OK, I’m not going into the details of why, but my Vera lost power ~3 times in a row without fully booting up in between each failure and an interesting thing happened.
The network lost the Vera. The Vera could no longer talk to any device in the network. A restore of the Vera from backup did not allow it to talk to the network. I had to add my devices back one at a time. The rub was that it seemed to not want to add any of my Intermatic CA3000 switches. So I called Tech support. We managed to get all but one of the switches working but to get them working we had to exclude each switch, reset the controller, then include the switch. Sometimes we had to do this multiple times. Tech support kept saying that they were changing some Zwave values, but would not get any more descriptive than that (one interesting note was that in the process the Vera recognized a CA5100 scene controller which I had not been able to get it to see before).
Tech support went back and did some research, said they found a Zwave value that needed to be changed, changed it, then said that I had lost all my devices again. So I called tech support back and we started adding devices back one at a time. None of the CA3000 switches would include or exclude this time.
Now I have multiple devices in my house that will not include or exclude, I’ve spent hours on the phone with tech support… Where do I go from here? Do I keep fiddling with the switches until they finally work again? Is there a chance that resetting the Vera to factory will help or is there a chance that it has screwed up something in the switches themselves? Would I simply be better of here just wiping it clean, loosing all my scenes and spending half a day rebuilding it again?
I am also trying to decide if the unit has become flaky or if the dashboard interface is finicky (some devices delete, others won’t). I’m leaning more toward finicky as it seems I can delete some devices, but only after some other devices have been deleted.
Any help, wisdom, or emotional support welcome… 
Emotional support; awwwww poor guy… Poor Vera…
Tech advise? Depends… Are you on 1.1.1245 and zwave 3.20?!?
If not, an upgrade might help.
If yes, considering the time you already spent with tech support, I would delete all devices, do a backup to save your scenes and do a full manual recover as described on the wiki. When I’m home I’ll find the exact links for you. You could start looking in the how to or the troubleshoot section to find the tutorial on manual recovery.
Might cost you the better part of a day, but it will ensure no errors are left in your system.
Let us know where we can help
@fronobulax,
Read my other posts here about my troubles and how (my personal theory, not official) the bad variable merge results can propagate themselves the more you try to fix it. I agree with @henk in that you will need to start from scratch although i would not recommend a restore from a backup after the problem started - you would be restoring bad data potentially (again - my opinion only, not proven)
It would have been nice if MCV had done an automatic device backup before they did the surprise automatic upgrade. Although that would require that the merge of old variables with new was bulletproof, and I am guessing that is still as it is.
All my opinion, but maybe some of it will help,
bob
@fronobulax,
Crappy!
[quote=“fronobulax, post:1, topic:168532”]Now I have multiple devices in my house that will not include or exclude,
[…] some devices delete, others won’t […][/quote]
It sounds like somehow Vera reset the HouseID and couldn’t communicate with the devices anymore. As they were still configured, you’d have to exclude them first, before being able to include them again.
Are you on .1245 or something older? Deleting devices has been troublesome in the versions before that for a while. Should work in .1245. If they keep coming back when you delete them, then they may actually be live, working devices.
When you do the excludes and includes, are you taking Vera to the devices, the devices to Vera, or are they all full-power includes/excludes?
All better now…
Yep…
So just to be clear is the recommendation to reset the Vera to factory defaults and reload 1.1.1245, then do the manual recover?
When you say delete all devices, I found a Wiki entry that says to do a Zwave network reset is that the equivalent of excluding all devices one at a time?
[quote=“oTi@, post:4, topic:168532”]@fronobulax,
When you do the excludes and includes, are you taking Vera to the devices, the devices to Vera, or are they all full-power includes/excludes?[/quote]
Full-power… I don’t think it is an antenna issue as I have devices that are much farther away and there is no issue including or excluding them (mostly GE wall wart switches). Also (in the round before this last loss of everything) I would have one switch that would include/exclude fine and the one next to it would not see the Vera.
You can tell that the Vera is generally not talking to them as they have a LED that flashes when you successfully exclude them then goes out when you successfully include them.
Oh and I guess I forgot to mention, the original issue with including these switches was that the Vera would see them during include but would fail to go into “learn mode”. Tech support couldn’t figure it out because it did not give an error. Of course now I cannot get the switches to see the Vera to exclude so I’m not sure if the “learn mode” is still the issue or not.
All better now…
Yep…
So just to be clear is the recommendation to reset the Vera to factory defaults and reload 1.1.1245, then do the manual recover?
When you say delete all devices, I found a Wiki entry that says to do a Zwave network reset is that the equivalent of excluding all devices one at a time?[/quote]
@fronobulax
please check this message for reference
http://forum.mios.com/index.php?topic=6809.msg43462#msg43462
Of course now I cannot get the switches to see the Vera to exclude so I'm not sure if the "learn mode" is still the issue or not.
You do not need the switches to show in the Vera UI to exclude them. Just put the Vera into exclude mode and operate the switch. The switch will then be excluded (i.e. its internal data with the old network information will be reset, making it ready to include again.)
The issue is that I can put the Vera in exclude mode then push the button on the switch and the Vera does not acknowledge that the switch was pressed. The Vera will see a switch on both sides next to the switch in question, but will not see that switch… Update… Last night suddenly Vera saw one of these switches again. Now I’m down to just 2 switches that Vera just won’t see.