Looking at routing tables had some kind of strange routes. I just chalked them up to RF weirdness but it now makes more sense.
All Z-wave devices have firmware, not just Vera. Will this fix in Vera take care of the problem or is something going to be required in other devices (e.g. light switches, etc.)?
I suspect that the primary controller (e.g. Vera) controls the routing tables in other modules, so a Vera fix will do the trick. I sure hope so.
@Micasaverde mentioned in his post that there was an undocumented command to clear the routing table in the dongle; maybe its possible for Vera to communicate this to all the nodes also?
This next MCV FW release will contain a work around /temporary fix. When Sigma releases their firmware upgrade MCV will incorporate it to upgrade the chip (V2 only) which should fix the issue.
The primary controllers Z-Wave chip holds the master routing table and there can be other devices in a system that hold a portion of that route such as the Trane T-stat, this is known as a routing slave, most other devices, light switches and outlets are slaves, but all nodes get their instructions from the primary.
This Z-Wave bug is / was the cause of what used to display “Send no response frame” and now the cause of the Blue Halo’s, “Waiting for node to reply after 0” and delays in execution. The bigger the system, the bigger the mess…
Does that mean that as long as Vera is the primary it will get the right magic in the routing tables of its z-wave dongle and that those tables will be propagated to the rest of the network automagically (as part of a heal network for example)?
It sounds like the temporary fix will be for Vera to detect the situation, “patch” the routing tables and then cause them to be propagated where required. It sounds like the upgraded firmware will avoid the problem in the first place. At the end of the day, either approach will result in correct routing tables everywhere. Does this match your understanding?
What’s the situation when Vera is not the primary?
My Vera used to be PRI but something changed it to be SIS but not PRI (any my network now has no PRI controller). So far, I’ve been told that I should rebuild my network but nobody can explain why the problem occurred or how to avoid it happening again.
The Z-Wave chip within Vera gets the information from each node when you add the node to the system. However, currently, from what I understand the problem to be is that each time you add a device, the chip thinks it can communicate with that device directly. The heal network is supposed to wake every device, ask it to report its signal strength & which other devices it is in range of and pass this information back to the chip where its put into a routing table.
That’s why it’s important not to move a device after installation and always perform a heal network after including / excluding or moving a device to wake all the other devices and have the route updated. Unfortunately the heal network hasn’t worked and/or the computations of the Z-Wave chip were inaccurate.
The primary controller is usually the SUC & SIS but dosent need to be both but it will always be the SUC. SUC means it’s a Static Update Controller and is able to generate the heal network for the Z-Wave chip to update the routing table. SIS means its a Static ID Server which allows you to add devices to the system and issue it a Node ID or remove it from the system. You could have more than one inclusion/exclusion controller in a system.
As far as Vera “getting the magic” the FW upgrade we will be getting next will include MCV’s work around software fixes (pending the Sigma fix) that will clear the Z-Wave chip routing table (within Vera) and allow a fresh route to be stored after a heal network.
Your system not being PRI, it probably changed during a FW update and there have been discussions that it may still be PRI YES but only displaying PRI NO. I don’t think anyone knows for sure how why or if…
The announcement was updated to clear this up: it’s a controller-side issue, and not a device one. That means that, as long as the controller is firmware-upgradable (like Vera is), the fix can be pushed to correct the errors within the entire network.
