So, my Aeotec zstick controller 5 died on me last yesterday. I already had a 7 but had never used it. I figured this would be a good time to redo my openhab install and upgrade to openhab 4. I’m on a rpi5 and using the latest openhabian image, installed today.
I did a test run by reseting one of my bathroom fan switches, (decora leviton, not sure of the model right now). Once I added the z-stick 7 controller, the test switch was discovered with no issue. However none of my older ones are. These are leviton BZMX1 and DZS15 models. I did the factory reset, by holding the top on the airgap switch, then pressing the switch till it blinked amber, then red. However I can’t get these to add to my controller. Now, I can’t find old manuals on how to do this, so I could be messing up the inclusion process, but the only video I can find says “put the controller in include mode and press the switch once”
Is there an include mode on z-stick 7? I knew how to do this on the 5, it seems it may always be in include mode, since it discovered the first switch. I did try to add a thing and scanning, but that didn’t work also.
Any help would be appreciated, I loath to replace all the switches in my house, I’d rather buy another z-stick 5
ok, so I just tried something, I plugged my old controller into the new openhab4 pi, and it came up. I have no idea what the issue with the old one openhab3 pi. I hadn’t touched in in months, so I have no idea why it suddenly broke. Only the z-wave controller had an issue, but if the controller is fine, I’m good with rebuilding using openhab4 for now, so this issue can be closed. Sorry for the erroneous topic
Yes, of course. When you open the Inbox and initiate a scan using the Zwave binding, it puts the controller into includion mode.
For a new node to show up on the controller, you must put the controller into inclusion mode (i.e. initiate a scan from the OH inbox) and then do the operation on the device to do the inclusion. But the device will only start the inclusion handshake if it’s not already paired to another controller. So you either need to exclude the device from the old controller or factory reset the device.
The good news is you do not need the original controller to exclude a device. Even if the device is not paired with your current coordinator you can exclude it from the old one. If you navigate to Settings → Things → Zwave Controller at the bottom you’ll see an option to “Exclude Devices”. Click that and the controler will go into exclusion mode and then you can press the button or what ever action on the device needs to be done to include it and the device will become excluded from the old controller. Then you can go to the inbox, initiate the scan and do the action on the device again and it will become included with the new controller.
Thanks Rich. That aligns mostly with what I was thinking. I do see some info on some of the devices in that db on how to exclude and include. Odd though, my old ones don’t seem to work with the new controller, but I was doing a factory reset, I can try the exclude.
As noted above, I was able to plug my old gen5 z-stick into the new OpenHab4 build and most of the nodes come up, but about 7 of them are showing as unknown device. They are in the db, and I checked that there’s xml for them. So I’m still thinking there’s still something wrong with my old controller, since they worked in OpenHab3 for years.
If they are battery powered devices, you need to wake them up, sometimes many times, to give the controller and openHAB enough time to interrogate the device and determine what it is. Until it gets a chance to do that it’s going to show up as unkown.
So, I figured out, and what you sent helped a lot. The new controller wasn’t excluded the old ones, I was doing a factory reset instead, but that wasn’t good enough. Fortunately the old gen 5 worked well enough to exclude them, and once I could do that, I could add them to the new controller. So I’ve now gone round and excluded all of them and added them to the new one.
I’ve moved everything now from my openhab3 to openhab4, and just need to figure out how to change the cloud to point to the new one instead of the old. I haven’t even looked at that yet, I guess I will also have to remove all of the devices and add them back to alexa
I think the gen 5 controller was just going bad, none of them were battery powered and all of them were in the database. They had all been running for years with no issue, then the reaction time from Alexa went terrible, from what used to be a second went to 30 seconds or so. I restarted the rPi and the controller stopped working. The controller was from Feb 2019, so almost 6 years old.
thanks