Troubleshoot Previously-working Z-wave Switched Outlet Issues (GE/Jasco 45605)

Hi. Been a minimalist hub user (v2 hub, current firmware from this Thursday, US Rev E) for a bit under 18 months now. MOSTLY happy until last 2 weeks or so. Only things we really have are a back door lock and a switched outlet (device in the title) to turn on the espresso machine in the morning. My wife works stockroom for retail so … early a.m. shift, and having the machine prewarmed when she gets to the kitchen saves her 15 min of sleep.

Problem is recently it’s begun failing to activate (on or off, variously). At the beginning (maybe last 2 weeks) the issue was intermittent, now it seems complete. I’m just using the “turn on at a certain time” routine feature, and ‘turn off at a certain time’ later. The activity is triggering and sending me the push notification, but the switched outlet itself is not activating.

This did start just before the latest firmware update, so it’s not (just) that. I did turn off power a couple times a week or so ago to do some wiring (remodeling a different room in the house and replacing outlets); not sure if that could be a triggering event.

I’ve excluded, removed, and re-paired the outlet. Right after doing that I can manually trigger a remote on or off action with the phone app on the device’s page, and/or see the device state if I hit the physical button on the outlet in the app. But then attempting to set up a new ‘turn on at a certain time’ routine for a few minutes later…I get the push notification that the command was sent, but the switch is not triggering via the “logic”.

After it tries but fails, if I use the phone app (which correctly still shows it as ‘off’) to turn on, it will respond again.

It does seem like the device state (showing as ‘on’ or ‘off’ on the app) is much quicker to respond if I physically turn it on or off at the outlet, than it is to for example go from showing on to showing off if I hit the button on the app screen to turn off. Like it is ‘monitoring’ it just fine, but slow to re-monitor after sending a remote command?

I do have device health on at the app…not sure that makes any difference or helps at all. No idea where to look for logging (the graph api page maybe?)

TL;DR: Works if I toggle myself at the app. Not via the Routines time logic. Any ideas??

my experience with a ceiling switch that consistently worked with inactivity-delayed-event routines (to turn off a group of switches), which then failed consistently,

is that adding a secondary, followup, time-of-day routine for that single switch, usually works-around the problem. This is not a satisfying solution, but a workaround that usually achieves the goal. Yet even now after 6+ months of primary routine failure, now recently the same switch has now correctly responded to the primary routine for a few weeks consistently (which is clear because it turns off before the secondary time).

I assume you have already tried adding plugin repeaters, and repaired the zwave network several times. Not the same as re-pairing the device, neither of which had any effect on my switch. Likewise, modifying the primary routine for different details like delay time, had no effect.

My switch too, always responded to manual command.

So, things are working again. I have no idea if another patch fixed it, something server-side, or what.

I do now believe (after haphazardly testing…not really going to NOT have the wife’s espresso maker ready when she wakes up for early shifts very often just to test more rigorously) that any time I EDIT an existing routine, such as by changing the time or changing the dates to fire, it is likely to fail to work. The hub still notifies that it fired the routine, but the switch will not actually trip on.

If I look at the app after for example having a routine that was set to (T,W,Th,F) for days and I edit it to add M later, it may show as effective for days (T,W,Th,F,M) in that order, instead of sorting Monday first.

Since I’ve started only ever DELETING and entirely RECREATING the routine any time I need to make a change for a given week (my wife’s schedule is sometimes different), it hasn’t failed again (yet).