I have 7 PS15EMZ5-1 appliance modules which I use to control holiday (x-mas) lights. They control trees and various other holiday lighting. Once the holiday season is over the modules are unplugged and stored with all of the holiday decorations for the year. At the next holiday season they are unboxed and plugged back in.
So the question is…should these devices be excluded from the network when they are packed up or can I leave them in and just know I will see bad nodes on the network until they are plugged back in?
I want to do what’s best for the health of the Z-Wave network.
I would exclude if your network can cope with not having them there but messing with networks can always have surprising results.
Certainly leaving them in the network when they are not there is not ideal. They could be in return routes and be used when other routes fail as part of the retry strategies. They will also be retried and pinged during various activities from openHAB restart to node add.
I have a few that are used for similar purposes but only 3 not 7. They are used as repeaters so I leave in place and just accept they are adding some value for the energy they use. I make sure they are off as the relays use a lot more energy than the zwave and no led on either. They are a little neater in design than the PS15EMZ5.
That is my take. Not going to claim that is best practice but it works for me.
I have some devices in a similar situation and I left them included. I recently connected two of them. One works OK but the other should route through another device but it is not seen by OH as online. Is that because it was offline for months?
I do the same as @robmac. They stay plugged in year round. The amount of energy they consume is insignificant, especially when compared to some of the real energy hogs in the house.
Harm is one of those words that can mean many things to different people
Personally, I would agree with others above - if you’re not using them, then it is probably better to remove them from the network. That removes any possibility that something tries to use them - for sure the binding will try and communicate with them on startup, and that will cause some delays at least initially if they aren’t there.
Well, these are basically what people (I think) are calling zombie nodes - they aren’t really in the network as they are powered down. To the controller, it’s exactly the same (if I understand your definition of a zombie node that is).
A zombie node is a node that does not really exist except in the controller network table. I think sometimes a device gets excluded without getting removed from the controller device table. I view the term as interchangeable with “ghost node”
This is not just removing the “things”, it’s excluding them from the network - correct? That way there are no zombies or ghosts to mess up the party - if I am following your thoughts.
With the HUSBZB-1 I have used the most, I sometimes needed to use software to clean them off the controller after exclusion. I was mainly using cheap Chinese devices at the time though.
You are in the USA. Here is the one I bought. Be sure to check when you get it. The first one they sent was for Japan. They subsequently sent a US one.
