Finally received a response from tech support. The reason I have problems with 3 specific GE switches is that I have too many devices on the system.
If I wasn’t so lazy I’d switch to Habitat today.
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That’s stupid. I have 288 devices working great, half are switches and all GE but one.
If your switches are Zwave, i suspect you’re running into having issues with more than 32 (roughly) zwave devices. All mine are Zigbee.
Seriously support is terrible. After I switched to Zigbee 99% of my device issues with ST went away.
BTW, thanks for those Iris devices!
Just out of curiosity, how many devices do you have.
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Np Thanks for buying them. Glad to make room for more toys lol Funny thing is my Zigbee stuff drops off often (The Osram stuff is the worst.) and my zwave switches have been rock solid for years. Guess I missed the meeting on the 32 device limit I have about 80 zwave devices. ugh
- 66 are virtual/simulated. ~50 are connected through other hubs/apps Hue, Lutron, LIFX, Arlo, Smartlife, Ewelink, etc
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Yeah, several folks around here have noticed issues past certain number of zwave devices. I was all zwave for a while and couldn’t shake off problems, so i decided to switch to zigbee due to significantly better reliability. As soon as dropped below 30 zwave devices all of a sudden my zwave problems also disappeared. I still opted to move completely over to Zigbee though.
I have 2 hubs. Wish they would talk to each other.
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32 for a certified zwave hub?! 
Vera Lite allows for 70.
Ring alarm allows for 100.
Vera, Fibaro, Homeseer, Hubitat: every other major DIY home automation platform allows for at least 150. Also Abode.
ThinkA is just a bridge to HomeKit, and even it allows for 150 Z wave devices.
30 isn’t even professional grade. Sure, it might be enough for an apartment, but not for a typical size house.
If they are truly limiting you to a functional maximum of 30 to 35 devices it should say that in big letters on the box. Because that’s nowhere near the Z wave standard.
I would say JMO, but it’s actually just a fact. 
No specs like that have ever been official, but a few folks in the community have had the same experiences as me. Could it be ST’s implementation if Zwave? Perhaps. Could it be older Zwave devices and their routing table issues? Perhaps. I think early on it was a combination of that. I remember all my FortrezZ devices (mimolites and water meter) would lock up after every zwave repair, but once i got below 30 the problem has never happened again. I’d like to think with all the new zwave devices out there and improvements with ST that this shouldn’t be be a problem, but for support to give an answer like that to th OP is shooting holes in that thought.
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I’m at 29 stable zwave devices on my main ST hub. I almost want to add some to test the 30+ theory.
I remember some discussion about something like that, but at the time, it was around the idea that only 32 could be directly connected to the hub. If you had a repeater, a wired device, that should allow devices to connect to it, increasing the overall limit that you could have.
As for me, I have three z-wave switches (about 15 z-wave total), and I had an issue with part of my network freaking out once. It turned out to be one of my switches was getting hung/stuck/frozen/whatever. A lot of my other z-wave traffic was being routed through that switch (gonna say like a repeater, but I may be talking beyond what I actually know). I went to my breaker box and flipped the breaker for those switches off and, after a few seconds, back on. Once I did, it was fine. Still is.
Take all that for what it’s worth, which isn’t much, but maybe that will put some context around some of what y’all are taking about, at least.
That’s Zigbee, not zwave. It has since been increased to 64. But that’s all within specifications and it’s all normal. It’s because the parent child relationship is different in Zigbee than it is in Zwave. Here’s that discussion. (The topic title is a clickable link)
The z wave specification allows for a maximum of 232 devices on a network for the current generations (this is going to be expanded in the future). Unlike Zigbee, adding more zwave repeaters doesn’t create any more device slots, it’s always the same maximum.
Memory restrictions on a hub can make it inefficient to go that high. So stripped down models like vera lite limit you, in that case to 70. But pro grade models, as with all the ones I listed, have a maximum of at least 150. That’s what people should be able to expect unless the zwave hub is specifically designated as “light.”
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Ah, my mistake. Thanks!
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SmartThings has always tried to hide the foundational stuff from the user so everything looks the same in the app. So it’s easy to get confused.
Been looking into Hubitat and I see that it utilizes Webcore and it runs locally. I like the versatility of Webcore with ST but it was always slow. Hubitat also has a Rule machine. If it’s anything like the RM we use to be able to use on ST I may be making the switch. I hate to do it. A lot of time invested in ST. It’s nice to be able to integrate so many manufacturers together but now only having basic IFTT and cloud-based Wecore (and who knows if it will be available much longer.) to control them is too restrictive.
E.g. I have a dehumidifier connected to a smart plug. When it’s full it idles between 4V - 6V. Since there’s no way to select a range to trigger a notification (only above, below, or at) I need to have 3 rules one for each voltage it may be idling at. Maybe they will add the ability to add a range in the future. We’ve waited for a lot of things to be added and fixed in the future that never happened. All the grass may not be greener on the other side of the fence but large patches of it certainly look that way.
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It’s based on the same RM that was created for ST years ago but greatly improved, up to v5 now.
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