Trane TZEMT400BB32MAA Thermostat Zwave questions/issues

I have a unique situation with one of my thermostats and looking to see if anyone has suggestions on what’s going on.

First, I have two zwave controllers, a vera2 and a vera3. Both thermostats were originally on the vera2 and then I upgraded to the vera3 (joy). I got all sorts of support help on bridging the units and somehow I still screwed that up. A couple of months ago support restored my last good vera2 backup before the migration. They also restored a vera3 backup before bridging was done.

I was left with a strange setup on each controller. Last week I got support to wipe everything from the vera2 except for the two thermostats and a few plugin switches.
The vera3 had previously had the thermostats manually excluded from the controller. I thought everything was good.
The vera2 lives on the first floor and the vera3 lives on the second floor.

Then the cold weather hit…
Last night I discovered the upstairs HVAC wasn’t heating. The thermostat showed the heat was “ON” but the heater showed a stats code of “off” or no command from the thermostat.

I made several attempts today to clear off the thermostats from the vera3, but two still remained. Thinking there may be some conflict I excluded both thermostats from the vera2, included them to the vera3 and then excluded them from the vera3. Still there were two extra thermostats on the vera3.

I decided the best thing to do is take the vera3 offline, so it’s currently unplugged. All my other devices are in limbo since that’s the primary controller.
Again, I tried to include the thermostats on the vera2 and get the same results. Heat ON, heater starts up but never ignites, cycles and tries again until it locks out for an hour. (which I’m currently in)
If I exclude the thermostat from the vera2 every works fine. Just no remote control.
If I include the thermostat back into the vera2 the problem returns.
There was one time where the vera2 was sitting within pairing distance and everything worked fine.

Is there some sort of vera/thermostat communication which happens when the thermostat turns the heat on?
The only thing I can imagine is there’s some heater/thermostat check before the burners light up. The vera2 controller is on the first floor, the vera2 network only has a few nodes and the upstairs thermostat is so far away that some communication isn’t able to happen when firing up the burners. I may make a network of those plug-in switches to see if that helps.

BTW, if anyone ever needs to have a good long battery for moving around your vera… I took an older fisher price PowerWheels 12V SLA battery and have had both veras running off that for a few hours. Way better than those small rechargeable battery packs!

[quote=“Jeff D, post:1, topic:194365”]I have a unique situation with one of my thermostats and looking to see if anyone has suggestions on what’s going on.

First, I have two zwave controllers, a vera2 and a vera3. Both thermostats were originally on the vera2 and then I upgraded to the vera3 (joy). I got all sorts of support help on bridging the units and somehow I still screwed that up. A couple of months ago support restored my last good vera2 backup before the migration. They also restored a vera3 backup before bridging was done.

I was left with a strange setup on each controller. Last week I got support to wipe everything from the vera2 except for the two thermostats and a few plugin switches.
The vera3 had previously had the thermostats manually excluded from the controller. I thought everything was good.
The vera2 lives on the first floor and the vera3 lives on the second floor.

Then the cold weather hit…
Last night I discovered the upstairs HVAC wasn’t heating. The thermostat showed the heat was “ON” but the heater showed a stats code of “off” or no command from the thermostat.

I made several attempts today to clear off the thermostats from the vera3, but two still remained. Thinking there may be some conflict I excluded both thermostats from the vera2, included them to the vera3 and then excluded them from the vera3. Still there were two extra thermostats on the vera3.

I decided the best thing to do is take the vera3 offline, so it’s currently unplugged. All my other devices are in limbo since that’s the primary controller.
Again, I tried to include the thermostats on the vera2 and get the same results. Heat ON, heater starts up but never ignites, cycles and tries again until it locks out for an hour. (which I’m currently in)
If I exclude the thermostat from the vera2 every works fine. Just no remote control.
If I include the thermostat back into the vera2 the problem returns.
There was one time where the vera2 was sitting within pairing distance and everything worked fine.

Is there some sort of vera/thermostat communication which happens when the thermostat turns the heat on?
The only thing I can imagine is there’s some heater/thermostat check before the burners light up. The vera2 controller is on the first floor, the vera2 network only has a few nodes and the upstairs thermostat is so far away that some communication isn’t able to happen when firing up the burners. I may make a network of those plug-in switches to see if that helps.

BTW, if anyone ever needs to have a good long battery for moving around your vera… I took an older fisher price PowerWheels 12V SLA battery and have had both veras running off that for a few hours. Way better than those small rechargeable battery packs![/quote]

Try a factory reset on both the Vera 3 and Vera 2

Then Add the thermostat to whatever Vera you are going to use and test one at a time.

I have the dashboard on my laptop so when adding devices I don’t need to use a battery

Howard

Thanks Howard, I reset the thermostat and did ever short of resetting the vera2 and 3. I avoid that at all costs because having to re-add every device is about the worst thing in the world and after getting done with that you still need to update all scripts, timers and automation settings. Way too much work with just ~40 devices.

If I understand your laptop comment and think I do the same with a tablet, but what do you do for security devices? My thermostats are like door locks, garage door openers, and use the low-power include mode where the device has to be next to the controller. My wife won’t let me run around the house carrying the doors to the controllers. =)

I did try one more time, this time with a ton of plug-in switches that are on the vera2 network, the thermostat (after being reset to defaults, again), and excluding and including the thermostat in the vera2. This time it worked! I removed all the plug in modules and put the vera2 back in its home and everything seems to work. Not sure what the problem was, but glad it’s back cuz it’s going to be cold again tonight.

FWIW, I wouldn’t suspect there’s any thermostat-zwave controller messages during the heater startup but have no idea what the protocol looks like.