Three days of ST work down the drain

As some of you will know, I have spent a long time, about three days of total time, trying to fix drivers associated with Motion Sensors, Contacts, Lights, Sockets and Sirens, about 85 devices in total; many were a headache to exclude.

With the help of the ‘Z-wave Sensor CS’ driver, and the ‘Z-wave Siren MC’ driver that was updated to help me, I managed to get them all working again. This has been a headache as I have very painful injured legs among other health issues.

Today I noticed that some of the LED notification lights on my light switches were not set correctly, (I have them set to on so the switch is easy to find in the dark). I then went to the app to change these only to find that the setting option was not available. I then went to my.smartthings and checked the devices and drivers, and all the ones I spent forever fixing are back to showing no driver, and in the app they do not show a driver either.

Is my hub dying? Do I suddenly have 80 plus devices dying? Is Smartthings going to crap and everyone is keeping it secret? All I know is I hope Karma strikes those involved, and the hierarchy in South Korea should bow in shame and quit for incompetence.

Do the switches showing no driver still work? What brand are these switches?

What brand and model switches are the switches with nonfunctional led indicators? Do these switches still work?

How many Z-Wave devices do you have?

Have you run a Z-Wave repair since rebuilding your system?

I don’t think your hub is bad, and I don’t think you have 80 bad devices.

You might have a bad device screwing up your mesh, or it could it be a ST issue.

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Hi Paul,

The system had been sluggish for a long time. I noticed though just over a week ago when my smoke alarm went off, and found it was actually triggered by GoControl Motion sensor and a bad Z-wave sensor driver that gave these motion sensors every capability possible. I eventually deleted, excluded and then reinstalled all ten of them one at a time with the Z-wave Motion CS driver which seemed to work well. I then repaired the network. I then noticed driver issues not showing up with all my (14) contact sensors, so spending massively more time I once again deleted, excluded and reinstalled them, but this time kept the normal sensor driver. Then I found similar issues with all my sockets and light switches, so once again hell of a lot of time deleting, excluding and reinstalling them using normal Zwave driver. Finally I went to update the non driver for my GoControl Sirens and used the Z-wave Siren MC driver as the ST one would not allow Home monitor to select them. Before about 10 days ago, everything worked, just slugish, so ST did something to screw it up.

  1. Everything still seems to respond, at least at the moment, but devices keep going off line for a short time, then usually come back on. All my switches involved are first generation GE Jasco Z-wave.

  2. See above

  3. If I counted correctly, I have 60 Z-wave devices.

  4. Numerous times. Twice it ran and completed in about 30 minutes, other times it has run overnight and not completed at all.

  5. I tried to run a Z-wave repair after each block of repairs. Started with Motion sensors, then Contact sensors, then Sockets / Switches, then Sirens.

Note the issues seem to keep changing. An hour ago non of the motion controllers were showing a driver or allowing it to be updated. Things like my garage front light and others are showing showing Z-wave Switch driver now (non an hour ago) and not then or still not showing fingerprint info; when I reinstalled everything, I checked each device one at a time as I re added them.

If things are working I would not do any thing drastic. My approach is if it’s not broken don’t try to fix it. But I would suggest running a Z-Wave repair daily to see if it helps. And give things a chance to settle down.

I don’t know what no driver being listed for functional device means. But it just might be a ST quirk that means nothing.

Battery powered being marked offline doesn’t mean they are really offline. If you open a door or walk past a motion sensor marked offline and they respond they are obviously online.

Mains powered devices such as lights and plugs being marked offline are another story. You probably won’t be able to operate them.

I am not a big fan of older Jasco GE Z-Wave devices as I have had several fail due to small power surges (turning a 15 amp breaker off then on). When mine failed they were totally unusable, so I knew they were bad. I have 1 old GE left and it is acting strange, automations tied to it don’t always run as expected. If I swap drivers it will work normally for a while then go back to missed automations. It is located really close to my hub, so that is not the issue. Maybe one of your older switches is acting up and messing with your Z-Wave mesh.

I have read people saying 60 Z-Wave devices is too many for ST to handle, but only have 17 at one location and 13 at the other and I don’t have problems, so I can’t comment.

And just ha another false ‘Armed Stay’ alarm with a window sensor that has a new battery and the window is tightly closed and is never open.