Ezlo Plus include/exclude mode failure

Hello Jim,

Can you please let me know when did you do the tests? yesterday, today?

Thanks!

Sent you two reply emails yesterday with the date/time and description of what was tested.

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Here is what my email said.

Look at 10:52am EST to 11:55 am Wed Feb 16 for slow to no device responce to Android app commands.

Many were very slow (3 minutes) to turn on or off. The android app crashed twice as well during this time. Two devices did not respond at all.

The two smart start devices were added at 11:12am - 11:16am. Both are flashing the include led. No action from the controller until 12:23am. Controller stopped smart start at 11:55am with no inclusion. Smart Start continues to try adding the devices at 11.30am. This cycle will go on all day.

No control of ANY device via the Android app at 6:37PM Feb 16.

Hello Jim,

Thank you for helping us to investigate this issue. We’ll check this case in detail.
I have updates on my side. We identified an issue with running the inclusion process the first time. We’ll include a fix for it in the next FW release. As a simple solution, you can try to start the inclusion process a second time. It should work. We’ll check other issues that you mentioned with logs from your hub. I’ll keep you updated.

I have tried to run the inclusion the second time for the past few months with no luck unless there is an issue with the front LED not blinking to show the controller has entered the inclusion mode. Please verify.

I had support downgrade my controller to the last release as nothing was working. This gave me time to move some more critical devices back over to my Vera Secure. Now I can help test further releases without many issues on my side. Once you figure out why all of my scene controllers fail to run scenes most of the time I’d like to test that fix out.

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While I am waiting for my issues to be resolved I decided to do some testing on my main HA network. Since my current controller is non responsive and useless in its current state I decided to start removing devices off it and placing them on my testing unit, an Ezlo Plus that I use only for testing new devices. This hub was factory reset prior to having anything added to it. I discovered that as I started to approach 20-25 devices the following symptoms started to cause ever increasing issues;

Controller became more difficult to get into include mode. The 60 second device include timer was going to 00 more frequently before the LED started to flash. I also tried to install new devices even when the LED was not flashing but no luck there either. I tried the work around that Max suggested above but that failed to help any.

Exclude stopped working completely. The app displayed and error message that there were problems going into both the exclude and include modes. See screen capture below.

Controlling a device from the Android app started to become very slow and some devices were completely non responsive. If you wait a while the devices start to respond again. This on/off response goes in waves so you never know if devices will work or not.

S2 encrypted devices (Zooz Zen21, Zen32 & Zen27) became non responsive at times in both scenes and from the Android app.

I just wanted to see if I had a bad controller but this proved to me that it wasn’t. This also explains why the controller in my rental unit has less issues as it has just around 20 devices and only one device uses S2 encryption.

Edit:
Through more testing I found out something interesting. It looks like the more I try and fail to include devices something is getting corrupted in the controller. Nothing seems to work so I decided to reload an earlier backup using the Mois 1.3.2 GUI. It failed continuously to load the backup so I did a factory reset on my controller then successfully restored my backup. Looks like whatever is getting corrupted is blocking a backup from loading as well. Once the backup was installed and the controller rebooted I was able to include devices again. I’m going to continue to run a backup after each 5 new devices are installed and see how things progress.

So far my rebuild has 35 devices installed and surprisingly the controller is working much better than expected. There are some issues in getting include/exclude to work but nothing more than what I consider normal these days and my two minimotes aren’t consistently running scenes either. The one big change in this rebuild is I’m trying not to include any devices that have S2 encryption.

Update:
I just added 4 devices with S2 encryption and once again my system is unusable. Include won’t work at all and devices take a very long time to respond if they do at all. Coincidence, maybe, a pain in the ass, definitely. Iv’e gone as far as I can with this. Ezlo has my logs so I’ll put my Ezlo controllers away until I get word that there are fixes for these issues.

Update:
The latest firmware update v2.0.27.1916.1 has solved many of my previous problems. I have been able to install another 15 devices without too many issues. The devices seem to be for the most part quick to respond but I have noticed that every once in a while things slow way down. Give it a few minutes and they start to respond again. This goes in cycles and it’s enough to drive my wife crazy.

The minimote and the Zooz Zen32 scene controller still have a hard time triggering scenes consistently. Every few days the minimote displays “Can’t detect the device” error. Press a few scene buttons and the error goes away just to show up a few days later.

The include function now works. :grinning: The exclude mode LED flashing is still inconsistent. The LED can be solid blue and it will still exclude a device.

Hello
I’m glad to hear that you noticed improvements that we’d made in the last FW version.
Thank you for reporting the issues. We will investigate those cases and find the root cause of them.
Our customer support team will contact you to have a live session and get the logs needed.
Thank you for helping us make our product better.

Hello
I want to share with you some thoughts on the issues you reported. Our developers have a guess that 50 zwave devices might create a noisy environment that might slow down their responsiveness. We see in logs a lot of information they are sending to the hub.
We will check minimote and Zoom Zen32 integration on our side to check if we notice any issue with these devices’ integration.
As for include and exclude function, we’ll try to get logs from your hub for this exact process in order to make sure that it works as expected. Our support will contact you to arrange a session. I’d appreciate it if you help us to get proper logs from your controller. Then, we’ll check this issue on the mobile apps side.

That’s disappointing to hear that the Ezlo Plus is bogging down under load especially since I’m still not finished adding all of my devices. I bought the Ezlo hub (3 of them) because your advertising said that your devices had a powerful processor and new from the ground up firmware. I even posted a few times in the forum many months back that anything over 25 devices the Ezlo starts showing issues with the include/exclude process and device response delays. The more devices I added the worst the response time got. I assume the include/exclude issues I’m having may be related to the Ezlo hub being overloaded with traffic.

My network previously consisted of a Vera Secure and a Vera 3 in my house sharing the load. With Vera devices i was able to have a master/slave configuration that worked great. The Ezlo at this time still doesn’t support master/slave configuration. I even bought a second Ezlo Plus just for that purpose but it still is not in use due to no slave device support. Even the new beta web GUI won’t control device from more than one hub though Melih says it does. I can program lights from two hubs but it only controls the lights on one in a cloud scene.

I could get away with two independent hubs in my house IF the VIO was working but that still isn’t the case either.

The bottom line is I’m at a cross roads with this system. It’s driving my family and renters crazy with slow or no device response. I need to know when the master/slave and VIO options will be ready or I need to choose another manufacture. I’ve been with Vera since the very beginning but I just don’t have the time to play with it much more, I need something that will work with a large complex system.

Grab my logs before I start removing devices off my main hub and putting them onto my spare Ezlo in hopes of reducing and sharing the network load. From there I’ll decide the direction I will be going in.

Hello Jim Mac,

I’d want to clarify my previous post. I didn’t mean that Ezlo Plus had been bogged down under load. Ezlo Plus is powerful enough to handle all your devices. I meant that noisy environment might affect responsiveness of zwave devices themselves.
As I mentioned, we’ll contact you to get logs from your hub during inclusion and exclusion process. It will help us to define a root cause of the issue you faced.
Sorry for you facing such an experience. We are improving our products daily. Howevere we might have some use cases that we should investigate and improve.

We’ll get together and test a few things out. I guess at this time the include/exclude is not my main concern, getting a responsive network is. I still have another 15 devices to add so I’ll put those on hold.

The one thing I’m not clear on is how do we control a noisy environment? The zwave devices need to talk so what’s the solution to this beside removing polling on some devices?
For now I will exclude a few seasonal outdoor devices that I don’t need right now. There are a few devices that have many child devices that I don’t use for example the Fibaro Smart Implant. I have a few of these and I only use them to monitor temperature so there are 6 child devices in each that are talking on the network. Anything we can do with those?
Does the Ezlo hub see any of the network chatter from my Vera Secure? I would think that since the devices on it are paired to the Vera that the Ezlo hub would reject any signals but does this add to the noise the Ezlo deals with?

I would still like to know a time line for the master/slave function.

For what it’s worth I am experiencing the exact same issues as described throughout this thread, both prior to and following this post. For me, S2 is the glaring flashing beacon saying “the problem is over here”. Smart Start is also incredibly problematic (unusable for me), but I suspect it’s because of the S2, which is a key component of the Smart Start method.

I tried NOT checking the Advanced Settings button during setup. Rather than saying “no” to all of these encryption and unencrypted technologies, It appears to just remove the choices from the users decision load. NOT checking Advanced Settings is NOT the solution. I’ve found that you MUST click Advanced Options so that you can UNCHECK everything. That is, of course, if you want to have any hope of a speedy and minimum of trouble include process. (I am still having these troubles as of June 26, 2022, using the latest firmware and iOS apps)

I too have had the issue of the LED on the Ezlo not starting to blink until minutes after the inclusion process has ended on the iPhone. These issues are no different between the Vera app and the MiOS app.

My questions is, why is the phone proceeding with the countdown if it hasn’t confirmed with the hub that the inclusion process has, in fact, started. I could live with a “please wait while your Ezlo does some housekeeping. The inclusion process will continue when those tasks are complete”. But putting the software into a sure-thing failure… Not an elegant or helpful way to handle the error.

While I don’t disagree with JimMac’s assessment (Apr 30, this thread) that a stable system is more important right now than worrying about include/exclude (which will inevitably include the solution to the include/exclude problem). BUT, from a customer relations perspective…

Every time I start searching for anything even in the web-neighborhood of Ezlo, I find another web server full of evidence that they are spending $millions on new technologies beyond the Ezlo, using MiOS to pander to new market segments, and huge all-encompasing marketing strategies…

All of this money spent while their core technology can’t even add and remove devices. I’m not belittling the “big picture” guys at all; they’re necessary for a successful long-term company. BUT, It’s time to give the good folks in the core-technology department some of those $millions… Get them the help they need to quickly get this most fundamental functions of the hub working.

Hi @Dan-n-Randy , We took this change requests to include more feedback on the app side and give more visibility already, but you haven’t mentioned which device you are trying to pair ? Can you give more detail so we can check the S2 settings for that device as well ?

My logs that were taken months ago should have given may examples of devices with S2 problems. I still haven’t heard any feedback on my logs that clearly showed all the issues I and now others are experiencing.

I’m slowly moving critical devices back to my Vera secure and ready enjoying a hub that actually works even if it a bit slower. I really missed VOI and now that my Vera is back as my main hub my family is enjoying the HA system much more.

By fall I have to have a rock solid Ezlo hub as it has to control lots of outside environmental sensors that can not fail. I’m not going to get my hopes up though so I’m already working on a non Ezlo backup plan.

I was told when my logs were collected that fixes were a priority so maybe these critical issues are being resolved but the silence is driving me nuts.

Hello @JimMac
We are improving include/exclude processes during the last 2 months. We’ve made it more stable, but still have work to be done. In your logs, we haven’t seen any obvious errors that might cause the behavior you described. Also, there might be some devices that are spamming the controller with a lot of information - one socket can send energy consumption and electricity data every second.
We are investigating this issue on the mobile apps side. Our goal is to make the inclusion/exclusion process more visible and traceable. We’ve already improved the inclusion process of zigbee devices (the new FW version will be released in mid of July). We are adding more improvements to the interaction process with zwave devices. You will get more improvements on zwave side next two months.

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Thanks, this is the update I was wanting to hear.
While I was on the phone with support during the log gathering process, we were investigating the delayed or no response issues with many of my devices. Some devices were taking 5-30 seconds to respond to changes while others never did. Is this being investigated or is it part of the “spamming” issue that is clogging the hub?

Hello @JimMac
Yes, we are investigating this behavior and finding a way to improve performance. I’d appreciate it if you help our customer care team to get fresh logs from your hub during the inclusion/exclusion process. Our plan is to change the default configuration of those zwave devices that can spam hubs to send less info to a controller (if this is unnecessary data). This is plan for Q3 2022 for us.