FAQ: How to remove ghost devices from your z-wave and zigbee networks

Wiki FAQ
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Sometimes after doing a Z-Wave repair you’ll notice error messages on your logs from unknown devices listed. These are ghost device, i.e. devices that are no longer paired with the SmartThings hub and not recognized but still remain in the network routing tables.

The problem with ghost devices is that they can create issues with the mesh, unresponsive devices, slow communication, delays and other issues.

NOTE: Starting firmware 37.x the hub should automatically detect and remove ghost devices. You can use this wiki to search and remove any left over ghost devices.

There are two way to identify ghost devices, either by looking at the routing table for the device (which shows only the last used route for that device) or for Z-Wave devices looking at the Z-Wave Repair events.

How to identify all ghost devices on a Z-Wave network

  1. Run a Z-Wave Repair from your SmartThings mobile app

  2. Keep the app open and look at the Repair messages

  3. Look for entries here WITHOUT a device name and says Unknown device, these are Ghost devices.

    Examples of GHOST devices

    • Unknown device: Failed to update
    • Unknown device: Could not update neighbors
    • Unknown device: Could not delete old routes
    • Unknown device: Could not assign new route

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Examples of VALID devices, displays a device name
WARNING: DO NOT DELETE VALID DEVICES OR YOU WILL HAVE TO EXCLUDE AND PAIR THESE DEVICES AGAIN

  • Aeon Switch: Failed to update
  • Aeon Switch: Could not update neighbors
  • Aeon Switch: Could not delete old routes
  • Aeon Switch: Could not assign new route

How to remove a ghost device from your Z-Wave network

There currently is no way to manually remove ghost z-wave devices. Ideally the hub should automatically purge all ghost devices within a few days (run a Z-Wave repair again in a few days to check for ghost devices as described above). If that doesn’t happen then contact support@smartthings.com and provide them with your hub id and ghost devices to investigate.

How to remove a ghost device from your ZigBee network

  1. Power down your SmartThings hub (unplug the power cable and remove batteries if applicable)
  2. Unplug/turn off your ZigBee devices which are affected by the ghost devices
  3. If you come across any ZigBee devices in your house which you know are connected to your hub but not showing up in the list of devices under My Devices, unplug them also or pair them with your hub and then exclude them to a clean start.
  4. Wait for 30 minutes and then plug the hub back in and power up all the devices, this forces the ZigBee mesh to rebuild it routing tables and should remove any ghost devices in the routing tables

How to improve the performance of the Z-Wave mesh

If you like this Wiki check out our work at www.rboyapps.com

11 Likes
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I can’t get this to work. When I click REMOVE I get a spinning circle and “Exclusion Mode Active”
Then I get “Having difficulty? You may Force Remove this Z-wave Device”.
I click FORCE REMOVE and back to a spinning circle and “Attempting to forcefully remove this device”.

Keeps looping thru same steps. I created the device exactly following your instructions.
Rebooted the hub made no difference…

Any help would be appreciated.

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1 Like
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Are you using the Classic app to remove?

I get the force remove prompt all the time. After selecting, it looks like it didn’t work successfully but if you go back you may find that the device is gone nonetheless.

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Yes. I’ve tried several times

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Well I repaired the network again and was able to remove the ghost device!!
I checked route for each Z-wave device and and don’t see any unknown devices. :smiley:

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I deleted 13 ghost devices today. Thank you! FYI, deleting the devices works from the new app now.

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I’ve got 2 ghosts that are very persistent. They are no longer showing in the Z-wave routes for any other devices, but when I run the z-wave repair in the IDE, I see a lot of error messages. I followed the directions above and no luck in deleting them - I get a network error (new app).

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I’ve got about 9 ghost devices … when I go through these steps and after attempting the force delete … I get an error that says “the device can be deleted because they are operating normally”

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I submitted a case to Support a few days ago. Still waiting for them to get back to me with a resolution.

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The procedure worked great. I removed 2 ghost devices that had been a problem.

I would not have know how to do this without help.

Thanks for the post

1 Like
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Thanks so much for the post regarding removing ghost Z-Wave devices. This worked for me.

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How long does it generally take for the Zigbee mesh to rebuild/update in IDE?

I have a zigbee door sensor that stopped working after the outage the other day and found this thread. I looked thru my devices and don’t see any zigbee devices that are missing or not working.

I followed the steps above. Power down the hub, and pull the battery out of the door sensor I’m having issues with. Waited a little over 30 minutes, powered up the hub and put the battery back in the sensor.

This is what it looks like:
This Device (A106) ↔ Unknown Device (62EB) ↔ Unknown Route (???) ↔ Home Hub

Even though the IDE still shows this, the door sensor is now working…

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Tagging @JDRoberts

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That’s two separate questions: how long does it take the Zigbee mesh to rebuild and how long before Smartthings reports the changes.

The answer to the first question depends on how many devices you have, but typically it could be a couple of hours. It could also be only a few minutes. Back when I was a field tech (not for Smartthings) we usually told people to check the next day.

The answer to the second question used to be that the IDE value was only updated once a day. I know that was supposed to be changed in one of the recent Betas, but I don’t know if it ever was. :thinking:

@Automated_House

1 Like
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I have 10 zigbee device and only one had in route Unknown Route (???) …
Yesterday I unplug the hub (also the battery) wait 30 min and powered up the hub …
Well after 12 hours I have 5 devices with Unknown Route (???) … :smiley:

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Did you power down and unplug/power off your ZigBee devices also?

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Gotcha. It still hasn’t updated this morning, but the device is still working fine.

Mostly curious more than anything.

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If I unplug my hub for 30 min and when I restart the hub I have always device with Unknown Route (???), I think that this route is recorded in Smartthings hub like ip wifi are recorded in router, otherwise these ghost devices should go away …

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Just to followup from my previous post for future searchers… https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/wisdom_of_the_ancients.png

It’s been over a week, devices working fine despite the IDE still showing the same unknown device, unknown route messages…

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Does removing ghost devices hinge on all registered devices being online?

I have a couple offline devices that are being routed through three ghost devices (02, 32, 0A). Plus I have two online devices that are routing through the (02) ghost device.

I’ve created all three ghost devices and deleted them, but repairing the Z-wave network doesn’t remove them. I of course get an error that the two offline devices can’t be repaired, but the two online devices retain their (02) ghost device.

I wonder if the offline devices are keeping (02) from being removed and so the repair utility just leaves it in the route for the other two online devices.