All of our home lights are automated with Smart Things. Lately, there has been some issues with some not working, other only some bulbs going on, and on the app, some say “unavailable”, and one scene that has completely disappeared from the app. I really need to get an electrician or anyone (a 15 year-old who programs clocks on Betamaxes) to come to redo all the lights and re-set up the scenes. I am in LA, and would appreciate any assistance, as I am so anti-techy, I am sure I’d screw it up worse. Thanks for the help.
I’m sure that’s very frustrating! An electrician is not going to be able to help with this – – the problems are going to be on the software side with SmartThings. So you need someone familiar with SmartThings and the platform.
First things first, though, have you talked to SmartThings support? They can be very helpful and it won’t cost you anything. Additionally, they have access to some diagnostics from their side that are not available to us as customers (or to consultants) so it’s always best to start with them.
In this context it is Los Angeles. Thanks very much for your advice. I have
been in contact, just don’t feel I am capable of reprogramming 45 switches
a half dozen scenes, so thought someone with that experience would be a
wise use of money.
Given your advice, I will seek to delete all the switches and start all
over again. Unless you care to stop by and do it? Lol
It’s up to you, but personally I wouldn’t start by deleting everything. Did you get a chance to talk to support or is that more time than you want to spend?
Unfortunately, I myself have to pay other people to do the maintenance on my system, so I can’t be of much help. But I expect there will be somebody in the area who might be able to do it.
Do you know the brand and model of your switches? And did you just use the official smartlighting feature to set up your rules or did you use some other smart app?
You’re probably right, I should concentrate on the 7 or 8 that I have issues with and go from there. The switches are GE and the app is the SmartThing app from the App Store.
The procedure, I am told, is yo take the switch off the hub and then go through the task of re-entering it. The frustration partly stems from the initial programming where the electrician assistant had me programming a couple, while he did others. I was unable to get mine programmed.
However, with support on the phone, I will look for a more satisfactory outcome.
Worst case scenario, I burn through a lot of candles but have a low electric bill.
Please excuse any errors in the above, as I have chubby fingers and this was sent from my iPhone.
You’ve probably done this already, but as A get ready step check each of the switches and make sure that the airgap is physically pushed all the way in if the device has an air gap switch.
1. Start with the Z wave repair utility
The first thing I would do is try the Zwave repair utility if SmartThings support didn’t have you do that already. This is pretty simple, it’s just an instruction from the hub to each individual device for the individual device to update its own neighbor tables. This will improve the general reliability of your Z wave network, because all the devices will know the most efficient way to pass messages along.
And the following thread will explain the error messages you might see:
2. Use the circuit breaker to cut and restore power to each problem switch
The next thing I would do is throw the circuit breaker once for any switch which is not responding. ( if two or more switches are on the same circuit, you only have to through the circuit breaker once. Just want to make sure that every problem Switch has the power cut and then restored.) The GE switches have some known issues where they can lose connection with the network. If you do a complete power cut which is what turning the circuit breaker off and then on again will do, this can sometimes restore their ability to hear the network. It’s another one of those “can’t hurt, might help” things.
If throwing the circuit breaker does bring any of the missing switches back online, then when you’re done doing all of them, run the Z wave repair utility one more time and that will make sure again that everybody is using the most efficient paths through the network.
3. Now start working on one switch at a time
After you’ve done those two steps, you can start addressing one switch at a time. Since these are Z wave devices, there’s an additional utility that can be a lot of help. That’s the “replace” utility. It’s normally used when you have a Z wave device break and you replace it with another of the exact same model. It allows you to do that without having to rebuild all of your routines and automations. The trick is that you can also use it to replace a balky device with itself, again without having to change any of your routines are automations. So it can save you a lot of work.
For this third step, you start by using the SmartThings mobile app to remove the Z wave device. And then you run the Z wave replace utility.
Here are the instructions for that:
I can’t guarantee that this will solve all the problems, but hopefully it will solve some without too much effort on your part.
Thanks, JD, some great helpful info. I actually “repaired” the z-wave utility last night. 4 of the 46 switches gave a message that they failed to update the mesh info and 4 (3 of the same and 1 add’l) gave a message that they failed to update route.
This weekend I will review all your tips and instructions and see if I can make some progress and get these back online. Once again, you’ve been a big help, whether or not I succeed!
@JDRoberts I’ve been reading your many posts on this forum and I’d really like to speak with you live regarding a few topics of ST. Would you be available for a private message, email or phone conversation? Thanks!
An electrician is not going to be able to help with this – – the problems are going to be on the software side with SmartThings. So you need someone familiar with SmartThings and the platform.
