You need the Silabs software or some other means of resetting the controller. It cannot be done from openHAB.
This problem has reappeared. I upgraded to the latest OpenHAB (3.4.4).
I had 2 dead Z-Wave switches and replaced them with Zigbee switches.
At first all went well but less than 24h the whole ZWave network is back into a slower than a snail…
I really do not want to reset everything again and start over. Does anyone have a better idea?
For those not wanting to read the whole thread again:
- I have an Aeotec Gen 5 Z-Wave stick
- When all goes well, the light on the stick changes red/blue/yellow/off at a regular rate of about 1Hz.
- When the network is slow, the color changes are only once every 20s or longer.
you have zombie nodes in the network
the network is getting swamped by something
if you have the means to sniff traffic and figure out what is doing it might help
how many nodes in the network (I’m not going to read the whole thread, sorry)
Do you have nodes that have a ridiculously high reporting rate set?
Have the two dead switches been excluded or whatever (removed from system)
Do you run nightly heal?
The two switches were repeaters and any battery nodes that used them in the mesh may be stranded
I guess try to add more detail about the network in general
There are about 40 active nodes on the network. Nightly heals are run, yes. They have not helped.
There are no nodes with ridiculously high reporting settings.
The two removed nodes could not be excluded. They were dead from the network before I pulled them from power. They do appear in the Z-Wave network map with dashed unidirectional lines.
I tried to get OpenHab remove the nodes from the controller to no avail.
I can run any test you’d suggest.
I did a comprehensive writeup about removing nodes here. In my cases slow networks were always related to these.
I tried to remove the zombie nodes as instructed in the pdf. Unfortunately, I get an error:
Remove Failed Node failed in 00:00:04.011
What did it say after the “check” if failed?
Your writeup says Use the zensys z-wave pc controller tool to delete nodes However I cannot find that tool.
Can you give me a link on where to find that?
(Several links are dead)
Tried again. The Is Failed operation results in Is Failed Node Check failed in 00:00:04.072
I believe it’s now part of Simplicity Studio 5.
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Interesting? Usually that means the node responded, so can’t be removed. Only failed nodes can be removed by that method. Did you see any message from the node? Click on the letter icon in the upper right (second one in)
@apella12
That’s actually empty.
Note that, whenever I restart the ZWave PC Controller, remove the stick, re-insert it, the stick lights flash regularly. As soon as I ask to mark the node as failed, the lights do not flash anymore. The light will change only after very long wait times.
Also those node cannot be replying, since they are now disconnected from the power.
PS: If having about 40 to 50 devices creates this kind of situation with ZWave, it seems to me the whole protocol was not well thought out. I have started replacing ZWave devices with Zigbee. I am never going to add another ZWave device or recommend ZWave to anyone…
However replacing all my devices is an expensive enterprise…
I have two Aetec 5+ sticks. Is there a way to transfer the config from the one currently paired with all the devices to the other one? Can it be done via a configuration file where the dead devices could be manually removed?
All that probably means the check if failed message never got through.
I have had 40 to 50 zwave node networks running for some time without a problem, but that doesn’t help you.
The are a couple of options for the other stick (assuming it is blank).
- Use the NVM backup on the first page of the PC controller to copy the configuration, then open another PC controller window and stick the other Zstick in another windows usb port and use the NVM to restore to the new stick. However, that will be an exact copy, so will have the same problem.
- what might be interesting is to add the other stick to your network. On the window with the current zstick use the Add, then on the other window click the classic learn. The blank Zstick should get a complete network. Then try to use that controller to remove the failed devices. It is a long shot and probably something could go wrong, but if you do the nvm backup first (of your current), you can just restore that version (without the other Zstick in the network).
Actually, one thing in my previous post is incorrect. The sticks are Gen5 but not Gen5+
Can I put a backup from Gen5 onto a Gen5+ ? (using ZWave cloner downloaded from domotic-hobby.com)
Could it be that the latter’s firmware fixes some issues?
Unlikely.
The quick way to tell is to try the PC controller backup, if there are errors then the answer is no. There is an older Zwave backup utility that can work on older sticks. Adding the stick to the network should work regardless of version
PC Controller backup stated that the operation was not supported. The aforementioned software however did download the NVM content. You think that content cannot be used on the 5+ stick?
I think it would be worth a try.
tl;dr
The main difference with an Aeotec 5+ is that there was a hardware change so that the device would work on a Rpi4 without a usb2 hub (powered or unpowered) in between.
The backup compatibility has more to do with the SDK firmware and library being used (This should appear in the lower right on the PC Controller or in the upper banner on the Backup utility). I believe the original Z-stick SDK was 3.95 (at least mine was). The minimum SDK for the PC Controller backup is 6.x.
The backup tool seems more forgiving. I did use it to backup a Zooz SDK 6.07 network and then write it to my Aeotec 3.95. The Aeotec 5 can be upgraded to allow the use of the PC controller, but that did not work for me, so cannot advise that. Also I noted above I do not think putting the slow “5” network on a “5+” will help speed things up. But at least you have the network back up tool.
Epiloge:
- I first tried to remove 27 devices in the hope it might trigger a reconfiguration of the stick. That did not help.
- Following another google search, I found the page to upgrade the firmware to the level of the 5+ stick. (firmware v1-02). After that update, I was able to mark the two removed switches as failed nodes and then remove them. And after that, it’s working again.
Conclusions: Updating the firmware helped. Now I have to pair 27 devices again.
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