ZWave offline devices block other devices

Today I had a strange problem with my ZWave network. Yesterday I noticed that two rollershutter devices because lost the calibration. I simply unplugged them because I didn’t have the time to calibrate them again immediately.

Today I wanted to recalibrate the rollershutters, but I noticed that every ZWave remote stopped working. Data from the ZWave sensors still was coming in, simply the remotes didn’t work anymore. I tried restarting Openhab, but that also didn’t help. I found no errors in the log, but I noticed a strong increase in cancel messages after unplugging the devices. After I plugged the rollershutter devices in an recalibrated them everything started working again.

I’m running the latest OH release 2.5.6. Is this a known problem when devices are offline for some time?

Yes, if you power down devices, then you are changing the network topology and this may impact routing depending on how large your network is.

Some devices may recover automatically, but it will take some time. Generally speaking, ZWave Plus devices will probably recover as they have a discovery mechanism, but this may take some time, and of course depending on the network (ie availability of other mains devices) there may now be no routes.

Older devices may have further issues - again depending on the network topology. If you have a lot of mains devices, and therefore a good mesh with a number of alternative routes, then it should continue to work.

So, the answer is “maybe” :slight_smile: and it depends on your network topology.

4 Likes

Thanks for the quick answer. I completely forgot about that. As expected it took about 24 hours, then everything worked as before.

1 Like