I have only had this system now for a few days and it’s been a constant frustration. I attribute some of that to my newbie status, but poor documentation and flakey operation are at the root of my frustration. This system was purchased to replace a 10 year old X10 environment that was mostly reliable but flakey too because I do have a lot of noise on my power grid.
I have 22 lamp modules spread all over my 2400 square foot house, there is at least one module in every room and in some rooms like the living room there are four. Longest distance between any two modules is about 10-12 feet. I got all the modules included with little troubles and they were all showing up in UI7 just fine, but a few of the modules would not respond so I was told by a few folks here to do a heal, which I did. From that point on various modules come up un-reachable. I have done maybe 10 heals now and each time different modules come up un-reachable. Once once did I have everything come up good in UI7 but that lasted only a few hours. If each heal yielded the same modules in trouble I could attempt to figure out why but never do the same modules come up in trouble. That makes no sense to me… Also should I be selecting any of the heal options offered such as “Re-configure all the devices when done” OR “Only update Vera routing (overrides other settings)”.
I was clearly expecting this system to be way more plug and play than it has been. Is the issue the Vera…? Did I make the wrong controller choice or is this a Z-Wave issue. If the experts here can help me get this darn thing operational I would be very grateful, otherwise I’m shipping the whole mess back next week so I can get at least a partial refund.
[quote=“RichardPHarvey, post:3, topic:186706”]1- Jasco 45609
21- Schlage RP-200 (which is actually a Jasco 45602)[/quote]
Probley to many at one time I’m gonna assume.
Heels sometimes cause more problems then they fix. Vera will automatically run a repair at 2am when there is problem devices. Problem is those take several days or several try’s to fix. I notice my further devices take some time to get settled in and find a good route.
If you tried to throw alot of these all in at one time there was never a good base network setup to begin with. No known good routes and it’s gonna take time and several attempts to get a good base going. Any that don’t get better after a few days, exclude and reinclude and it will get in back into sync with your network.
EDIT:
Make sure your leaving your vera in one place. Moving it around while adding devices only makes it more confused (and requires those no so good heels) as to what route to take where.
Integlikewhoa - I actually didn’t add all the devices in at one time. I added then over a period of three days, several at a time. Most of what you posted is making me think this is not a clean solution yet, one that requires way too much tinkering to keep running. I got so sick of messing with my old X10 system and decided to upgrade for that reason, feels like this was not an upgrade at all.
I hate to say it, but this is all tinker play land. When I set mine up initially, I was frustrated as well. But now I can say I have my system so that their is no need to interface with it and works reliably. I am running a vera lite ui5 in a 2500 sq ft house with roughly 35 devices. It’s flawless but did take some pain to get there. The info above is good info.
Well I can tell you 3 days is not enough time for 20 plus devices and several heels.
The tinkering for me is adding conditions and more automation. I never have z-wave range or communication problems after setup.
I have a back garage and casatias that’s 2k square feet and sits around 40-50ft from the house. I have 8-9 z-wave devices back there including light switches and hotwater heater relay. Those devices when adding can sometimes take awhile to setup since there is no direct communication during inclusion. When I first add a device back there is might be slow to respond (with retry attempts), or not respond at all (failed) for a bit. After a few days everything works it’s self out and now everything back there works as good as in the house.
I think your trying to many things at once. with 20+ devices and 4 jumps per device imagine how many possible routes each device can take. It takes alot of trys and uses for vera to find out the best route for each device.
OK. I will take all this advise and let the system stew for a few days and see what I have then. But just to add to the frustration, last night when I went to bed I had 2 devices that were un-reachable and this morning I have 4. One of the 4 is within 6 feet of the Vera box itself and in the same room. It’s just hard to understand that this is normal.
It depends. What is that device? Is it a switch or outlet? If it is, is it in a metal gang box or plastic? Even if it’s plastic, some devices have really good range, but only in one direction (the direction of the face of the switch). There are plenty of factors that can contribute to it.
That said, I have had some devices that had similar issues. Mostly they were battery operated devices and mainly they were the Aeon 4-in-1 multi sensors. I have since removed them due to the issues with them. My other main issue device is my lock, but locks are known to have issues with range and the need for a device that supports “beaming” near them if it can’t talk directly to the Vera. That said, my lock reports 99+% of the time now and I think that is more on the lock side than the vera (and the fact that my air handler is right between the vera and the lock).
I currently have only one “box mounted” switch and the box it’s in is plastic and that switch has yet to be a problem, but I’m sure it will at some point. I also just installed 1 Fibaro motion sensor, it’s the only battery powered device I have and other than losing the temp sensor in UI7 that device too has not yet been an issue. ALL 21 other devices are Jacso plugin lamp modules as noted above. It’s these modules that are bouncing in and out of the “reachable” state.
As I said above, right now I have 4 of these lamp modules (up from 2 yesterday) that Vera can’t currently communicate with. One of the 4 is within 6 feet of the Vera and it worked fine until the 2am auto heal took place. That alone makes no sense to me, why would the heal kill communication of a device that is so close it can communicate directly with the controller.
Let me ask, is there some other option out there, even a more expensive option that will just work and not be so darn flakey.
[quote=“RichardPHarvey, post:10, topic:186706”]I currently have only one “box mounted” switch and the box it’s in is plastic and that switch has yet to be a problem, but I’m sure it will at some point. I also just installed 1 Fibaro motion sensor, it’s the only battery powered device I have and other than losing the temp sensor in UI7 that device too has not yet been an issue. ALL 21 other devices are Jacso plugin lamp modules as noted above. It’s these modules that are bouncing in and out of the “reachable” state.
As I said above, right now I have 4 of these lamp modules (up from 2 yesterday) that Vera can’t currently communicate with. One of the 4 is within 6 feet of the Vera and it worked fine until the 2am auto heal took place. That alone makes no sense to me, why would the heal kill communication of a device that is so close it can communicate directly with the controller.
Let me ask, is there some other option out there, even a more expensive option that will just work and not be so darn flakey.[/quote]
This is not normal and something doesn’t seem right.
I just opened up UI7 again and guess what, I’m now down to only one module that Vera can’t communicate with and it’s the one module that’s in the same room. Again, this makes zero sense to me.
UPDATE - I started pounding the one last module with on and off commands while watching the connected light to see if it responded at all. For maybe 20 commands I had no response then all of a sudden the light came on once, after a few more commands the unit started responding to all commands. For only the 2nd time since installation last week I have a green smiling house in UI7. Wonder how long this will last
Just to share my experience, I had an issue where all of a sudden half my devices were unreachable and some were just a few feet from Vera. Reboots or heals did not work.
At the end I realized the problem was with a specific device flooding the z wave network, preventing devices from communicating with each other. In my case I was lucky that the ct30 thermostat is reported on these forums to cause that problem and I was able to identify and fix the problem.
In your case, it might be a case of a single bad switch.
I’d suggest excluding all devices and then adding them in groups of 3 or 5 and waiting a day or two in between to see which group causes the problem and then you can narrow down to the specific switch.
Right now I hate VERA and Z-Wave. I have two years spent trying to get UI5 to work for me, and yet my very dense network still has z-wave problems to the point I get a restart at least twice a day while running z-wave jobs… As of last night, Tech Support can find nothing wrong, yet when I run a heal it never produces a heal report (not in the GUI anyway)…
So a few days have now passed and my status is better but not yet perfect. I did not stay with the green happy house for long (as expected) and now have only one module that’s in trouble. It’s one of two light modules that I have in my barn that is some 60’ away from the main house and it’s nearest neighbor module. What’s confusing is there are two modules in this barn and one works perfectly yet the other does not, despite the fact that the two modules in the barn are just 10 feet apart and it’s totally open space between them.
This is the way I try to fix signal problems.
If we could see Z-Wave signals in the air, you would see that the angle of the slave device in relation to the controller matters since they are not all omni directional as someone else here pointed out. Also to make things worse very dense materials like metal block radio waves. 60 feet between buildings is pretty far for Z-Wave in a home environment. You are doing good if one is working perfectly in that environment.
Try to imaging the controller and slave devices as suns and dense materials that maybe in walls such as mesh, pipes and wire as something blocking the suns rays and showing a shadow or no or limited signals behind those items. Moving the slave devices might help as the shadow angles will be other than the controller.
My point is to try rotating the slave device if you can, moving them to other locations. and even rotating and moving the controller a bit might help.
60ft between devices it pushing the limit to be quiet honest.
I have a 2k sf building, rv garage and bathroom and stuff in the back. I estimate around 45-50 feet between closest nodes. It takes some time when first getting setup (and again when I swapped vera lite to a vera edge) to get everything responding back there fast again.
They say 100ft between z-wave devices is the max range (I think new zwave 500 or plus is supposed to go longer, but your devices don’t support that), but usually we tend to tell people realistically 30-50ft is more the max. It really depends on whats in the way and each house is different ofcourse.
Z-wave can bounce or route threw 4 different nodes or devices (not battery devices). and you can check in the advanced tab which devices it using to get to that device. You can also override the auto path to your chosen manual path. But be warned when you do this you start tinkering and may cause your problem to get worse.
I suggest you try to cut down that 60ft gap and add more devices to get the mesh network bigger and more dense. Also here is info on manual z-wave routing, but I think it might be early to do it and it comes with a WARNING.
integlikewhoa - You’re missing one very important point, there IS a working device that is within 10 feet of this un-reachable device. All I’m asking that last module to do is listen to another module 10 feet away. Am I wrong thinking that modules only need to be able to “hear” the transmission from one other device (controller or module) to respond correctly…?
