Z-Wave Network Repair / Routes

Did you get any failure messages? While I do not know why, I often get errors stating the routes could not be updated. After a few attempts, they typically update and errors go away.

Example from a couple days ago:

I believe the routing shown in the ide only updates once every 24 hours to keep server load down.

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Ok, that’s good to know! Although it would be nice to have the routing shown update immediately after a Z-Wave repair, just so see that the action has had some effect.

While that was my understanding too based on posts above, my routes seemed to update immediately as I opened tabs with devices that I thought had too many hops, and right after the repair I opened the same devices in new tabs to compare routes. The routes had updated to show the devices talking directly to the hub. In fact, look at the first post where I show before and after. I don’t know the exact time between the two but it likely was about 1hr.

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maybe @Kianoosh_Karami can clarify for us.

Checking this morning, I see some of the routes did change overnight. However, I still have hardwired devices (GE switches) that are going through multiple hops, ping-ponging back and forth across the house.

The sump pump water sensor I posted above (battery powered, not woken up during any of the repairs) now looks like this. It is physically 4’ from the hub and from the SES. However, the Iris outlet is on next floor.

But weirder is this cropped up. 2 of my minimotes and one of my Aeon Multisensor 6s (all battery powered), now report this routing:

I’m not sure what to make of that – device 03 is listed twice!! It would also seem to imply I have Z-wave devices in the mesh that SmartThings does not know about. I only have 18 Z-wave devices total and they are all in the device list. I don’t have any I added/removed that I can remember.

Could be ghost devices. Look at the list of devices and if the DNIs of the Unknown Devices do not appear, I would do the following:

Manually create new device
Give it any name you wish, I use DEL## when ## is the node ID
Give the device one of the ghost DNIs
Select Zwave Switch for the DTH
Save
Go to app, find the device and select Remove, and then Force Remove to get rid of it
Once you completed these steps for all the ghost DNIs, run network repair again

Since I started this thread, I had to delete 9 ghost devices and this process is known to work.

Edit: You might end up needing to exclude and include back the devices if none of the above gets them to work properly again.

That was about what I was planning to do. I figured I’d do 1 more network repair yesterday afternoon and then see how the routes reported this morning before taking any further action.

And today, most of the routes (including those for battery powered devices) are almost all straight hops to the hub. The phantom DNIs no longer show up. E.g., the same battery powered water sensor today:
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The same Multisensor 6 shows a single hop, but that device is actually a reasonable repeater inbetween the hub and the sensor.
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The only weirdness is that the repeater itself reports a more convoluted path:

But at this point I’m not going to touch anything further.

For what it’s worth, I’ve got all sorts of crazy routes. In at least one case I’ve got devices in a multi-gang box where one device goes straight to the hub and the one an inch away goes completely around the house via the max allowed hops.

I started a thread on this a couple of months ago because I get a ton of errors when trying a repair. So I was “stressing” over the screwy routing.

@JDRoberts convinced me to stop worrying about it all so long as things were working. In a nutshell, Z-wave routing isn’t likely to look… efficient.

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But… you have to admit there is a refreshing sense when you run a repair and the crazy routes become straight shots to the hub. I did not check all my devices, but the batch I was monitoring for before/after effects of a network repair (see top post) all improved dramatically. Also, less hops means less unneeded traffic on the mesh network and faster performance. When you have lots of devices, this can actually make a noticeable difference. While I don’t have a way to measure it, my network seems to be performing better.

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I wish that would happen to me. Z-wave repair on my network generates errors on 20 or so of my 25 devices.

Everything works, all Z-wave Plus mains-powered devices, all using stock DTH running locally. But I get random 5 to 20 second delays and occasional lost commands.

When I feel I can throw more money at the problem, I plan to change out some Z-wave devices for Zigbee.

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Maybe the mesh network is not strong enough, and if that is the case, by swapping out Zwave devices for Zigbee, you will make it worse for the remaining Zwave devices.

I believe you mentioned you have an Iris plug in outlet you are using as a Zwave repeater. It is my understanding that the Zwave radio in that device was not openly publicized, and If I recall correctly, when I tried to include it as both Zigbee and Zwave, it caused some issues. I still have 3 of those outlets and they are very reliable when used as intended (Zigbee only). I would recommend to exclude the Zwave portion of that outlet (for good) and see how your mesh does after that.

Good point on the potential issues if you remove even more Z wave repeaters. Getting the balance right can be tricky.

One small point: The iris plugs were intended by the manufacturer to be both a Z wave repeater and a zigbee repeater: that’s why they have a Z Wave radio in them. :wink:

That said, over the years a number of different community members reported different kinds of issues with the Z wave aspect, and there were apparently multiple versions of the firmware put out, some better than others, and no way to update that at this point if you happened to get a bad one. So I’m not surprised if anyone finds a specific device o& that model to be more reliable for Zigbee. It’s just not the intent of the design.

Agreed on the original design intent but I don’t believe the ones I own have any zwave markings on them. Let’s compare it to the Bluetooth radio in the ST hub :wink:

EDIT: I just checked one in my office and it actually has a Zwave Plus sticker on it. I need to check the others as this might be a more recent one…

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Not necessarily true though. I’m down to 6 Zwave devices from well over 100, and those remaining devices are scattered at all corners of the house and haven’t moved. My super old Aeon HEM is under the house and is the furthest zwave device from the hub, and it’s connected directly to the hub. It’s literally under the house on one side of the building and the hub is in a room tucked behind a dresser mirror on the exact opposite side of the house. It’s also configured to report instantaneously, so it’s a very chatty device in my Zwave mesh and works great.

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All my other zwave devices are zwave+, and they’re GE fan controllers and one water meter. Given my small number of devices, my repairs take 2 to 3 minutes w/no errors.

I am convinced that the more zwave devices in the mesh, the harder and harder it is for ST to not have repair/mesh issues. I have no idea why or what causes this, but for me I believe I just had too many chatty devices, as well as some old GE devices finally starting to fail. I’ve mentioned this before elsewhere, but I also noticed significant zwave mesh improvements once I got down below 30 devices.

I’ve noticed a greater range than expected on many of my devices as well. So as long as @HalD 's devices are all in acceptable range, then removing won’t hurt. Some devices are able to report back the signal strength so he could use that feature to check whether any particular device might need a repeater.

I concur that 30 to 40 zwave is the limit where you start seeing issues. Last time I had to exclude everything and rebuild, I started cursing the world at around 40.

@HalD - There is a good chance you do NOT need the repeater in the Iris plug… and while not everyone may have had (or known to have) a bad experience with the zwave portion of it, I am pretty sure they only caused me trouble. Included as Zigbee only, they are great so I truly believe a long period with the zwave repeater excluded would be a good test to do. If you really need a repeater, then I would advise an in wall mounted device instead (this way it can never be removed).

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LOL, yep I remember those days…

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I’m pretty sure my Z-wave mesh is fine.

All I own are Z-wave Plus smart switches and dimmers. I have mostly Zooz but also a couple of Levitons and a couple of GEs. All of them use the stock DTHs and show as local. I only use Smart Lighting and new app Scenes, no WebCore.

All but three of my devices are in one room. The heart of the house is a single open room that incorporates kitchen, dining room, wet bar, and living room. The front entrance, three hallways, and three sliding glass doors open off this room. With ceiling can lights, hanging fixtures, counter lights, lighted cabinets and most of the exterior lights, there are over 30 Decora switches around the perimeter of this one room.

All but four of my Z-wave Plus devices are in this room. One of the four not in this room has to route thru this room to reach the hub.

When I do a Z-wave repair, everything in this room plus the one that routes thru it throws errors, usually “cannot update neighbors” or something like that. There’s a long, rambling topic I started about this last winter.

All my devices work. I just get random 2 to 15 second delays, usually when triggering multiple devices via a scene. Different devices in the same multi-gang box can be switch instantly or have delays.

I do not have any Iris plugs or other Iris devices. At one time I had some Aeotec Z-wave Plus repeaters. I removed those several months ago as they were never repeating anything.

I have multiple devices in my kids’ bedroom that I use for their night routine. As you can imagine, they must be super reliable to avoid causing tantrums. At first the entire control was via zwave and it was an inconsistent nightmare. Stuff would have random delays or simply not work. It felt like everything running perfectly and fast was the exception.

I got so fed up I removed the $90 zooz zwave power strip and replaced it with a bunch of Smartthings ZIGBEE plug in outlets. Night and day… it has been flawless ever since.

The issues were likely not due to the power strip, but rather to the traffic on my zwave network. On several occasions it turned out that chatty devices were wrecking havoc. Lately I was pointed to Zooz 4-in-1 sensors sending a message every 30 seconds, which is too much (per ST).

The point I am trying to make is that you might not have routing issues, but maybe routing delays caused by traffic. I would scour all the devices you have and tone down / turn off any reporting you see. If you must keep the reporting, try to spread it out in frequency.

I had devices reporting Voltage ?!?!?!? frequently. While I can see it helping to find issues with the power grid (brown outs/surges), or faulty connections (bad connection could show as a drop in voltage), I think it is silly to have these devices report 120V over and over. Another one that can be toned down in most cases is Energy reporting. The only reporting that I tend to find more useful if a bit more frequent is Wattage or Amperage. Cutting down on the reporting of all able products can speed up reaction time on your network if traffic is your issue.

Sorry, I confused you with @jlv. He is the one that should try excluding the zwave repeater in the Iris outlet to see if his issues go away… or maybe I am just 100% confused between your issues and his issues now :wink: