Having lots of problems -- is it really this hard?

I’m new to this program, and I’m really giving it a good try and studying hard, but I’m having numerous problems getting this thing off the ground and wondering if maybe this is too far beyond me.

I have OpenHabian freshly installed on a Raspberry Pi 2, using an Aeotec Z Stick. I have a rather simple network at the moment: Three GE ZW3005 Dimmer Switches, a Trane XR524 Thermostat, and a Schlage BE469 Deadbolt Lock. I’m using the Chris Jackson Z-Wave binding.

The only things that are showing up on my system are one of the dimmer switches, the thermostat, and the lock.

The problems are:

  • Two switches are not showing up, either in the Inbox or in any search of the network.
  • The lock doesn’t appear to be fully enrolled (I keep seeing a message below the thing in HABmin that says “Node Initialising: STATIC_VALUES”).
  • On the Z-Wave Network Screen on HABmin, one dimmer switch and the z-wave controller show up as connected, the thermostat is in a dot by itself and doesn’t appear to have a connection to the system. The lock isn’t showing up at all.
  • I am unable to access any graphic controls to any enrolled devices on the control screen on Paper UI. The screen shows up with a blank top bar with no locations.
  • When updating a found thing with a location, the system says “Thing Saved”, but then immediately returns a "ERROR 500 - Internal Server Error and does not create a location with a control on the Control screen.

I understand this program is a bit of a developer package, and some work needs to be done to get it up and running, but is it really this hard just to get some basic operation and device enrollment accomplished? I’m getting extremely frustrated and close to dumping the hole thing if I can’t get beyond these basic setup issues.

Any advise that can help? :unamused:

I think your z-wave devices are not associated with the stick. Therefore not recognized by OH as new things.

There is a tool whichs work directly with the stick. Try to stop OH, start the tool and see if the stick has all devices in the list.

HomeAutomation, thanks! That got the devices enrolled. One headache gone! Any ideas on the other problems I’m having. I’d be very interested in figuring out the ERROR 500 thing, and why creating locations are not saving to the control screen. Thanks again!

One problem I’ve had including some devices is that sometimes my z stick mounts to my OS at /dev/ttyACM0 and sometimes it mounts to /dev/ttyACM1 (even when nothing else is mounted to /dev/ttyACM0). Since you have to unplug the z stick to include a new Thing, this has tripped me up when it looked like the new device wasn’t connecting, when in fact my z stick wasn’t connected. Tldr: make sure after including a new device (and thus unplugging your z stick), your z stick is at the same mount point you specified under its Thing configuration - otherwise unplug it again, wait a minute and plug it back in (or update your Thing configuration).

My understanding is that 500 error you’re seeing is a bug in paperui - I have the same issue. Updating things in habmin works for me though - have you tried making the same changes in habmin?

Regarding the lack of options on the Controls screen, I have found it works out better when adding Items, if you click on each channel for your new Thing and click to add a new Item/link there, rather than manually adding a new Item and then linking it with a channel. My switches are working much better after letting OpenHAB generate the Item for me, rather than creating it myself (even though the properties appear identical).

As an aside - I’m new to OpenHAB also, and it has been really challenging getting off the ground, so you’re not alone. As I’ve begun writing rules for my devices, I can see the power OpenHAB can provide, but at this point, I wouldn’t recommend this platform to anyone who doesn’t have a development background and who would give the platform a good shake for at least several weeks, if not months before running out of steam. I’m planning to stick with it, if for no other reason than there does not seem to be a strong alternative that doesn’t give a 3rd party control of my devices… hoping I can pick up a lot more about how it works as I go, since right now I’m troubleshooting via forum posts all day.

Good luck!

You shouldn’t stop OH for this and use other tools. You can put the ZWave stick into inclusion mode from within either PaperUI (the blue + under Things) or habmin (click the circled +).

The lock to work properly requires SECURITY implementation which is not supported in the current code. There is a not-yet-officially-released version of the ZWave available, see this thread.

Not sure what you’re trying to control in PaperUI because it’s not intended to be used to control (use) devices. It’s just for administration purposes. Set up a sitemap and use BasicUI instead.

On the 500 error, well this is difficult to tell from the outside. You possibly entered invalid parameters, but in fact this could be anything. You would need to enable proper logging (at least log:set debug org.openhab.binding.zwave in Karaf console) und check the logs for hints, but there’s many possible reasons for this so noone will be able to give you a checklist here.
Have you gone through the basic tutorials on docs.openhab.org ? Jumping right into the middle often results in making settings without understanding what they’re for, and it’s close to impossible to quickly explain to a beginner how to systematically debug the whole thing.