Z-Wave Recessed Light Not Re-adding? Help Please :(

General Discussion
1

Hi all!

While trying to troubleshoot why my recessed Z-Wave lights are not working anymore, I screwed a couple of them up to the point that when I finally found a driver that made some of them work again, left others ‘dead’.
To explain: All of my recessed lights are GoControl LB65R6Z-1 and worked fine before Edge as dimmer switches. End of June they stopped working and were shown as offline in the app.

I played around with some of them, resetting, removing, etc. before I finally figured they needed a new driver. By that time I had force removed three and played around with 3 more.
After a good soul added my device IDs (014F/4C42/3133) to their driver, 6 of the lights I left completely alone worked perfectly fine again.
The 3 that I just played around with, but didn’t remove, stayed in ‘offline’ even after updating the driver and the three force removed ones I can’t re-add anymore…
I then force removed the other three ‘offline’ devices as well, tried the z-wave exclusion through the hub (‘no devices excluded’… ) and, you guessed it, re-adding is not working either.
The instructions for the lights say:
To Reset Unit (If Required)
In the event that your primary controller is lost or otherwise inoperable, to reset
the fixture and clear all network information, follow these steps:

  1. Use the wall switch to turn the power to the fixture OFF then ON four times
    within four seconds.
  2. The LB65R6Z-1 will flash twice when the reset occurs.

For removal it says:
Removing from a network:
The LB65R6Z-1 can be removed from the network by the Controller/Gateway.
Refer to the Controller operating instructions for details.

  1. Set the Controller into Removal Mode, and follow its instruction to delete the
    LB65R6Z-1 from the Controller.
  2. Reset the fixture by using the wall switch to turn the power to the fixture ON.
    The LB65R6Z-1 will flash twice to confirm the removal.

I tried both of them, the HUB keeps saying nothing got removed when trying the removal. The lights don’t flash twice either though after turning the switch to on.
The lights DO flash twice after 4 times toggle though, but they still don’t get found when I try the generic z-wave device scan or the regular ‘scan for devices’.

Does anyone have any tips for me how I can get my lights added again?

2

As a former field tech, I’ll tell you what the first thing I would try in the situation is.

One possible problem is that one of the many lights which is not working now was a critical repeater for the others, so messages just aren’t getting through.

To test this hypothesis, I would begin by moving the hub physically into the same room with the lights which are not working.

Then methodically try excluding one light at a time. If the light successfully excludes, then try adding it back to the network. Hopefully it will pick up the new driver.

If the light does not successfully exclude, make a note of that, and move onto the next light. Try to exclude that.

And so on through all the lights in that room.

At the end of this process, if any of the lights successfully excluded and then successfully added to the network, it may be an individual bad device causing the trouble and you may have to add a new repeater somewhere.

If you have any lights which successfully excluded, but which only added back to the network as a zwave “thing,” they probably have a different fingerprint than the others and you’ll have to start exploring that issue.

Once you’ve completed this diagnostic process, put the hub back where it normally stays and then run zwave repair. If the repair cannot reach the devices that you successfully re-added, you’ll probably need to add another repeating device about halfway between those lights and the next nearest repeater. A zwave smart plug should be all you need for this. After you’ve added the smart plug, run the Z wave repair again to see if it can now reach the lost lights.

I’m sure that sounds tedious, and it is, but you should get a lot of diagnostic information from that process, so, again, that’s what I would do. But obviously it’s up to you. :thinking:

1 Like
3

@JDRoberts
Thank you!
I only have a small ranch home, so I wouldn’t think that the distance matters, but I will try this on the weekend.
My issue with troubleshooting single lights is that they are recessed and and I have multiples on a single wall switch, so I guess it will be a lot of ‘up the ladder/down the ladder’.
Or I could use a light fixture that fits the connector and just do the testing right by the hub instead of moving the hub and connecting/disconnecting the lights in the cans…

The weird thing is, none of the lights (2 different groups) successfully excluded. I really begin to wonder if I’m just too dense for this process and should just switch to dumb wifi devices… :smiley:

1 Like
4

I have a few of these laying around that I didnt install. Which driver did you use to get them to work?

5

@mlchelp

Name Z-Wave Switch and Child Mc
Version 2023-07-31T21:43:50.247029504
Here’s the comment that my device was added.

6

Thank you sir.