Kwikset Lock Root Status - showing unknown? Why?

[simonmason]

I have three Kwikset locks in the house. Performance has been good - only complaint is that occasionally a command sent to a lock can take up to a minute or more to work. However, that seems to be the issue with z-wave in general.

Of the three roots for the locks, one seems to continually report Unknown status. This root shows a value of 0. The other locks show a value of 255 and report "No status". Since there are no status graphics in the root device I am not sure what is going on here?

[simonmason]

Further checking shows that these locks are now failing about 50% of the time. I am getting "Failed sending Z-Wave command to device:" at least 50% of the time when unlocking and locking the three locks I have in the house. Z-wave in general seems to be operating around the house so this appears to be something with the locks? Can anyone provide any assistance here? Thanks.

[Rupp]

Have you tired putting in new batteries as these locks have a very short range. You may also want to ensure there's a line powered devices as close to the lock and in front of the lock and then wake the lock a do an optimize of the lock to ensure a valid route.

[RoChess]

Plug-ins > Z-Wave > Node Information

Find your lock and look at the "Neighbors" info as to what nodes are all within communication range.

The "Last Working Route" should ideally indicate "Direct (40K)" or "Direct (100K)" when it's able to talk directly with the controller. Otherwise it'll say something like "3 (40K)" to indicate it is routing via node number 3.

If it says "None" then it immediately highlights the issues you're having.

As Rupp suggested adding repeater nodes or AC powered devices with repeating support helps. Forcing an optimisation on the lock also helps if new neighbors got added. It might be as simple as weak batteries, as I found out once on my Schlage locs. Use Energizer Lithium batteries myself now as cheap Alkaline ones would report battery level incorrect sometimes and couldn't supply enough current to lock door when it warped slightly. Duracell was fine, but the added benefit of the Lithium ones was worth it to me and they last many years.

Only thing I'm not sure on if locks that rely on secure channel communication will repeat communication easy via other nodes. Read something about RF beaming with Z-Wave, but that might be related to instant status reporting. Aeon Labs sells a dedicated Z-Wave repeater node for $30 with Z-Wave Plus and S2 support, so if all fails that might be worth trying.

[sparkman]

Seems like it was caused by an old version of the plugin. I had a few locks like that too. Go to the HS Control Panel and in the immediate script command window, paste and run the following:

&hs.DeviceInvalidValue(xxx) = False

replace xxx with the reference ID of the lock's root device.

I reset mine a few years ago and the root device has not become Unknown since.

[simonmason]

Thanks sparkman for the script command. That cleared out the status.

So I went through these steps:

Work it up manually and rescanned. It took about 10 minutes and appeared to work fine.

Checked all of the batteries. They reported fine and the lock is showing 80% battery.

Plugged a Jasco plug module in next to it. Optimized that and then optimized the lock.

Now the lock is reporting everything correctly with only one problem. It is not locking or unlocking.

It says it is doing it in Homeseer when I lock or unlock it.

The lock works fine when using the keypad.

After running a full optimize it started throwing errors again - Failure to send

Looked in Z-Seer - ran packet test - failed 10 out of 10. I have another lock in the same room and it is also failing the packet test. I have included images of the nodes.

There are a lot of nodes between the locks and the Z-Net which is located about 20 feet away near the ceiling on the floor below. I have about 100 z-wave devices in the house.

The only thing I can think of right now is to remove it completely and re-add it? Anyone have any other thoughts? Thanks.

[simonmason]

I eventually gave up debugging and removed and added it again and everything is working fine now.