Recent Problems Adding ZWave Things

Setup, Configuration and Use Installation
1

openHABian 3.1.0 stable on RPi4 with Aeon Labs ZStick Gen5+

I have a template I use to build new OH systems. Just recently I have started having problems adding zwave devices.

Here is my process:

  • Copy my template to a new SD card
  • Place into controller with new Aeon Labs ZStick Gen5+ zwave controller
  • Change username in openhabian-config
  • Navigate to location to add zwave Things and click Scan
  • Press button on Aeotec Multisensor 6 (in this example). Green lights flash indicating the device is trying to include but then lights go back to gradiant indicating the Thing is not on a zwave network.

I can get better results if I use the z-stick directly to include the Thing but even then they don’t initially fully include, just a node number with no channels. They seem to then come in a bit later with the channels. This is happening with other zwave devices as well.

Until about the last month or so I haven’t had these problems. Same template, same but new controller/zwave stick, same but new zwave devices.

Has something changed recently that would explain this? Makes no sense to me.

2

That’s pretty standard behavior for battery powered devices. The binding and controller cannot interrogate a battery powered device because it spends most of it’s time asleep. The device has to wake up on it’s own (or through manual intervention by you pressing a button or something) for the binding to gather enough information to figure out what it is.

Nothing has changed in the binding that would have changed this. And given you are running on 3.1 release you are running on software that hasn’t changed in about five months so if things have changed in the past few months the change is outside of openHAB itself.

3

Thanks. Yeah these devices are powered via USB cable.

I just loaded the current openHABian install and had no problems so it’s something with my template. I had the same problems adding devices to an existing system this weekend also so it appears to be a new problem relating to these systems, even when installed previously. So strange. Could there be anything related to the config file? That is the only change I made aside from just configuring stuff in the GUI but I haven’t messed with that in months. I guess there could be another binding causing a conflict that wasn’t before.

4

Which config file?

6

Openhabian.conf

Actually I’m guessing that something got mangled when I made a copy of the template recently. I’m trying an older version to see what happens.

7

This is expected behavior if you include a device just with the controller. Inclusion only connects the device to the controller’s network, it has nothing to do with all of the OH specific details (channels, device name, etc.). Those details are what is stored in the z-wave database and can then only be associated with the device later when OH queries the controller for the information about included devices and knows which database entries to look up.

8

Thanks JustinG When/what causes OH to query the zwave controller?

9

Wow this took me FOREVER to figure out.

It turned out to be the micro sd card reader I used. The one I have been using is unavailable so I bought some Kingston readers and if that’s in teh USB port I can’t install zwave devices. Even if there is no card in teh reader and even with different readers so it’s not just one that’s bad. Crazy. This is the reader: