Non-existant virtual devices and Z-Wave repair

Devices & Integrations
#1

So everything was working well until I made the mistake of trying to create virtual switches for some Tuya Wifi based wall switches. And now I have unresponsive “Z-Wave” Thermostats with the error message that “Network repair for device [17]” (there is no device [17]) or device 11 or device 14.

I also get the error message that the “device could not delete old routes” every time I try to repair the Z-Wave network. Also every time I repair the Z-Wave network a different thermostat will go off line.

Further, if I look at the device some of the Z-Wave routing is insane with 6 or 7 hops sometimes through non-existent devices even with thermostats in the same room as the hub.

How do I get rid of these “ghost devices” once and for all?

#2

Simulated or virtual devices should not look to the system like zwave devices and should not be show up in any zwave repair because they will never have been included in the hub’s own device table since they aren’t a real Z wave device. So I don’t think your simulated thermostats would have anything to do with it.

It’s more likely you got some ghost devices from a failed pairing, that could happen. See the FAQ on those

I suppose it’s possible that if you created a simulated device and didn’t use a virtual DTH but instead used a Z wave DTH, something in smartthings cloud platform might end up reserving those device IDs so they would end up looking like those devices to the hub during a zwave repair, but that would be pretty ugly. I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying it’s ugly. If you want to use virtual devices, make sure you use DTHs for virtual devices. And don’t use device IDs that the hub might want to assign on its own.

#3

That is not possible for a zwave device. Zwave routes are a maximum of four hops, plus the origination node and the destination node, so you just can’t have more than six device IDs in a zwave route. :wink: and simulated devices cannot be included in a Z wave route, because they have no physical existence and obviously have no zwave radio.

Any chance you’re confusing hex IDs and decimal conversions?

Device ID question

#4

I wish I had taken a picture of it… it was crazy, It was hopping from the Hub → Games Room Thermostat-> Shed Lights → Unknown Device [30] (there is no device 30) → Office Lights → MasterBath Thermostat-> This device. (which was offline)

It was like Z-Wave was taking the longest route possible to control the thermostat that was in the room with hub.

#5

As far as the actual routing, there are a couple of things to remember.

  1. what smartthings shows you is just the most recent route that the hub reported to the cloud. It’s not real time, it’s not necessarily the most frequently used route. It’s just the one that was used at that moment. it should not include any virtual devices. Just actual physical Z wave devices on your network, and potentially some ghosts, which are left over from when a zwave device ID was given out by the hub but is no longer used. The device IDs that are shown are in hex (you can tell because some of them will have letters in them) so you have to convert those back to decimal to track which devices they are.

  2. The routing takes into account a lot of real time factors that we don’t get to see, including signal strength and which devices weren’t busy at the moment but the message came through. So it’s usually best not to worry about it as long as the quality of service is OK. :sunglasses:

So right now, let’s just assume that your unknown devices are ghost devices that got legitimate zwave IDs. So just follow the instructions in the FAQ and you should be able to get rid of those. If you get stuck, you can ask support to help.

#6

Thanks, I had been re-adding them and then removing them in the IDE… And they would remain. (it would change their name), but even though I created “virtual switches” it would still have them play in the Z-Wave repair… Weird

Then I followed the instructions properly… created “Ghost” Z-Wave Generic Switches in the IDE and the forced the deletion of the device in the “New App” and on the next Z-Wave repair (back in IDE)… they were all gone…

And even better… All of the CT101 Thermostats suddenly came back to life!.. I will take a look at their routing to see if anything else weird is going on.

But it looks like I’m back in business.

Thanks Again.

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