GE z-wave switch shows offline but still works

Devices & Integrations
1

I have a GE z-wave wall switch that keeps showing offline in the Smartthings app. I figured it was going bad and would need to be replaced. But I just discovered that the switch is still responsive if I use Actiontiles to control it. Once I do that it shows as online in ST for a while but eventually reverts back to offline. So it doesn’t appear to be an issue with the switch but with the ST app instead. I’ve tried changing the driver but it didn’t alter the behavior. Any thoughts?

2

Hi, @AwsmSpaceMonkey

Some devices go to “sleep” to save battery and return automatically when receiving a new event.
From our side, the engineering team can verify if the device was set offline correctly.

3

I had the same issue with the GE/Jasco ZWave receptacles. I had two of them and they would randomly show offline, but my automations still functioned. If I would turn the breaker off to that circuit, they would come back online… for a while. I replaced them with more GE/Jasco devices which ultimately did the same thing. I then replaced them with some Eaton Aspire ZWave devices, these just died after a few months. I’m now using some Eve Matter/Thread receptacles and have had no more issues, they were expensive but so far so good. The GE/Jasco devices seem to have this offline issue with either their switches or receptacles, lots of posts with similar issues. Time to move on, these are not good devices.

1 Like
4

I should clarify that this a recent change in behavior. This switch has been working fine for years. It is also not a battery device, it’s a hard wired wall switch.

5

How recent? There have been many changes regarding the health check after the migration, so, it can be a side effect.
Anyway, for the team to investigate, we need the following information:

  1. When the device goes offline. Take note of the time and share it with us including your timezone. For example 11:00 hrs GMT-6
  2. Then, submit your hub logs:
    ide the Hub logs by following these steps:
  1. In the Advanced Users app, enter the “Hubs” section
  2. Enter the corresponding Hub and click on “Dump Hub logs”
  3. Confirm the process by clicking on “Dump Hub logs” again in the pop-up.
  4. You’ll get a green box at the top confirming the Hub logs were requested.
  1. Once done part “2”, send the command from action tiles as you mentioned. Verify the device comes back online (BTW, it’s expected that the execution of an automation brings a device back since the Hub receives a message from it as a response). Take note of the time when this was executed and share it with us as well.
  2. Finally send the hub logs as well.
  3. Share the complete brand and model of those devices in case the engineering team knows about them being problematic
  4. Open support access to your account:
    1. Confirm the email account registered in the forum is the same one you use for SmartThings. If not, please share it with me over DM
    2. Enable support access to your account:
  1. Go to the SmartThings Web (my.smartthings.com)
  2. Log in to your Samsung Account
  3. Select Menu (⋮) and choose Settings
  4. Toggle on Account Data Access
  5. Select the time period and confirm - In this step, please select “Until turned off”, once the team finishes, we’ll let you know so you can disable it again.
  1. Also, please share the names of the devices involved to look for their IDs in your account
6

This behavior has been documented all the way back in 2017.
That was still when the DTH drivers were used, it’s not a driver issue, it’s just a brand that doesn’t make quality devices. They’ll work for a while and then just present as offline in the app. I’ll bet if you cycle power to the switch from your circuit breaker, it will come back online, for a while. Sometimes I could get a few days, before I replaced them it was more like hours.

1 Like