Eurotronic Spirit Z-Wave Plus doesn't work

I found out a few things. It turns out that it’s certainly a range issue after all. Inclusion and exclusion does not work well from a distance, just like operating the rest of the device. It’s almost always offline and only responds–albeit very unreliably–when pressing the buttons, and only for a few seconds before it goes offline again. Next to the controller everything works perfectly.

When I remove the thermostat after installation and move it close to the controller (while still included) it responds very well to commands and I think it also stays online (difficult to see because it goes into install mode fairly quickly when it detects there’s no valve. Installing on the valve again yields the same problems again. I already suspected that inclusion close to the controller would not make a difference (why would it?). I think that the cause of the routing problem is also a perfect explanation why some people have problems and others do not: for some people there are no routing nodes required, as their direct range from the controller to the Spirit is small enough.

So there you have it, it’s a range issue. And one that is probably caused by the Spirit not taking indirect routes over the mesh network, since it has no neighbours and does not route (as also mentioned earlier).

Next question: how to fix it?

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Dear Gabri. Thanks for testing and confirming my guess. I don’t think that we can fix that because the device is a blackbox. I already talked to eurotronics but the seem not to be very supportiv on this topic.

@chris: You are the expert. Do you see anything we can do here? If I remember correct you have bought a device as well?

Why don’t you think it routes? I would be VERY surprised if that was the case - it’s basic device type is a routing slave, so I think it does route.

Sorry, but can someone summarise in a short post as to what the problem is? There’s a lot of posts here and it’s hard to follow what is working and what is still the problem.

I bought one of these at the end of last year to do some testing, but it didn’t work and had to be returned. I do have a replacement, but I’ve it’s just sitting in the large box of stuff I’ve bought for testing at the moment as I’ve been busy with other things…

Dear @chris:

To sume it up. The inclusion of the device works fine, so the database seems to be correct. But the device doesn’t report any neighbours to openhab (XML + habmin checked). hansvandamme is using the devices in a short distance to the controller and everything works. Gabri and myself have a longer distance to the controller, so we rely on routing and it doesn’t work for us (several other devices in the same room are working perfectly, at least for me). Gabri moved the device next to the controller for testing purpose and everything was fine as well.

Nevertheless, if we push a button on the device the value is reported to the controller and for a short period of time the device is reacting on changes performed via GUI. (Device will be reported as active but status changes back after a while)

So our conclusion is it must have something to do with routing.

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This doesn’t mean it doesn’t route. The controller is responsible for doing the routing and the binding has no knowledge about this. Also, neighbours are not the only method used to establish routes. The system will use (so called) Explorer frames to discover a route to a specific device (this is a ZWave plus feature, so if other devices are not ZWave plus, then it may not work).

Maybe it has to do with routing still - I’m not sure. Really there’s not so much that the binding can do about routing. It just tells the controller to set up routes - the actual routing is done completely by the controller.

If you are not already doing so, I would recommend to use the development version of the binding. See the following thread for installing it.

Other than that I’m not sure what I can suggest as the binding is not really involved with the network layer.

Many thanks for your help.

Thanks for your help. I continued the investigation. (I’d really like to be able to turn on my heating when I’m away this winter season ;))

I installed the test Z-wave binding, by first removing the normal one from the latest snapshot in PaperUI, then dropping the .jar file into the /usr/share/openhab2/addons folder. I removed all my items then (needs to be done either forcibly or via HABmin). When discovering new items, everything is found and works, except all the Spirit TRVs!

  • They are discovered but they just show “Z-Wave Node XXX” as an unknown device, and don’t get initialised.
  • Also, still they show: “OFFLINE - COMMUNICATION_ERROR Node is not communicating with controller”

How to proceed?

One more thought: I think the next step is determining if the device itself is at fault here to try to rule out OpenHAB as the culprit.

It seems unlikely though that it’s the device itself, as for sure Eurotronic would have tested its routing capabilities, but maybe not with OpenHAB. Anyway, if it is a device problem we can all send an e-mail to Eurotronic to let them fix it. I believe this is the first TRV device with FLiRS so perhaps there are teething troubles.

What I can do is trying my whole Z-Wave installation with another system. If time permits I will try to install Domoticz this weekend, which also uses OpenZwave. If it works with Domoticz then we know we have to hunt for the problem in OpenHAB.

As for OpenHAB itself, can a developer (Chris?) shed light on what we could try next?

I tried Domoticz. It makes no difference for the reception of the devices. I don’t see an option in Domoticz to display neighbours or to view a network map as in HABmin though, so I cannot provide evidence, but it seems that the problem remains the same. So I think the device does not contact its neighbours and thus cannot route. To be absolutely sure I will install a powered Z-wave device near the Spirit to see if it works when it is provided with such a close neighbour.

Any other things to try are of course welcome!

Major breakthrough!!! It suddenly works perfectly :slight_smile:

Although I don’t know why, after excluding and including my Spirits, they now route correctly and report neighbours in HABmin. I think I might know where to look in order to understand what was wrong. Namely, the “Show Properties” screen in Paper UI for the Spirit valve has become much more extensive and lists neighbours, routing, beaming and more. I recall that it was much less detailed than it is now:

No idea why this is. Perhaps because I added a new Z-wave mains-powered switch last week? Other than that the only thing I did was re-including the valves. Could a different specification suddenly have become active or something?

In HABmin’s Z-Wave Network Viewer you see that both my Spirit valves now show neighbours:

Capture
(Node 11 and 15 are the Spirit Z-Wave Plus valves.)

Which is also visible in the Thing configuration under the Attributes section:

Request: Can another Spirit owner perhaps also show their “Properties” page and their “Attributes” section in HABmin if it’s much different from the above? Especially for someone who has the same problems as I had. (chr1s?)

Maybe we can find out what makes these devices not route at first.

Anyway, I’m happy it is resolved. Fingers crossed it stays this way…

I mentioned earlier that the Spirit I installed was working perfectly - now I take it back, it sporadically lost connection with the controller despite being 5m away in the adjacent room. Two other Spirits I installed downstairs never worked properly either. So I returned all of them and bought a Fibaro Heat Controller instead. I highly recommend this to anyone who is having trouble with their Spirits - it has the same FLiRS tech so responds immediately to commands, is half the size of the Spirit, has a rechargeable Lithium battery and works so much better from further away. Fibaro also sell an external temp sensor for it so you can get it to reference the room temp away from the radiators to make it more accurate. Only thing is its £62 here in the UK vs £50 for the Spirits. Probably worth it if you consider it’s actually working!

I also had trouble with the device not reaching my controller, and the controller declaring it OFFLINE all the time. The device is maybe 5m away through two walls/doors. The controller stick was plugged right into the box running OpenHAB. And in the same corner I also have my DSL/Wifi box, power supplies, network cables… Now I tried putting some USB extension between the controller stick and the box and moved the stick away (less than a meter), trying to rule out possible interferences or shielding. And what should I say, since then the connection seems pretty stable, since then no more OFFLINE.
(Of course I can’t rule out that it’s just coincidence, and that now the controller is just in a little bit better position regarding walls and doors…)

So probably the Spirit has a low range. This would not be a problem if it shows proper meshing behaviour and you have an always listening slave close by for routing messages. Can you both check in HABmin if it does that? (That is, check the same sections as in the screenshots I took above. It should show multiple neighbours in the Attributes section and green lines to other nodes in the Z-Wave Network Viewer.)

Sorry, missed that message. I’m new to ZWave business and it’s my only device up to now, so there is not a lot to mesh :wink:

If that’s the case, then your range problem might be expected, since the range is low apparently. What you can do though is check whether it has a green checkmark for Routing in HABmin (see above picture). Also, please tell if there are differences in your properties screen compared to mine in PaperUI (also see above picture).

Let’s try to resove any remaining issues before next winter :wink:

Didn’t have much time lately to play with this. But actually since I moved the controller a little it seems pretty stable. No communication error for over a month. I plan to install some Zwave switches, when I find some time, then I should probably see some routing.

Just checked my device config in PaperUI, and indeed it looks different than yours… (see below). Namely I’m lacking the Zwave Plus references… Maybe this is the reason why unsolicited updates don’t work for me? Maybe I need to update OpenHAB and re-create the device…

And Routing in HABmin has a green checkmark.

Indeed, your Paper UI properties output looks like mine first did I think. This suddenly changed a while back for me to include the Z-wave+ references as these additions indeed consist of. After that I had the feeling that the devices started routing, or routing better at least.

Maybe this is because of your OpenHAB version? I’m using a recent snapshot.

Is there any news on this?

I recently bought four Spirits – unfortunately before I found this topic. All of them are showing the symptoms described here. No routing (the nodes are isolated in the HABmin network viewer) and they do not react on any commands, not even sending sensor information.

Two of the spirits are in sight of the Z-Wave controller, less than 4m away. The other two one floor below, but directly beside a perfectly working Z-Wave wall-plug.

The device information HABmin shows:

Eigenschaften

OpenHAB is running in V2.3.0 stable as docker container (Debian).

So, I am wondering if it’s worth trying to get them work or better send them back and let the manufacturer deal with the problem.

I would suggest to use the latest snapshot and if there is a problem still, then please provide information on the issue. This thread is nearly a year old and a lot has changed in that time.

With the V2.4.0 snapshot it worked…thanks for the fast reply!

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