#Large ZWave (mostly ZOOZ 800) HA Setup - mesh and signal issues

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

edgy siren
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Hello, new here, but not to HA. I've recently setup my home with zwave dimmers from zooz (Zen77, Zen72). My HA runs on an Intel NUC. I'm having signal issues. The system worked great for maybe 3 months, and recently has gotten flaky, without any real changes as far as I can tell on my side. But I understand how meshes can change and become bad.

Here's what I've done to try to figure it out...
I put the controller on a USB -> cat6 -> USB setup, so I can drag it around the house (it is maybe 30' long). I have a zooz plug (ZEN04) on an extension cord I can drag around too. They are currently not in the AV room, but in a stairwell perhaps 3' from each other. The communication between them is not great. When both were in the AV room, the signal was 10/10 in all 5 iterations of a Health Check. Now... 3/10, 5/10 are most signals.

In the network graph, I see the Plug node talking through another house node to get to the controller. I see a green dotted line from plug to controller at -66db (which is excellent), but the solid green lines go from the plug to another node (X) and then the controller. Both P -> X and X->C have a -95db or worse line. (Image pasted.)

How can I get this plug to talk directly to the controller? This is a typical example of what the other nodes in the house are doing. Many takea bad route, and therefore get lots of drops, and 30-60s latency on light on/off actions (if they work at all). Some lights work great (I don't even notice latency).

Any advice?

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tribal eagle
edgy siren
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That seems like a great idea. Will I have to re-include everything?

tribal eagle
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piping zwave though a network usb setup can cause responce time issues. as z-wave must respond within 100 ms or its a timeout.

currently in experimental is a option to run the zwa-2 on network as esphome does some clever stuff on device FURTHER READING

tribal eagle
edgy siren
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Oh, I should clarify... the usb stick was this morning just on a 3' usb cord to get it a bit away from the rack. And none of my light switches sees better than -90db.

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So the cat6 setup was just to test.

tribal eagle
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at the recent z-wave alliance event with a zwa-2 on both ends they got a device working at 9.6km. this is a bit of a special setup to be fair but the point is that its likely to reach everything in your house 😛

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that record broke the previous test which involved testing a device vertically. between the ground and a skydiver... they like to have fun over there 🙂

edgy siren
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I've ordered one and will try it when ti gets here. The PoE options sounds great.
My house has a lot of plaster/lathe in it. I'm hoping the lightswitch mesh can cover well (it was!) but I think the hop to the controller from the closest switches is still too weak

tribal eagle
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you might find that most devices might just talk directly to the coordinator with the zwa-2. its size is the ideal antenna size as its the same as the wavelength of z-wave.

edgy siren
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That would be great as well. Thanks.

tribal eagle
edgy siren
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My ZWA-2 device arrived today. Looks great. I assume I'll need to exclude then re-include each device?

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(No way to transfer?)

winter salmon
tribal eagle
edgy siren
winter salmon
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I linked the message that already had the migration instructions, which were posted again.

edgy siren
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gotcha, thanks. I missed it the first time. Migration complete, rebuild underway! I can't say I fully understand why it is doing things the way it does, but I'll wait it out and see if it rebuilds okay.

edgy siren
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I am back... I have migrated all of the nodes over (as documented, worked perfectly), and the new device is about 8 feet from my rack. It is on a shelf up close to the basement ceiling. I rebuilt all routes, and about 1/3 of the nodes got the red ! saying the rebuild failed. In several cases, there are 2 switches in the same gang box, and one rebuilt fine, and the other failed. Is this normal?

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Also, one light I'm testing with, I can turn on/off with HA, but the lag time is 30-300 seconds! (Yes, after one attempt, the light changed ~10 minutes later.) This was not happening 2 weeks ago. It was all snappy for this exact light. The signals to the new antenna seem better (-84db to this switch), and according to the network graph, this switch talks directly to the controller.

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I ran this diagnostic, and it seems good, except the 5th run?

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I did this test, and the light rapidly came on/off 20 or so times:

Then the control panel switch was snappy for a bit, then it took 30 seconds. Someting strange seems to be going on... it seems intermittent.

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One more question... then I'm done for the day and will check again tomorrow. I tried one of those USB -> cat6 -> USB to connect the ZWA-2 a good distance from the server room, but it didn't work. It worked okay for 10 mins or so, then it kept saying the controller was disconeccted and tried to reconnect. Are there any known to work reliably on this? If not, how else can I move the antenna further from my server room? (I might be able to move the entire HA NUC -- it is small -- but I'm hoping to avoid having that bundle of wires and hardware visible. The antenna at least looks okay. How do other people solve this?

brisk crane
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Capture some driver logs on loglevel debug so we can see what else is going on.

edgy siren
edgy siren
winter salmon
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In the Store directory. Folder icon.

edgy siren
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Here is another example... this confusing... "Library 2" is the second switch in the library, which I factory reset and re-added tonight. 10 minutes ago, it was talking directly to the controller with a -82db signal. Now the graph shows this.

Why in the world would it take these routes instead of talking directly to the controller? The library is directly above my server room. This switch is maybe 20 feet from the antenna. But those other nodes are 2 floors up. Why would it talk through them instead of directly to the controller? I want it to go the other way around... I want this node to be one of the strongest connections that then builds the mesh out to the other nodes.

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And insult to injury...here is Library 1

Why wouldn't Library 2 talk either directly, or through Library 1? They share the same gang box.

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edgy siren
edgy siren
edgy siren
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I know I'm bombarding with messages, but I sense we are on different clocks. I also want to make sure you have more than enough information. I appreciate the help! (Ignore anything irrelevant.) I'm learning as I go here. I have this bit from the log for a health check on Node 212 that had mixed results. Anything useful in there? I notice these are mostly (all?) controller logs not driver logs... are we looking for specifically driver log messages?

📎 message.txt
winter salmon
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Those appear to not be driver debug logs

brisk crane
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yep, they are not on loglevel debug

brisk crane
brisk crane
edgy siren
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Had some success last night setting priority routes and letting it test a few times. Send to have convinced it my route choice was a good one. Hopefully that one is sticky now. More tonight.

edgy siren
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3 hour more today with experience like:

  1. include a node... the flow worked perfectly... I even completed a software update.
  2. try it again with a node right next to the one in #1... nightmare experience. The zwave Js UI keeps saying "inclusion failed", but then the node is included without security. Or the node blinks green and the zwave js UI doesn't ever see it... I have to exclude it to try again (exclusion works)