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What to do when a node doesn't appear on the Node Info report (but is really there)

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    What to do when a node doesn't appear on the Node Info report (but is really there)

    I have a Fibaro "button" that is working fine. When I click on the "Manage" button on the "Z-Wave" tab for this device, it shows it as node 49. I can wake it up and verify connectivity to it (see screen snip Home below). When it is pressed, the associated events are triggered, etc. However, this device does NOT appear in the node information report (see screen snip Forum below). I tried doing a "rescan", but that didn't help. I tried going into the Z-Wave config and clicked "Reset Z-Wave Data" to rebuild the database. While that appeared to run successfully, this node does not appear. How does this happen and what should I do?
    Thanks for your help.

    FYI: I only happen to run across this issue because I was trying to get a count of the number of Z-Wave devices I have. I noticed that this one was missing. I'm not going to look through the list in greater detail to see if there are other anomolies.

    Screen Snip #1
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    Screen Snip #2​​
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    #2
    The node is no longer in the Z-Wave controller’s memory. It will still communicate because the device knows the HomeID and the devices info is in the HomeSeer device. I’ve run into this twice.

    Here is how to fix it:
    • Shut down HomeSeer - to make sure the HS devices are not deleted when the device is reset
    • Perform a factory reset on the device
    • start HomeSeer
    • Include the device
    • make note of the node number of the newly included device
    • set the new device’s node number to No Node ID
    • Delete the parent of the new device, the features will also be deleted
    • assign the new node number to the original device
    ​​​​​​​This method will leave all of your Events intact since the original RefIDs are retained.
    HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

    Comment


      #3
      Thanks. I'll give that a try. I just found another device that working fine, but also not in the node list. I'm wondering how many more devices I have that are like this. Going through them one at a time is painful. Is there another way to find out what devices may be missing?
      Also, I have found some devices that are unknown to me. It's possible I added them and didn't give them names or they were failed adds that never got cleaned up. Is thee a way to tell if these devices are really there and working (i.e. a last communicated with timestamp?). They appear to be sensor devices as their description is "Node 54 Z-Wave Sigma Notification Sensor. There are four of them that I don't believe are "real".

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by ChrisMiller View Post
        Thanks. I'll give that a try. I just found another device that working fine, but also not in the node list. I'm wondering how many more devices I have that are like this. Going through them one at a time is painful. Is there another way to find out what devices may be missing?
        Also, I have found some devices that are unknown to me. It's possible I added them and didn't give them names or they were failed adds that never got cleaned up. Is thee a way to tell if these devices are really there and working (i.e. a last communicated with timestamp?). They appear to be sensor devices as their description is "Node 54 Z-Wave Sigma Notification Sensor. There are four of them that I don't believe are "real".
        I’ve had it happen twice and I cannot think of anything I could have done to delete a node only from the controller. It has to be something done internally in the controller, or an errant command from the plug-in.

        A Z-Wave device that is not successfully interrogated at inclusion will usually show up as a Sigma device. Go to the Z-Wave tab and do a Test Connectivity. If it succeeds, do a rescan to see if it can build the HomeSeer devices. If Test Connectivity fails, immediately do it again. If the second one fails it is a missing device or failed inclusion. Immediately select Remove Bad Node to delete it from the controller and remove the HomeSeer devices.
        HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

        Comment


          #5
          Thank you Randy. Your contributions on this forum are great/appreciated. I'm sure providing your insights takes some time. So, thank you again.
          I only found one other device that was actually working, but not found in the z-wave node information report. I followed your directions and things were fine.
          However, I did find another discrepancy that I don't know how to handle:
          As I mentioned, there were four unknown devices on my "Devices" page. I decided I would go ahead and delete them. I did this by using the "delete" button on the devices page. 3 of the 4 were removed successfully and no longer appear in the Node Information list. However, one still does (see screen snip below)
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          Since I don't see this device listed any longer on my devices page, and I have no way to "exclude" it, how do I get it out of the Z-Wave controller? I tried resetting the z-wave data (on the ZWave Config menu), but that didn't help. I painstakingly went through the node information page and verified that all of my other devices are correct. How do I get rid of node 13 now?

          BTW: I got started down this rabbit hole because I seem to have a problem with the response time on with an event (delay in the time it takes for a light to come on after the motion sensor fires the event. I read on another post that it was possible the z-wave network was congested or had a bad node or route.) That is what got me looking into the z-wave node list to see if there were things in there that may be unnecessary. I have posted another topic about that a day or so ago as well. I was hoping cleaning up any "bad" nodes and re-running the full optimize might make things better.
          Chris

          Comment


            #6
            Since I don't see this device listed any longer on my devices page, and I have no way to "exclude" it, how do I get it out of the Z-Wave controller? I tried resetting the z-wave data (on the ZWave Config menu), but that didn't help. I painstakingly went through the node information page and verified that all of my other devices are correct. How do I get rid of node 13 now?
            It looks like you are using the V3 Z-Wave plug-in. If so you can go to the Controller Management and “Import Node Info from Controller and Scan Devices”. This will create new HomeSeer Devices for any nodes in the controller without associated HS Devices. Then you can “Test Connectivity” twice back to back. If it fails both times, immediately Remove Bad Node. This will remove the node from the controller and remove the HS devices.

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            BTW: I got started down this rabbit hole because I seem to have a problem with the response time on with an event (delay in the time it takes for a light to come on after the motion sensor fires the event. I read on another post that it was possible the z-wave network was congested or had a bad node or route.) That is what got me looking into the z-wave node list to see if there were things in there that may be unnecessary. I have posted another topic about that a day or so ago as well. I was hoping cleaning up any "bad" nodes and re-running the full optimize might make things better.
            Check the “Polling” interval on every parent and feature by looking through the Node Information page. Make sure polling is disabled on all devices. Polling is one thing that can really introduce delays.

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            HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

            Comment


              #7
              Randy,
              Thanks again. I was able to finally able to remove the bad nodes using the technique you suggested. When I had attempted to remove them before, HS4 would tell me it couldn't do it. However, after attempting the connectivity test (twice as you suggested), I was able to remove the bad nodes successfully!

              Regarding Polling:
              I am now going through each device and eliminating polling as you suggested. However, I am interested to understand why it's "bad". Since I didn't set any of these settings, I assume they are defaults that got set when the device was added. If polling isn't a good thing, then why are these default values set. Are there cases where polling should be happening? For example, I see polling is set for many battery powered devices like water leak sensors.

              Thanks.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by ChrisMiller View Post
                Randy,
                Thanks again. I was able to finally able to remove the bad nodes using the technique you suggested. When I had attempted to remove them before, HS4 would tell me it couldn't do it. However, after attempting the connectivity test (twice as you suggested), I was able to remove the bad nodes successfully!

                Regarding Polling:
                I am now going through each device and eliminating polling as you suggested. However, I am interested to understand why it's "bad". Since I didn't set any of these settings, I assume they are defaults that got set when the device was added. If polling isn't a good thing, then why are these default values set. Are there cases where polling should be happening? For example, I see polling is set for many battery powered devices like water leak sensors.

                Thanks.
                There is an issue that HomeSeer has had for years. When including a node, HomeSeer will set polling on the device. This shouldn’t happen and it’s a legacy from before Z-Wave plus when many devices didn’t report status change due to Lutron holding a patent on Instant Status. Only Lutron, Cooper and Leviton provided it, other companies didn’t pay the licensing. That all ended in 2016 when the patent expired. Polling is not necessary for any Z-Wave plus devices or for older devices that supported Instant Status.

                Polling is bad for traffic because it sends out commands and looks for responses on a regular schedule. I believe this traffic is more substantial than normal Device control, because of he impact it can have on Z-Wave latency. When scheduled polling is set on the parent or root device, all the features are also polled. Sometimes HomeSeer set polling on the parent and all the features, more than doubling traffic. Enough devices being polled can introduce delays in Z-Wave command execution. Energy reporting and device status reporting is initiated automatically from the device, scheduled polling is not needed.

                The only time I use polling is during my startup cleanup Events. This is to make sure critical devices’ status is correct when HomeSeer is started. This is only in the off chance HomeSeer was down while one of these devices was manually controlled. This is only event driven polling, not scheduled. The only scheduled polling I have is for battery powered devices and then only every 12 hours on the battery feature. This sets a wake-up on the device that otherwise might not report battery status.
                HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

                Comment


                  #9
                  Thanks again for the helpful info Randy. I did remove polling from every device (except the battery child devices...which are all set at 12 hours per your suggestion). This topic did raise a few more WWRD (what would Randy do? 😉) questions about the Z-Wave network for me:
                  1. I've heard it's not good if there are old Z-Wave devices on my network. Is this true and how can I tell which ones they might be? For example, most of the nodes in my Z-Wave Node Information report indicate they are 100 Kbps. However, there are some that are 40 Kbps. Are the 40 Kbps the "old" devices? Does this matter?
                  2. Hub placement: I know the intuitive answer to this, but wanted to ask anyway. Currently, my hub is in the corner of my basement. While that sounds bad at first, there are plenty always-on devices on every floor (some in-wall switches/outlets, lamp modules, appliance modules, etc.). Given it's a mesh network, does it really make that much difference since the packets should have multiple paths through the mesh. The "neighbor" list for nearly every node is quite long, so it would seem there are lot of options. Would it materially help if I moved the hub to a more central location or is it fine where it's at as long as there are plenty of other nodes around?
                  3. How do you troubleshoot lags in performance? For example, if I continue to see that the log shows an command was sent but it is taking ~10 seconds for the actual device to execute the command and report back, what do you look for first. I kinda know how to measure/troubleshoot this on an IP network, but have no idea how to tell what's going on with a Z-Wave network.

                  Thanks.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by randy View Post
                    The node is no longer in the Z-Wave controller’s memory. It will still communicate because the device knows the HomeID and the devices info is in the HomeSeer device. I’ve run into this twice.

                    Here is how to fix it:
                    • Shut down HomeSeer - to make sure the HS devices are not deleted when the device is reset
                    • Perform a factory reset on the device
                    • start HomeSeer
                    • Include the device
                    • make note of the node number of the newly included device
                    • set the new device’s node number to No Node ID
                    • Delete the parent of the new device, the features will also be deleted
                    • assign the new node number to the original device
                    This method will leave all of your Events intact since the original RefIDs are retained.
                    randy Thanks for your detailed explanation, I recently "lost" one of my HS-WD200 dimmers while trying to resolve some issues with the z-wave plugin and another bad device. It looks like the screenshots here are from the legacy Z-Wave 3.x plugin - do you know if/where to change the Node ID setting on a device using the Z-Wave 4.x plugin? I would like to try your procedure and see if I can get the missing device back, ideally without having to downgrade everything (esp. since I have added some new Z-wave devices since upgrading my system to the 4.x plugin)

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Sadly the V4.X plug-in no longer supports removing or changing the NodeID. It is displayed on the Device Information page, but it cannot be changed. This is one of several things missing from the V4.1.0.3 plugin that leaves me stuck at 3.0.11.0
                      HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by randy View Post
                        Sadly the V4.X plug-in no longer supports removing or changing the NodeID. It is displayed on the Device Information page, but it cannot be changed. This is one of several things missing from the V4.1.0.3 plugin that leaves me stuck at 3.0.11.0
                        randy thanks, that was what I was afraid of.

                        Do you know if it's possible to downgrade to 3.0.x to be able to access these settings and then "cleanly" upgrade back to 4.x once I've fixed the affected device? In my case, there are several Z-Wave devices that I've added since upgrading to the 4.x plugin, not sure how they would be impacted by a downgrade or if that would just screw up my setup even more. Based on timestamps of files in the Homeseer data directory, it looks like the Z-wave DB files are no longer used and 4.x is all JSON based configuration, but I don't know if/how that impacts the controller memory itself.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by randy View Post
                          Sadly the V4.X plug-in no longer supports removing or changing the NodeID. It is displayed on the Device Information page, but it cannot be changed. This is one of several things missing from the V4.1.0.3 plugin that leaves me stuck at 3.0.11.0
                          While not fixed in the Z-Wave plug-in, Stephxx’s “HS4 internals” plug-in exposes the Node setting for Z-Wave Devices.
                          HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

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