What's the general procedure to "fix" Zwave devices that no longer respond?

Community Playground General Discussions
1

I’ve got a UI7 vera lite I’ve been using for a few years, and there are a number of devices that have just stopped working over the years - a couple GE light switches, a GE wall outlet, and a couple of Enerwave 7-button scene controllers. All of these were working fully (for some value of “fully”) at some point in the past, but have stopped responding to Vera even though the light switches still work manually.

The “network healing” doesn’t seem to fix anything (and I think it’s been removed from the UI recently, anyway) - what’s the correct way to go about fixing these? Bonus points if I can do it without turning off the breaker, which is a giant pain. Ideally, I’d be able to do this without having to touch each scene these devices are involved in, but I bet that’s not going to be possible. :confused:

Thanks,
+j

2

I can’t speak for the enerwave controllers, but on the GE switches, pulling out the airgap is a good thing to try as a first step. It’s basically like flipping the breaker for the switch.

3

tonight my thermostat was displaying a flashing network symbol. looking at the manual it meant loss of network.

I simply put it into “listen mode” then did a “configure nodes” on the advanced settings.

after a minute it was talking again fine.

4

Power cycle:
As suggested, the use of the air gap switch is a good first step. The air gap switch provides the ability to disconnect power, just like the breaker.

For devices without the air gap switch, the appropriate action would be to cycle the breaker.

Exclude/Include:
If power cycling does not have any impact, the next step is to exclude and include the device. This resets the device to factory defaults. Assuming this gets the device working again, you will need to reconfigure your scenes and programming to utilize the newly included device with its new device number.

Replace the device:
If the device still doesn’t work after an exclude/include then it is safe to assume that the device is bad and you will need to replace it.

5

i find the best thing to do is once you have all your nodes working and scenes created… SAVE A BACKUP!
When you get issues with devices you can reload the back up and you should be back to that state when all was well.

I still do fart around with a “Cant detect device” error that pops up every now and then… my solution - try polling the node via the advanced tab of the node… if this fails review the autoroute field on the variables tab within advanced - this shows the route vera is using to communicate… i have added routes that make far more sense then the routes that have been populated. (This is like manualrouting) i do have devices that do not have the autoroute field, which then requires you to use the tab called NEW SERVICE under advanced - this will allow you to manually add the route.

Do a search on the forum for autorouting - its explained in more detail there.

If this all fails, then you will have to exclude and then include the device again… which is a hassle as if the device is used in a scene, it means that scene needs to be reviewed and updated.

good luck