GE Switch Failures

As mentioned, the only way to get them to work again is to exclude and rejoin. I have done it dozens of times. They have also been doing it for over 2 years in two different houses.

How many switches?

Probably 10 or so…although it seems its really 3 of them that do it, but when they go out all the others do because the mesh is broken.

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Those z-wave switches are the most reliable things in my house.

Where is the placement of the hub? Is it in a cabinet or far away from everything? My guess is the hub jumps to a single switch and everything communicates through that. If that switch drops everything drops.

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Do a replace. Works great for me. Much easier than excluding and re-adding.

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I have tried replace a few times, it just stalls at checkign device health. It also cant remove the dead devices without doing a force remove. It says I am trying to remove the incorrect device…almost like it is corrupting their IDs.

Have you tried rebooting the switch with the air gap? I had a friend you lost 3-4 switches and this fixed them. Easier than a excluding and stuff.

Pop the air gap. Once it’s ready to replace, pop it back in place. Wait a few seconds. Then replace.

FYI. My iPad works better than my iPhone with respect to replace. Not sure why. iPhone seems to take forever. iPad is nearly immediate.

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Database corruption? Wouldn’t be the first (or tenth) time.

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This worked perfect for me. I’ve had two fall off in the last few days. first one I did the exclusion method. This method is WAY better.

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I recently cut power at the breaker to my kitchen lights (GE Z-Wave 3-way setup). When the power was turned back on, the master switch with the LED light worked to control the lights, but the accessory (secondary) switch does not. Any ideas?

It seems to be talking to SmartThings because I can control the lights by toggling them on or off in the app. A goodnight routine involving the lights failed to work properly with them last night though (first time run since cutting the power earlier in the day).

Not sure what’s going on and would like to get the accessory switch working again! I’ve tried rebooting the hub and repairing z-wave network with no dice, but not excluding and re-including the device yet. Is that the next step or am I missing something here?

Are you saying the accessory switch does not work when you physically press the switch on the wall?

If so, that almost certainly has to be a wiring issue. The GE accessory switches don’t even have a radio in them, and they are invisible to SmartThings. They communicate with their master switch via a physical traveler wire. So if the master is working but the secondary is not, the first thing I would do is check the wire connections at both ends.

If by chance, you are not using the regular GE accessory switch, but instead you have some other Z wave switch in a virtual three-way, such that the accessory switch actually shows up as a device in your things list, then that would be a different type of problem.

It’s as you’ve described. Accessory switch does not work when physically pressed, but master does. It’s a GE accessory switch (came bundled with the master).

It must be a wiring issue then like you say. There is a GFCI outlet in the same box as the master that I was working on (which is why I cut the power). Didn’t change anything on the GE switch but maybe something fell off or became disconnected when stuffing the outlet back in the box. I’ll take a look when I get home. Thanks!

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Just in case anyone wants to know the resolution – it was indeed a wiring issue. The “traveler” wire came loose on the master switch. I reattached and everything works again.

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I just had two GE switches fail within days of each other; a third one failed a couple months ago. Very disappointed in the quality and not looking forward to potentially laying out another $1000 for replacement switches. I’ve seen a couple references to them having a 2-year warranty but I’m pretty sure these were all at least a bit older than that.

What have folks experienced with other brands? I see Leviton, Lutron, Enerwave, Honeywell, Zooz? I’ve seen favorable comments about Inovelli but they seem to be out of production at the moment.

Interesting this thread just got resurrected. I was just thinking about this. I have had about 4 GE’s ‘fail’ over a couple of years (switches, dimmers and a fan control). I got replacements direct from Jasco on all of them and they did not want the old ones back. Over time I have gone back to the ‘failed’ devices, powered them up, done a general device exclusion and re-included them and all of them are working again. All but one have been permanently back in service for some time (the other I simply have not installed, not because there’s a problem with it). So, at least in my case it looks like the ‘failed’ devices simply needed a good reset.

Anecdotal I know. But so far I have not had a single GE device permanently die. I have about 69 GE devices. My oldest ones are about three years old.

The Honeywell switches are also made by Jasco, so the same as the GE switches. The firmware is a little different but they’re essentially a rebrand.

As I’ve mentioned before, we personally use the Lutron and are very happy with them. Lutron is an engineering company that focuses on lighting. (Among other things, they invented the first dumb dimmer dial switch.) they have a ton of patents and higher standards than most of the others. Just as one example, most of the others set a target response rate of two seconds or less. Lutron sets a target of 0.5 seconds and usually hits it. :sunglasses:

Leviton would be at the low-end of the “best“ category on a good/better/best scale. Lots of features, well engineered, but expensive.

Zooz is the house brand for The Smartest House. Intended as a budget brand, but they are using very new technology and have a lot of interesting features because of that, so they compete well with most of the “better“ brands. Very popular in the community. Some of their staff members are active here as well, so they can answer any detailed questions. @TheSmartestHouse

Enerwave are OK, they would probably be down near the bottom of the “better“ category from an engineering standpoint. They used to be more popular before Zooz and Inovelli came on the market.

Again, I strongly recommend reading the light switches section of the device class features FAQ so you understand what some of the different features are that a light switch might or might not have and why people might choose one model over another. The light switch discussion starts around post 40 in that thread. :sunglasses:

Bulbs, switches and sensors, oh my....what to buy (device class features FAQ)

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Thanks for the tag @JDRoberts!

@Jim_Newman if you have any questions about functionality or warranty on the switches, feel free to send us a message and we’ll be happy to help!

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Ohhh yeah! Wouldn’t want to trust my life to a jasco product, that’s The Truth. They just stop responding to z wave. Can’t be removed or reinstalled. Not recognized by ST no matter how many times you cycle The install. Ohhh… All three that went bad were three ways with air gaps. Really bad qc!

Same exact problem. Won’t uninstall. Z wave repair or exclusion useless. Several have done this. Hell, my Sonoffs are 100% reliable over 2.4 ghz. Jasco is c expensive crappola.