Delayed response - system getting backed up

[simonmason]

I have a Z-Net and a Z-Troller. The Z-Troller is barely used - mounted near the pool to improve reception for 4 devices there. The Z-Net is my main unit with 73 nodes.

My switches are about half instant status and a lot of older ones. I have polling turned on for the older switches so I can check status and trigger events. I don’t use scenes much as many devices I have don’t support it.

For the last 12 months I have noticed response times for events getting on average much worse - on both instant status and older switches. Anything from instant to 30 seconds or more.

Is the simple answer to turn off polling and replace with instant status switches where I need to trigger events?

Or is there anything more I can do? Thanks.


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[simonmason]

Any thoughts on this? Would really like to get rid of the random and quite regular delays in z-wave response. Thanks.

[Guest]

Have you looked at your system log to see if any ZWave device might be malfunctioning? A single ZWave device that is flooding the ZWave network (for example) can bring that network to its knees.

[rwenner]

I'm experiencing the same problem with a similar configuration (I have an SEL with two Z-Nets with about 90 nodes). Over the last 6 months Z-Wave responses have slowed and can take as much as 30 seconds. A restart usually fixes the problem, but it returns rather quickly (within a few hours). No errors in the log and the Z-Wave devices are rather close together (within 30 feet of a controller), and are a mixture of Z & Z+. I have a Zee S-2 at the lake house and have not experienced Z-Wave delays - - I'm thinking it's the SEL/Smartstick.

[simonmason]

Have you looked at your system log to see if any ZWave device might be malfunctioning? A single ZWave device that is flooding the ZWave network (for example) can bring that network to its knees.

I don't see any obvious examples of this. No device is continually posting in the log. I am trying see if the /ZWaveConfig screen tells me anything. But there doesn't appear to be any documentation for this screen.

I contacted support a while back about this and one of the suggestions was to turn off polling. Without knowing what this would do, I did it. Any event that was tied to a switch without instant status didn't work.

So I concluded from this that turning off polling would reduce a lot of the traffic? Hence my original question - should I be moving toward instant status switches and leave polling off? And if polling is turned off, does that mean that z-wave devices without instant status will never update in Homeseer unless sent a command directly from Homeseer?

[Guest]

So I concluded from this that turning off polling would reduce a lot of the traffic? Hence my original question - should I be moving toward instant status switches and leave polling off? And if polling is turned off, does that mean that z-wave devices without instant status will never update in Homeseer unless sent a command directly from Homeseer?

Just to define terms: Instant Status simply means that the switch will notify the main ZWave controller (Homeseer in this case) that it has been turned on or off manually. Non instant status means the switch does not, and the controller will need to poll the switch to detect that the switch has been switched manually. A long time ago, only two ZWave manufactures had Instant Status capability (due to copyright, I believe), but that has been rectified, and most ZWave+ modules now have instant status.

If you want Homeseer to do something else when a switch is manually turned on or off, then that switch needs to be an instant status switch. Otherwise, polling is only necessary so that Homeseer will realize the switch has changed state and display the current state properly. I usually set my polling to a lengthy time (like an hour). Constant polling will clog up the ZWave network, as discussed above. But unless your polling interval is very short, it probably is not the problem.

[GeekyDaddy]

Try running a full optimization.

Plugins -> Z-wave -> Controller Management -> Z-Wave Interfaces -> Actions -> Fully Optimize a Network -> Start.

Don't close the browser, open another tab and go to logs

[STCook]

You could go into the zwave config page and enable logging of send/receive commands for a short while to see if there is something being overly chatty on the network. Dont leave that on to long, it can dump out a lot of log entries but it is a way to see traffic.

It could be a device going bad or simply to much polling. From that config page you will also see the primary polling enable switch, you can turn that off and see if that fixes the issue. If it does it could still be a bad device (or simply to much polling).

[simonmason]

I am a little confused. I do have a number of older switches that I use to trigger events. I am reasonably sure that they don't have instant status reporting. So I did a little test.
One of the switches is for my basement lights. It is a Leviton switch from at least 5 years ago. In the Z-wave options for this device the polling interval is set to 0.

When polling is turned on in ZWaveConfig and I turn the light on or off it triggers the event. When I turn off polling in ZWaveConfig then it never triggers the event when I turn it on and off.

Does this make any sense?

As for the other devices - it appears that my locks are setup to poll every 15 minutes, then about 20 of my devices are setup to poll every 20 minutes, then the vast majority of devices are an hour or more or set to zero. Should I be moving all of the 20 minutes to an hour or more? Is this what could be creating the traffic?

GeekyDaddy As for optimization - are you suggesting to watch the log for something specific?

Finally, this is showing in my ZWaveControllers page:



I have no idea what the other networks are. I have not had any other controllers other than the two I have hooked up now. Presumably I should remove the other networks but I am afraid to do it unless someone says go for it! I am not sure if this has anything to do with my other issues?

Thanks.

[GeekyDaddy]

simonmason look for errors during optimization, also it will let you know if there are any issues with contacting.

As for the phantom network chances are you had other Z-wave controllers at one time or you did an "erase and create new network" or something like that. Expand your interface and ensure that the interfaces match the networks. It's alright to remove them if you don't see any link to them elsewhere, but not necessary to do so. Ensure you perform a z-wave backup for each network/interface before you delete anything in case. Before you remove them, turn off the z-wave plugin and then turn it back on, see if they disappear afterwards, also you can disable/enable each interface by clicking on the green check mark.

Hope this helps

[Guest]

I am a little confused. I do have a number of older switches that I use to trigger events. I am reasonably sure that they don't have instant status reporting. So I did a little test.
One of the switches is for my basement lights. It is a Leviton switch from at least 5 years ago. In the Z-wave options for this device the polling interval is set to 0.

When polling is turned on in ZWaveConfig and I turn the light on or off it triggers the event. When I turn off polling in ZWaveConfig then it never triggers the event when I turn it on and off.

Does this make any sense?

As for the other devices - it appears that my locks are setup to poll every 15 minutes, then about 20 of my devices are setup to poll every 20 minutes, then the vast majority of devices are an hour or more or set to zero. Should I be moving all of the 20 minutes to an hour or more? Is this what could be creating the traffic?

As I recall, it was Leviton that held the "Instant Status" patent/copyright. Cooper I believe was the other one. Not all Leviton switches had Instant Status though. GE/JASCO had a modified Instant Status, in which they can notify the controller if the GE/JASCO was within range to directly communicate with the controller.

Battery operated devices will wake up and notify the controller anyway (so in a sense they are instant status). I will turn off polling for Battery only devices, so cut down on battery usage. (When I was on Vera, Vera defaulted the polling for my locks to every 2 minutes. Drained the lock battery in about a week and a half.)

I do not know why you no longer get messages from the Leviton when you turn off polling. Probably something else is going on.

Like I said above, I do not believe that polling is causing your issues, especially since you seem to not have short polling times.

[simonmason]

I did some research into this and apparently Lutron had the patent and Leviton (and Cooper) at some point licensed it from Lutron. They incorporated the instant status into their RF+ line. I am not sure which ones I have - would have to take them out of the wall. But I am guessing they are the RF+

So the question - why when I disable polling does the Z-Net stop hearing them?

And yes I agree that the delay issue is due to something else going on inside Homeseer that I haven't been able to figure out yet.