So, I have what a GE Enbrigthen Zwave Switch, made by Jasco. It failed. They sent me as a warranty replacement a newer version with Zwave Plus. I installed it yesterday, only to discover two more switches of the old variety failed too, but they worked 'til I replaced the first bad one.
So my question: there seems to be a link between my replacing the one and the failure of the other two. How can this be? I don’t get it.
PS: the manual control of the device has failed. The light will not turn on manually. ST IDE shows it still active, but I cannot control it either.
If it died at the switch it was a hardware failure. 99.99999% the timing was purely coincidental. However, it IS likely related to whatever event killed the switch they originally replaced in the first place.
When I lose my old GEs they usually go in clusters… I lost 7 in one day during snowmageddon last year…
Why do you think this is? It makes no sense to me
Because the THING that actually falls in the Jasco design is a sub-par capacitor that is unfortunately sensitive to surges. You can usually trace these failures back to minor sirge or brownout events… And the damage to the capacitor is cumulative.
The repair, ZWave in general has nothing tondo with that circuit thay blows these devices.
Historically, those switches have been very sensitive to current surge. There’s some kind of buffering issue where when there’s a surge on the line the radios freeze up and then again, historically, the only solution has been to cut the current at the circuit box and restore in order to get them working again. And it does seem to get worse as the switches age. You can find lots of discussion of this in the forums.
So as far as the logic of it… If all devices of this model have that same vulnerability, and they’re all about the same age, then anything causing current jumps might cause multiple ones to fail. Even replacing a switch might cause a current jump that then causes another switch to freeze up.
You’ll find discussion of this on many home automation forums, it’s not a smartthings issue. It’s a Jasco switch issue with those older models. It does seem to be better with the newer ones.
So… You’re not the first person to report several of them failing either all at once or within a few days of each other. The first thing to do is check the wiring and all the connections and make sure everything is clean and tight. And preferably map the connections to make sure you’re not having current surges.
If the wiring and connections look good but you still have some non-responsive switches, try the trick of throwing the circuit breaker and see if that resets it.
( by the way, again going by historical reports, just using the air gap switch is sometimes not enough. You may have to throw the circuit breaker.)
Here’s a very old thread from six years ago on this issue:
Thank you all!
It could be as simple as returning the power to those other switches after you installed the new replacement switch. Just flipping the breaker back on can blow out the older Jascos.