub is downstairs and the sensor is upstairs. i have the homey pro hub high on a shelf under my staircase. i still see tx errors but appears to be stable in terms of not being stuck on motion detected/no motion detected. i also added one of the repeaters in that same room just to help out if it ever does connect to it. its been less than a week now and its connected directly to homey. ive also restarted my homey pro hub after i made a few changes.

Just fed up with z-wave on my homey hub. i think i spent quite a bit of money buying batteries i could have bought a zigbee equivalent sensor.

i think ive seen a way to add my aeotec hub to homey pro. would rather add devices directly to my homey pro but with these ongoing issues its either i dump these devices for zigbee equivalents or add them back to my aeotec hub.

[loy80y]

ill probably have a look at this article at one point and make any changes to see if it helps. thanks!

[Peter_Kawa]

@loy80y

aeotec

It probably is not even solely a Homey issue, but a combination of z-wave devices flooding the mesh network, and Homey lacking tools or systems to control that behaviour.

The Aeotec app should be updated, to have the default check and poll interval settings less nervous.

@Peter_Kawa

I’ve read several posts about these things ruining your mesh, because they’re way too ‘chatty’
Try to increase the intervals, avoid "every 1 second’ check-intervals and such;
Here’s an excellent explanation and howto:

Homey Pro 2023 Zwave issues

I found the same situation with my Aeotec switches. They were sending a large number (hundreds per minute) of messages all related to metering which flooded the z-wave network and made it unresponsive for other control signals. 2023-05-18T21:31:15.278Z Node[33]: [COMMAND_CLASS_METER] {“Properties1 (Raw)”:{“type”:“Buffer”,“data”:[161]},“Properties1”:{“Meter Type”:1,“Rate Type”:1,“Scale bit 2”:true},“Properties2 (Raw)”:{“type”:“Buffer”,“data”:[108]},“Properties2”:{“Size”:4,“Scale bits 10”:1,“Pre…

[loy80y]

its weird in my case because its just a particular aeotec model (trisensor) im having issues with. ill definitely look into the link you provided earlier about common z-wave error messages. probably need to set the poll settings for certain functions to check way later. just checking quickly now i dont think it can be turned off for the the aeotec z-wave motion sensors but ill see if i can max out the time so it doesnt check as frequent.

the other post you linked about chatty devices i think i only did that for some devices that had issues. ill probably just do it for all z-wave devices. not sure if its alot but some of my rx numbers are in the thousands for my powered/repeater devices. its only been 2 days as i restarted my homey hub. ill see how it goes leaving the power metering on. i only need to monitor the watts. i really dont want to turn it off as ive got flows set up.

aeotec has kept the app up to date which is good. they released an update not too long ago which broke the trisensors which they fixed shortly after i had reported it.

ive already added all my repeaters now. wasnt planning to add them all in yet as i only purchased them because of this issue. just glad i picked them up for cheap on ebay otherwise i would have dumped my z-wave devices and switched to zigbee. ill see how it goes for a week once i’ve updated all my z-wave devices in terms of their reporting interval. just sucks i cant leave the out of the box settings.

[Peter_Kawa]

@loy80y

just sucks i cant leave the out of the box settings.

Exactly why I wrote this, maybe you can contact Aeotec about it:

@Peter_Kawa

The Aeotec app should be updated, to have the default check and poll interval settings less nervous.

[loy80y]

@Peter_Kawa

Exactly why I wrote this, maybe you can contact Aeotec about it:

i’ve got a support ticket open atm. ill refer them to this post and the other links. i did see dirk may also logged a support ticket to aeotec. never hurts to report it.

i’ve started changing a few settings starting off with my powered devices. from the developer tools it shows that those have been the most chatty devices. ill do my trisensors and the rest of my z-wave devices over the coming days.

hoping i can get past a week with the 2 trisensors causing alot of issues. least i wont need to remove these devices and replace them with something else.