Z-Wave nodes show OFFLINE - COMMUNICATION_ERROR

Looks like your item channels don’t match your stick.

Your items are linked to channels with the ID zwave:device:65985128

But your stick ID appears to actually be zwave:serial_zstick:65985128

Update your channels and you should be good to go.

Thanks for that Justin,
Well spotted. I am using inbox to add the nodes, there seems to be no way to edit the device ID when you add them. How home they don’t match the Z-Stick and how do I edit?

I take that back. On a second look, that appears to be a correct config, since you are correct, the things added via the inbox do have the zwave:device:65985128 ID. So the issue is something else.

Have these nodes worked previously or is this the first time you’ve tried to add them? If they are battery devices they may not be fully initialized yet and you’ll need wake them several more times before OH has all the data it needs to communicate with them fully.

OK, to be absolutely sure I will now remove all devices from the z-stick, then do a factory reset of the z-stick and re-connect all nodes one by one.
I will report back once done.

You don’t need to remove them from the z-wave stick!

They are probably communicating just fine with the stick. The binding just needs to collect data from each device before that device can be fully initialized in OH. If the devices are battery devices then they often do not stay in communication with the stick long enough at a time to send the whole packet that OH needs for initialization and so need to be continually woken up (by doing whatever the user manual says is the device wake up action) until OH has had enough time to collect all the info.

None of the devices are battery types.
There are just 2 at this point: ZW132 and FGS211. I removed all things from openHAB including the Z-Stick controller. I have factory reset the Z-Stick and re-paired both devices. I just plugged the Z-Stick back into the RaspberryPi and created the Z-Wave Serial Controller on /dev/ACM0.

Then I searched for the devices in the inbox.

I am now moving the controller right next to the nodes to ensure there are no signal problems, then I will try to search for new devices again.

I moved the controller closer to the nodes. Now the device models show up correctly when I search the inbox.

But when I move the controller back to the original location I am back to the original problem. Looks like I have the nodes to far away.

Any way to improve the range?

Z-wave is a mesh network so the easiest way to increase the range is to have nodes between your controller and the other nodes. If you have need for other sensors or actors those will work or you can just get a z-wave range extender.

Depending on how complex you want to get there are other options such as having the stick in a satellite RPi that communicates with your OH via some other protocol (MQTT over wifi for example).

Add more nodes or a range extender between the controller and rest of modules. Then make sure you heal the network. This will update the routing between the mesh network.

Depending on your current setup a mesh heal might do it already if you moved or removed a node.

Thanks! I will add more nodes. Can you explain where to do a mesh heal?

OK I added a new node (node 6 - ZW096). It is between the controller and the two nodes having trouble. It is within line of sight and only 4 meters away from nodes 2 and 3. Total distance between controller and trouble nodes is 10m but on a different floor (wooden house).
I am having no issues between node 6 and the controller. But nodes 2 and 3 still keep showing off line unless I bring them in close proximity to the controller.

I should point out that this Z-Wave installation has been running fine until about a week ago, when I started seeing these nodes go offline. I have replaced the Z-Stick, Completely re-installed the RaspberryPi from scratch with the latest image.
Every bone in my body is screaming RFI (Radio Frequency Interference).
The way I see it, if nothing changed in the system, it must be from an outside influence.

I have included a Airspy Spectrum Analyzer screen shot taken in the range of Z-Wave Frequencies used here in New Zealand.



You can see the Z-Wave signals (919.8MHz and 921.4MHz), and the noise floor at around -50dB.
The first screenshot is taken near the controller, the second, near one of the nodes.

Any ideas
Surely Z-Wave has better range than this?
Maybe I should try Zigbee…

Have you tried your stick on a USB cable, to get it away from the Pi?

First, I’m not an expert, but have been running Zwave for a while. Like you I did start with 2, but located the pi and z-stick about 3 feet away. A good reference of Zwave routing Z Wave Routing Basics: Retry Strategies
Also there is an application Simplicity Studio that will measure z-wave network health. it is free, but you have to register.
Lastly there is a web site to clean you debug file. Z-Wave Log Viewer
I ran yours through it.

good luck

Thank you for that report Bob. Clearly shows the communication issues. I will look for that software.
To answer the Dalek, e-x-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-e ! seriously though the z-stick is 30cm away from the pi on a usb hub. Let me know if you think it will work better at a greater distance. No external power supply though - as it doesn’t make any difference to the result when I connect a power supply. I heard the pi has inadequate capacitors on the usb power supply which is why the z-stick doesn’t always get detected when plugged directly into the pi usb port. Big lesson learned there.
Al

Quite a set-up !
I hesitate to mention this, but try the z-stick on the USB hub with only an SD card running openhab2 in the pi (nothing else on the usb ports. I see you have something else attached. I have had trouble with an SSD attached to Rpi4.

Bob

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Seems reasonable.

(EXTERMINATE! must always be written all caps, with at least one exclamation mark. It’s the law. You can add hyphens though.)

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The other device you can see in the photo is a Modbus RS485 usb dongle which gathers realtime power usage data from a check meter in my switchboard.

The wired Modbus is the one part of this home automation system that works 100% reliably.

I already tried removing the RS485 dongle but it did not help to resolve the ZWave comms issues.
I will attempt a longer USB cable and remove the RS485 dongle again as a test.

If I cannot get Z-Wave to behave I am considering to ditch everything and move to KNX with dedicated KNX cable.

Hi,
I just saw yesterday that aeotec released a new stick due to incompatibility with the pi4 - could that be part of your problem?

Blockquote
New Pi from Raspberry, new Z-Stick from Aeotec. As it was built upon an older Z-Wave stack, the non-plus model of Z-Stick Gen5 isn’t compatible with Raspberry 4. But Z-Stick Gen5+ is. That opens up your home automation software to Raspberry’s new architecture including 8GB of RAM and an ARM v8 1.5GHz CPU.

Blockquote

/Chris

Chris,
That could well be the problem.
I will try to get a 5+ stick.
Al