2 weeks ago, I was at my vacation home where my vera3 is located. I changed batteries on 75% of my battery powered sensors and replaced 2 sensors that seemed to be failing. At first all sensors read 100% battery and all had green globes. I decided to run a “repair” because of the 2 replaced sensors. Before doing so, I was suspecting that my AC scene wasn’t running properly and that I had not received reports from my ADD scene for a week or two, but I am not certain of that. After the repair, I tested my AC scene and the ADD scene and neither worked. After the repair, 2 or 3 of my sensors had a red globe and showed the message “Unable to get any information on the node”. I asked MCV for assistance and they suggested that I restore a backup from when my sensors seemed to run properly. I did this and the red globes and red messages disappeared but my AC scene and ADD scene were still not running. The MCV tech said 2 lines were missing from my AC scene (how did this happen?) but fixing that didn’t get it working. The tech said that he would continue to work on these 2 scenes and get back to me once he fixed them. I never heard from him but about 3 days later the scenes began working again. This week, 2 more sensors started behaving in the same fashion even though their batteries are reading 100%.
Is this a sign that my Vera3 unit is failing or has MCV made some changes on their end that are causing previously functioning scenes to fail?
This can happen as a result of Vera’s automatic Network Heal process. If it tries to configure battery-operated devices and they do not respond in time, they can be left in an unusable state.
Opinions vary as to whether the automatic heal is necessary on a stable system. I turned it off on my system after the second time I came home from a trip to find that it had broken some of my sensors. Our resident Z-Wave guru @Z-Waver usually recommends that you leave it on, though.
To turn it off, go to the Z-Wave Settings tab and uncheck Use Vera routing instead of Z-Wave (requires 4.5) then restart Vera.
[quote=“RexBeckett, post:2, topic:180967”]Our resident Z-Wave guru @Z-Waver usually recommends that you leave it on, though.
To turn it off, go to the Z-Wave Settings tab and uncheck Use Vera routing instead of Z-Wave (requires 4.5) then restart Vera.[/quote]
Wow! Thanks. No pressure, right?
@aecchalet’s problem does sound like yet another case of poor signal quality and I concur with @RexBeckett’s recommendation. If you can repair the network and get it working again, then disable automatic heals as @RexBeckett stated, or at least disable Automatically configure on the battery operated device, then it should remain fairly stable.
As always, the real fix to poor Z-Wave signal quality is to add more nodes(routing/powered not battery operated).
These two sensors are furthest from my zwave controller but I have an appliance module plugged in and about 6 ft from one and 20 ft from the other. When this problem first began, a different sensor was acting this way and it was 10 ft from my vera3 with nothing in between. These modules seem to be functioning fine.