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Unreliable Polling of Non-Listening Device (Stella-Z)

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    Unreliable Polling of Non-Listening Device (Stella-Z)

    When using an event to poll a none listening device when it wakes up getting the response is unreliable. In this case it is polling the temperature from a EUROtronics Radiator Valve. The log shows the wakeup and communication succeeds however in some cases the temperature is not returned. No obvious error can be seen however there are some clues that indicate this is a regression in the Z-Wave plugin from ~June 2014.

    Some threads I can find mention .150 as the last reliable working version.

    I have logged the bug in Homeseer Bugzilla as http://bugzilla.homeseer.com/bugzill...ug.cgi?id=3254 the bug has loads of extra details. I'll leave the short version here to see if anyone else has experienced something similar and can offer some advice.

    ====================================== Reproduction Steps ======================================

    1. Setup Homeseer using the latest version of the software and the latest Z-Wave plugin.
    2. Plug in a Z-Wave controller (the version I use is listed above but I don't think the specific model is a factor).
    3. Pair a Stella Z Radiator TRV (details above) into your Z-Wave network you should get 7 devices created (incl root).
    3a) Unit goes into calibration mode and is now 'listening' for 3 minutes. NOTE: If you need another 3 minutes at any point then simply press the button for more than 5 seconds until the light turns red and then starts flashing green. The valve goes through the same calibration process as before. It does not reset any settings.
    4. Proceed immediately to Root node and access device settings
    5. Set the wake up interval to 6 minutes.
    6. Create an event with the following settings
    6a) IF The event will automatically trigger every 6m, 0s
    6b) Then Poll [Radiator 1 Temp Child Device] for status.

    What should happen is the polling temperature check will be queued and when the Stella-Z wakes up the temperature request will be sent to the device and the device will send back the temperature. Given the wakeup interval and the event both have the same time the command will only be requested once per wake up cycle.

    Although this does sometimes succeed many times although the wakeup and temperature polling request is apparently sent no reply is processed. This has been tested with no other traffic on the Z-Wave network and only one other device attached.

    Below is part of the system log when the command executes successfully.

    NOTE: The log is formatted with the oldest call at the bottom and the latest one at the top so you should read it from bottom to top.


    ==== Log of working event ====
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Z-Wave Wake-Up 'No More Info' Notification sent to Node 4(Node 4 Z-Wave Radiator Valve 1 Root).
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave Device: Node 4 Living Room Radiator 1 Temp Set to 22.5 (C)
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave ApplicationCommandHandler from node 4 HANDLING: COMMAND_CLASS_SENSOR_MULTILEVEL_V2 Frame(7)=5
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Sending to node 4 (UnSecured) CC=COMMAND_CLASS_WAKE_UP
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Device (Node 4) woke up and Poll Device for Node 4 Living Room Radiator 1 Temp was successfully sent.
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Sending to node 4 (UnSecured) CC=COMMAND_CLASS_SENSOR_MULTILEVEL_V2
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Wake-Up Notification Processing for Node 4 (Node 4 Z-Wave Radiator Valve 1 Root)
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Z-Wave Wake-Up Notification Received for Node 4
    Apr-15 7:42:44 PM Z-Wave ApplicationCommandHandler from node 4 HANDLING: COMMAND_CLASS_WAKE_UP Frame(7)=7
    Apr-15 7:38:53 PM Z-Wave Device: Node 4 Living Room Radiator 1 Temp controlled by Home Climate Control Check Temperature Living Room (Radiator) is being queued to be polled the next time it wakes up.

    ==== Log of event failing ====
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Z-Wave Wake-Up 'No More Info' Notification sent to Node 4(Node 4 Z-Wave Radiator Valve 1 Root).
    [TEMPERATURE SHOULD BE RETURNED AT THIS POINT]
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave ApplicationCommandHandler from node 4 HANDLING: COMMAND_CLASS_SENSOR_MULTILEVEL_V2 Frame(7)=5
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Sending to node 4 (UnSecured) CC=COMMAND_CLASS_WAKE_UP
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Device (Node 4) woke up and Poll Device for Node 4 Living Room Radiator 1 Temp was successfully sent.
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Sending to node 4 (UnSecured) CC=COMMAND_CLASS_SENSOR_MULTILEVEL_V2
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Wake-Up Notification Processing for Node 4 (Node 4 Z-Wave Radiator Valve 1 Root)
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave UZB_Dongle: Z-Wave Wake-Up Notification Received for Node 4
    Apr-15 8:24:55 PM Z-Wave ApplicationCommandHandler from node 4 HANDLING: COMMAND_CLASS_WAKE_UP Frame(7)=7
    Apr-15 8:20:53 PM Z-Wave Device: Node 4 Living Room Radiator 1 Temp controlled by Home Climate Control Check Temperature Living Room (Radiator) is being queued to be polled the next time it wakes up.

    ==== Success Rate ====
    The success rate of the polling providing a result is around 20% sometimes you get a period where the polling works a number of times in a row then it will fail for an extended period. I checked the success rate over a ~4 hour period which had 21 successful results instead of the expected 97 results giving me the 20% value.


    I really hope someone can help as this issue is making it impossible for me to setup our climate control central heating as communication with the valves is too unreliable.

    Thanks!

    Edwin

    #2
    Originally posted by EddDeDuck View Post
    When using an event to poll a none listening device when it wakes up getting the response is unreliable. In this case it is polling the temperature from a EUROtronics Radiator Valve. The log shows the wakeup and communication succeeds however in some cases the temperature is not returned. No obvious error can be seen however there are some clues that indicate this is a regression in the Z-Wave plugin from ~June 2014.
    I have 2 of the StellaZs which have been running fairly successfully for a number of years now. I have a bit of a love hate relationship with them and had to set up quite a complex set of events so that I could control them the way I want. I find polling values generally works fine as long as you keep to one child per wakeup. The Stella goes back to sleep very quickly, it doesn't wait for HS to finish communicating. I therefore don't have any automatic polling configured but do it all through events. My wakeup is set to 6 minutes and I poll the temperature every 18 minutes. This leaves some wakeups free for other communication. Make sure you haven't got any automatic polling set for the root or any of the child devices, from memory these don't show in the log.

    Bear in mind that when HS3 polls the temperature device it doesn't show a result in the log if the value hasn't changed. So, it might look like the poll was unsuccessful when it was just that the temperature hasn't changed. I'm pretty sure that the log shows an error when it is unsuccessful and HS3 tries to re-queue the poll. It's a long time since I have looked because I haven't had any problems for a long time.

    There are some threads on the board about controlling these devices. I think that most of the difficulties are down to the way the device operates rather than HS3. Certainly when I set mine up some time ago a search on the net showed people were having similar troubles with the StellaZ using other control systems.

    I find the temp is way off anyway, not surprising as it is on the hot pipe and so close to the radiator. I control mine by basically switching modes based on a remote temperature sensor that I have in the room.

    Steve

    Comment


      #3
      I thought I should add my experience as well - I went with the StellaZ a couple of years ago and deployed 20 in my house, all polling (6 min) managed by events. I agree with what Steve has said but despite these misgivings I have found them to be reliable over the course of each day. I only ever poll a single device within each node at a time. I found this approach improved the reliability of getting a response from the device. I do get a very large number of Zwave warnings such as below

      Apr-15 13:25:54 Z-Wave Warning WAKE-UP Cancelled for node 116 - wake-up queued at 15/04/2016 13:25:50. Too much time has elapsed.

      I just haven't pursued why these occur across all the StellaZ nodes, but HS keeps going and the overall heating system operates just fine. For me the biggest hassle is battery replacement. I'm now using rechargeable's (having scrapped trying power adapters because I found the device didn't restart polling after a power cut)..but that's another story.

      Comment


        #4
        Neil, battery usage is interesting. One of mine runs batteries down much faster than the other. The heavy user I can hear doing a minor adjustment of the valve every 60 seconds. It's not affected by the valve position, even if it's fully closed or fully open, I hear a little buzzzz every 60 seconds. According to HS3 they both have the same firmware version 0.4 so it's odd they behave differently.
        I know you have lots of these, do they all behave the same way?
        Steve

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
          Neil, battery usage is interesting. One of mine runs batteries down much faster than the other. The heavy user I can hear doing a minor adjustment of the valve every 60 seconds. It's not affected by the valve position, even if it's fully closed or fully open, I hear a little buzzzz every 60 seconds. According to HS3 they both have the same firmware version 0.4 so it's odd they behave differently.
          I know you have lots of these, do they all behave the same way?
          Steve
          I've not come across one buzzing and certainly never 60 sec minor adjustment as you describe. The only thing I have noticed is some occasionally 'cycle' in the same way they do when you first install and they self calibrate. Usually but not always when the mode is changed between Heat and EnergySave or vise versa - very odd. Some units are much quieter than others to - I have felt like I need to get the oil can out - but hey, I do think they do a good job and the family haven't complained. I still need to buy 2 more.

          Battery usage certainly varies, now that I'm using rechargeable's the battery state is never more than say 70% on a full charge but this is down to the lower voltage (1.2v) than normal disposables (1.5v). I did start out with a 2000mAh but I'm now trying some 2400mAh.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by naellis View Post
            I've not come across one buzzing and certainly never 60 sec minor adjustment as you describe. The only thing I have noticed is some occasionally 'cycle' in the same way they do when you first install and they self calibrate. Usually but not always when the mode is changed between Heat and EnergySave or vise versa - very odd. Some units are much quieter than others to - I have felt like I need to get the oil can out - but hey, I do think they do a good job and the family haven't complained. I still need to buy 2 more.
            By buzz I mean the valve motor running for perhaps half a second. It's exactly every 60 seconds. I suspect that these check their temp and adjust the valve if necessary every 60 seconds and for some reason this particular device seems to think it needs to make a minor adjustment each time.
            I haven't kept any kind or record of battery changes but I think the good one goes at least a year where as the bad one is only a few months at most. Not surprisingly.
            I have also very occasionally (perhaps only a few of times ever) heard a valve go through a complete full close and open cycle as if re-calibrating. It maybe a design feature to prevent the valves sticking.

            Steve

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
              By buzz I mean the valve motor running for perhaps half a second. It's exactly every 60 seconds. I suspect that these check their temp and adjust the valve if necessary every 60 seconds and for some reason this particular device seems to think it needs to make a minor adjustment each time.
              Steve
              If I remember correctly aren't you using the direct valve control mode in your setup. I've never tried that because HS doesn't support it. That may be what's causing those 60 sec things....just a thought.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by naellis View Post
                If I remember correctly aren't you using the direct valve control mode in your setup. I've never tried that because HS doesn't support it. That may be what's causing those 60 sec things....just a thought.
                I did experiment with direct valve control when I got the first device. I can't quite remember what happened now but I think I could get it to partially work but HS3 mode always showed as unknown even though I had defined a status value for the direct control. I think I was able to set the mode to direct and control the valve but it just didn't report correctly in HS3.
                However, I reverted to using low and high set points and switching the mode. I basically set relatively high and low set points and then just switch between high and low (heat, save heat or whatever they are called) based on the actual room temperature.

                Steve

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
                  I find polling values generally works fine as long as you keep to one child per wakeup. The Stella goes back to sleep very quickly, it doesn't wait for HS to finish communicating. I therefore don't have any automatic polling configured but do it all through events. My wakeup is set to 6 minutes and I poll the temperature every 18 minutes. This leaves some wakeups free for other communication. Make sure you haven't got any automatic polling set for the root or any of the child devices, from memory these don't show in the log.
                  Thanks I read your posts which were the basis of my initial setup work.

                  I currently poll temp every 6 mins but I'll push that out to 18 so I can do things like polling battery or changing the set point as needed and see how that goes. I only have 4/5 radiators as it's not the biggest house so traffic on polling should not be an issue. Like both of you I have a 6 min wake up on all my rad valves.


                  Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
                  Bear in mind that when HS3 polls the temperature device it doesn't show a result in the log if the value hasn't changed. So, it might look like the poll was unsuccessful when it was just that the temperature hasn't changed. I'm pretty sure that the log shows an error when it is unsuccessful and HS3 tries to re-queue the poll. It's a long time since I have looked because I haven't had any problems for a long time.
                  Do you know if the lack of an update in Homeseer when the temperature is a Stella Z side issue of Homeseer? It would be great to get Homeseer to update if the temperature is the same instead of getting nothing which means it's hard to decipher if the issue is the same temperature or the polling failing.

                  Closing my current bug and opening one requesting something of that kind of feature feels like something could be useful to more than just me.

                  Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
                  There are some threads on the board about controlling these devices. I think that most of the difficulties are down to the way the device operates rather than HS3. Certainly when I set mine up some time ago a search on the net showed people were having similar troubles with the StellaZ using other control systems.
                  Yep I think I read them all (I noticed you posted in at least one of them The problem is people tend to leave once they solved the issue so once I am all done I might post a google friendly final post with instructions on what I did (thanks to all your help) to get this all reliably setup so others in the future can find a solution via a simple google

                  Originally posted by SteveMSJ View Post
                  I find the temp is way off anyway, not surprising as it is on the hot pipe and so close to the radiator. I control mine by basically switching modes based on a remote temperature sensor that I have in the room.

                  Steve
                  Yep I do that for one room now to calculate the offset but for the others I am using a rough offset until I can get some more temperature sensors. I was thinking the Fibaro motion/temp/light ones as I have one of those and it seems to work great but I'm open to suggestions

                  Once again thanks for the help and to naellis too, the one thing I am impressed with is the community for Homeseer even if the software has some rough edges the community has always helped when I needed it.

                  Edwin

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by EddDeDuck View Post
                    Do you know if the lack of an update in Homeseer when the temperature is a Stella Z side issue of Homeseer? It would be great to get Homeseer to update if the temperature is the same instead of getting nothing which means it's hard to decipher if the issue is the same temperature or the polling failing.

                    Closing my current bug and opening one requesting something of that kind of feature feels like something could be useful to more than just me.
                    I suspect it is HS3 that makes the decision not to log the update if there is no temperature change. Personally I am happy with that behavior and it is generally consistent with the way other devices behave in HS3. I'm pretty sure you get some kind of failure message in the log if it is unsuccessful, e.g. the device goes back to sleep before the value is retrieved.

                    Ideally I'd like these devices to behave more like most of my other ZWave sensor devices. That is I'd like to be able to configure them to send out temp and valve positions at specific intervals and/or when they change by more than a specified amount, rather than polling them. I doubt the Stella firmware is likely to be updated though.

                    Steve

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by EddDeDuck View Post
                      Do you know if the lack of an update in Homeseer when the temperature is a Stella Z side issue of Homeseer? It would be great to get Homeseer to update if the temperature is the same instead of getting nothing which means it's hard to decipher if the issue is the same temperature or the polling failing.
                      You can configure each device differently as to whether to update with no change (option at the bottom of my screen capture):

                      Click image for larger version

Name:	Capture.PNG
Views:	1
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ID:	1184384

                      Of course if the Stella doesn't send the data, then that checkbox won't have any effect.

                      Cheers
                      Al
                      HS 4.2.8.0: 2134 Devices 1252 Events
                      Z-Wave 3.0.10.0: 133 Nodes on one Z-Net

                      Comment

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