Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

HS3/HS4 Z-Wave Lock Issues - Resolved?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    HS3/HS4 Z-Wave Lock Issues - Resolved?

    I have been experiencing issues with my Z-Wave Locks for several years. I have an event that locks the doors every night when my Alarm System is armed. Whenever the event runs, I noticed 1-2 of the locks would indicate an unknown state. In the logs, I would always see an error indicating "failed sending Z-Wave command". I always thought this error was caused by the locks not being Z-Wave Plus. Well, I just replaced all 3 locks with a Z-Wave Plus version and I am experiencing the *exact* same issue! I am now wondering if the event I created caused the issue. The event would send a lock command to all 3 locks within the same "Control A Device" action. I just separated them and added a 5-second wait between each and the issue seems to have been resolved. I am NOT going to put the old locks back in, so I now have 3 locks to sell

    I thought I would share in case anyone else has experienced a similar issue.

    Regards,
    Ultrajones
    Plug-ins: UltraMon, UltraM1G, UltraCID, Ultra1Wire, UltraLog, UltraWeatherBug, UltraPioneerAVR, UltraGCIR

    #2
    I do the same thing with turning multiple lights off or on. I was experiencing a lot issues without small delay between actions. Not sure if it is Z-wave traffic issue or something else but small time delay helps the system to keep up with things it seems. I don't think it is related just to locks.

    Comment


      #3
      It is interesting that you experience this with Z-Wave switches. I have several HomeSeer events that turn on or off multiple switches in one event action. It's fired reliably for years.
      Plug-ins: UltraMon, UltraM1G, UltraCID, Ultra1Wire, UltraLog, UltraWeatherBug, UltraPioneerAVR, UltraGCIR

      Comment


        #4
        Well it depends on Overall size of your system. I am talking 15 switches at the same time with many, many motion sensors and other devices talking to Z-wave gateway. We might not be comparing apples to apples.

        I am not the only one reporting similar issue..

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Charles_cz View Post
          Well it depends on Overall size of your system. I am talking 15 switches at the same time with many, many motion sensors and other devices talking to Z-wave gateway. We might not be comparing apples to apples.

          I am not the only one reporting similar issue..
          Same experience - though what's interesting is that a few years ago HS3 coped with this perfectly fine, but overt time I had to start breaking things up because it coped less and less. I think it has been newer version of the Z-wave plugin that have contributed rather than HS3 itself... but never been able to put my finger on it. But splitting into separate events, adding delays, preventing any event from firing more than once in a short period, etc has helped ease the issues but not entirely solve them.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Charles_cz View Post
            Well it depends on Overall size of your system. I am talking 15 switches at the same time with many, many motion sensors and other devices talking to Z-wave gateway. We might not be comparing apples to apples.

            I am not the only one reporting similar issue..
            I do have 2 different Z-Wave networks using 2 HomeSeer Z-Net devices. The first one has 67 nodes made up of switches, sensors, and a lot of modules that have built-in energy monitors. The other contains 2 water meters and several power strips that contain very chatty energy monitors for each outlet. I am thinking about creating another Z-Wave network for just my locks. Has anyone else done this? Do separate Z-Wave networks share the same channel possibly causing more network issues?
            Plug-ins: UltraMon, UltraM1G, UltraCID, Ultra1Wire, UltraLog, UltraWeatherBug, UltraPioneerAVR, UltraGCIR

            Comment


              #7
              I had trouble with 6 iBlinds motors and had to separate the simultaneous closing of them at sunset with delays and even then that was not 100% reliable. Then I modified my RaZberry from PCB antenna to an external antenna and was able to revert all of my changes and run the close blinds event without any intervening delay. I also had trouble including a Kwikset Z-Wave lock before but not now...
              YMMV...
              HS4 Pro Edition 4.2.5.0 running on Lenovo ThinkCenter & Debian Linux
              Plugins: Z-Wave (via Nortek USB stick

              Home Assistant 2021.10.6 running on HA "Blue" ODROID-N2
              Add-ons: Android Debug Bridge, Duck DNS, ESPHome, File Editor, Glances, HA Google Drive Backup, InfluxDB, Log Viewer, MariaDB, Mosquitto broker, NGINX SSL Proxy, Node-RED, Portainer, SSH & Web Terminal, Samba, TasmoAdmin, UniFi Controller, Visual Studio Code, WireGuard, Zigbee2mqtt, Z-Wave JS to MQTT
              Integrations: AccuWeather, Alexa Media Player, Glances, Google Nest, HACS, HomeSeer, Insteon, IPP, Life360, Local IP, Logitech Harmony Hub, Mobile App, MQTT, My Garage, OpenWeather, Spotify, Tuya Local. Ubiquiti UniFi, Z-Wave JS
              Insteon: 2413S Dual Band PLM
              Zigbee: zzh! CC2652R Rev A
              Z-Wave: RaZberry daughtercard on RPi 1B via ser2net

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Ultrajones View Post

                I do have 2 different Z-Wave networks. The first one has 67 nodes made up of switches, sensors, and a lot of modules that have built-in energy monitors. The other contains 2 water meters and several power strips that contain very chatty energy monitors for each outlet. I am thinking about creating another Z-Wave network for just my locks. Has anyone else done this? Do separate Z-Wave networks share the same channel possibly causing more network issues?
                The frequency would still be the same but I do not know is there are "channels" for Z-Wave. I know about Network ID's but they would still collide in-air unless "channelized" somehow...
                HS4 Pro Edition 4.2.5.0 running on Lenovo ThinkCenter & Debian Linux
                Plugins: Z-Wave (via Nortek USB stick

                Home Assistant 2021.10.6 running on HA "Blue" ODROID-N2
                Add-ons: Android Debug Bridge, Duck DNS, ESPHome, File Editor, Glances, HA Google Drive Backup, InfluxDB, Log Viewer, MariaDB, Mosquitto broker, NGINX SSL Proxy, Node-RED, Portainer, SSH & Web Terminal, Samba, TasmoAdmin, UniFi Controller, Visual Studio Code, WireGuard, Zigbee2mqtt, Z-Wave JS to MQTT
                Integrations: AccuWeather, Alexa Media Player, Glances, Google Nest, HACS, HomeSeer, Insteon, IPP, Life360, Local IP, Logitech Harmony Hub, Mobile App, MQTT, My Garage, OpenWeather, Spotify, Tuya Local. Ubiquiti UniFi, Z-Wave JS
                Insteon: 2413S Dual Band PLM
                Zigbee: zzh! CC2652R Rev A
                Z-Wave: RaZberry daughtercard on RPi 1B via ser2net

                Comment


                  #9
                  Collision avoidance in Zwave networks is simple mechanism similar to ethernet, in that, all nodes are listening and if network traffic is detected by the transmitting node, then the node does a random back-off and retries.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by TC1 View Post
                    Collision avoidance in Zwave networks is simple mechanism similar to ethernet, in that, all nodes are listening and if network traffic is detected by the transmitting node, then the node does a random back-off and retries.
                    Thanks.
                    Plug-ins: UltraMon, UltraM1G, UltraCID, Ultra1Wire, UltraLog, UltraWeatherBug, UltraPioneerAVR, UltraGCIR

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by Ultrajones View Post
                      I do have 2 different Z-Wave networks using 2 HomeSeer Z-Net devices. The first one has 67 nodes made up of switches, sensors, and a lot of modules that have built-in energy monitors. The other contains 2 water meters and several power strips that contain very chatty energy monitors for each outlet. I am thinking about creating another Z-Wave network for just my locks. Has anyone else done this? Do separate Z-Wave networks share the same channel possibly causing more network issues?
                      There are people in these forums that have hundreds of devices and specifically have 2+ Z-Wave sticks without issues, in fact allegedly performing very very well.

                      I've never thought too much about this until you just mentioned the key words "very chatty"... if there is one thing I can consistently say about my Z-Wave is that:
                      1. Vera tech support would remotely login and often comment that my Aeotec multisensors seemed to flood a lot of traffic
                      2. I intermittently noticed HS3 "momentary jams" sometimes occurred when a Aeotec multisensor detects movement after a long length of inactivity (it's not a wakeup thing as I have them running on mains not battery).

                      Thinking ahead more, I also have a few Aeotec smart switches for controlling appliances and for some of them (washing machine, dish washer, etc) I specifically have them updating power usage so I can monitor when they are finished plus these aren't time sensitive.

                      So ideally I could have:
                      Z-Wave #1 - All the chatty stuff like multisensors and smart switches
                      Z-Wave #2 - All the time sensitive instant-response stuff like lights

                      Boy my brain is going into overdrive thinking about the potential of this...... hmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!! 👍

                      Comment


                        #12
                        I've tried optimizing meshes, adding repeaters and secondary controllers, disabling power reporting for some devices and of course, the command sequencing.
                        In the end, the only thing that helped me (but YMMW) is increasing the number of networks. For 100, or so, devices, I now have 4 networks.

                        I used to have 10-15 devices that would systematically generate errors and now, there is only one left.

                        My lock seems to like the network #4, not sure why. Number of devices on the network? But not because it is quiet. On this network, I have a Zooz Power Strip and two Aeotec Nano dimmers that report 5% current and power changes.

                        This of course is nothing but Band-Aids. Hopefully, one day, HST will come out and just tell what the message is actually supposed to mean.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          I have a similar event which runs if the home's alarm system goes into Armed Stay or Armed Away. This event does a few things, but one task is calling a "Lock all Locks" event. The Lock All Locks event is a simple event. It is only manually run (or called by another event) and has a single Control A Device action that sends the "Lock" control to each lock device. So far so good and it has been reliable. I do have powered switches in proximity to all the locks to help make sure they're well covered.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by scorp508 View Post
                            I have a similar event which runs if the home's alarm system goes into Armed Stay or Armed Away. This event does a few things, but one task is calling a "Lock all Locks" event. The Lock All Locks event is a simple event. It is only manually run (or called by another event) and has a single Control A Device action that sends the "Lock" control to each lock device. So far so good and it has been reliable. I do have powered switches in proximity to all the locks to help make sure they're well covered.
                            You raised a very good point, the nodes closest to the locks need to support Z-wave beaming. I purposely picked wall switches near my locks that did this.
                            This explains it fully:

                            "Beaming" is a Zwave feature that is designed to increase battery life for door locks.

                            Like most battery-operated Zwave devices, battery-operated locks sleep most of the time and just wake up occasionally to see if there are any messages. This conserves battery. However, people waiting at the door for a lock to open need a very quick response.

                            Z wave introduced beaming to address this. A nearby mains-powered device, typically a wired wall switch or plug-in pocket socket, will keep repeating the same message to the lock until it is received. So it is the wired device that is using power. This ensures that as soon as the lock wakes up to check, The message will be available.

                            Only the neighbor closest to the lock needs to support beaming.

                            Comment

                            Working...
                            X