How often should a Z-wave device communicate?

Hi.
I did a really good cleanup some days ago, went over the settings of all my Z-wave devices and changed so the ones where I don’t care about power readings actually don’t send any readings. It really cleared up the air here, I realize I had loads of unnecessary stuff sent over my network all the time. Now I can have the Zniffer running for minutes without nothing at all :sunglasses:

However, now when I look, most of those devices have the status “ERROR: COMM” (Node is not communicating with controller). If I send something to them, (for example simply to turn them on) it works good, but apparently the controller sees them as a problem since they don’t regularly report anything.

This is not a really big problem since the devices work as they should, but it really annoys me with a lot of red warnings in the list of Things. Anyone knows how often a node should communicate with the controller in order not to be marked as erroneous? I could live with some pollution in my Z-Wave network as long as it makes my list green again… But question is how often they need to report in for that to happen…

My Z-Wave devices can be silent for quite a while if not getting commands or nothing is to be reported. At least, for the battery powered ones, they report once a day the battery level. I was asking me the same question as you. I have some reporting on my HABPanel using the “Last update indicator widget” (GitHub - BasvanH/habpanel-widget-lastupdate-indicator: Lastupdate indicator widget for HABPanel (OpenHAB).

I think this differs between mains powered and battery powered. All my battery powered devices are always online, even one that I happen to know has been out of battery for months…

Still reported “Online” after months? The Z-Wave spec says: “Sleeping nodes can be considered as failing after missing more than 2 consecutive Wake Up Periods.”