I’d like to know the best way of viewing z-wave traffic on my network to troubleshoot an issue in my installation.
I’m struggling to get full performance from my newly-installed Schlage BE469 smart lock; I’ve called their support line and they agree that it’s not acting correctly but pointed the finger at an incompatible z-wave controller. The root issue is that, while OH completed the interrogation of the device and populated with channels, not all of the channels will consistently update with a state change of the lock and the lock does not always respond to z-wave commands. I see some traffic in the OH logs but, since it’s the last layer of communication, it doesn’t tell me anything my sitemap doesn’t. In other words, OH is behaving correctly and the issue appears to be in the z-wave layer. Is there something similar to the herdsman log for zigbee that can be monitored to get more information on the device traffic?
Running OH 3.3.0 on a RPi 4 with a Zooz Z-Wave Plus S2 ZST10 controller.
I have the same lock, and I also had apparent problems with the lock communicating events to the controller. Let me ask a few dumb questions first. (1) This is not the 700 series stick, right? Those aren’t compatible yet. (2) It was a secure inclusion? (3) Does it have lots of neighbors?
The thing is that now my locks seem to be behaving well lately, and I don’t know what changed or why. Over time I’ve changed my setup. I’m using an Aeotec Z-stick Gen5 now. Here are the properties from my Lock thing:
I’m still wary of my locks and I don’t trust them for home security. To help with that, whenever I command a lock/unlock from OpenHAB, it runs a script timer which checks the AlarmRaw to see if the lock is reporting what it should. If it isn’t, it attempts to lock it again up to 4 more times and then sends me an error notification if there’s a problem.
As for monitoring the Z-wave traffic, set your Z-wave logging to DEBUG and watch the log when you command a lock event. I’m bad at interpreting the output but there are many here who can decipher it better than me.
I’m sorry this isn’t more helpful, but I’ll share what I can if it might help you.
Thanks for the insight! To respond to your questions
Yes, it is the 700-series. Is that incompatibility from OH or the lock (Schlage, definitely - they had never heard of Zooz)?
I don’t believe so. I went through the normal z-wave thing adding process and was never prompted for a password or similar. Is there a different process I’m supposed to use for a secure inclusion? My only experience with this is from years ago, with a different lock, that wouldn’t include until OH added the secure-add feature and then it just started working with no extra effort.
I’m similarly wary of this lock but I want to have it in the event it becomes reliable in the future. My rules have an icon that also acts as a button on the floorplan view. It doesn’t change from one state to the other unless there is some sort of status change (also looking at AlarmRaw) confirming the lock did something. I don’t want to have the command re-issued because things don’t jive in OH with reality. For example, I’ll tell the lock to unlock, I’ll hear the motor start turning, but the channel states never update. Maybe things would be okay if I’m re-sending the same command…
I’ll try increasing the polling period as well. I had to do that with some of my older dimmers that took forever to turn off.
You did include it securely, so that’s not the problem.
Yes, it is the 700-series. Is that incompatibility from OH or the lock (Schlage, definitely - they had never heard of Zooz)?
Ah, the 700 series. Believe it or not, I also used that stick for a while at the beginning and it was mostly compatible, but Imy zwave network was flaky at times. I then found out that the OpenHAB z-wave binding is not fully compatible with the 700 series. This may be part of the problem. I’d recommend getting a 500 series zwave stick and seeing if that improves things.
I’m slowly collecting a graveyard of things that maybe sometimes work for some people but never here, haha.
The incompatibility might explain some of the “sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t” behavior I’ve experienced, as well. For the most part, it’s been really good, until it isn’t…
I still have the OG Aeon Labs Gen 5 stick in a drawer and it’s in the list of supported devices… Maybe I’ll give that a try.
What I’m struggling with, though, is the disconnect between what’s going on here and what I thought z-wave was all about - a standardized protocol that was more expensive because of the licensing and verification that it conformed to the standard. Has something changed in the years since I started down this road and now it’s just expensive?
Eeesh! What a mess… After reading through this, I’m going to exclude my lock from the network and add it to my old Aeotec Gen-5 stick. If it suddenly becomes more chatty then I guess I’ll just have to port my network over and put the 700-series back in the drawer until things progress.
What a great resource! I’ll have to spend some time digesting but this looks very helpful for future troubleshooting.
I’m slowly collecting a graveyard of things that maybe sometimes work for some people but never here, haha.