Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

WS15Z-1 glitching when being polled?

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

    WS15Z-1 glitching when being polled?

    I had a "bad" node like this in the past and I just eventually replaced it. However I am just sceptical that this is a software z-wave issue as it seems to randomly affect nodes and when the node is on it will flutter on and off when it seems to be polled or when traffic passes through the node. I have no way of verifying this (to my knowledge) but has anyone else had this issue? I'd speculate a hardware failure wouldn't cause a light to flutter off and on but instead go dead or not respond at all. It still accepts z-wave control, but when it's on it has an undesired Halloween effect. Any ideas?

    #2
    An update. It just got worse and worse and got to the point of the relay clicking on and off probably 200 times a minute...this was going to be a fire hazard. I immediately removed the switch, and since it's a "dud" at this point (it's out of warranty) I thought I'd take it apart and see what made it tick. I have had 2-3 others fail similar to this and they went back on warranty after fighting tooth and nail with Linear. They didn't want to honour their warranty due to the retailer not carrying their product anymore.

    I de-soldered and disconnected the low voltage board from the load switching/PS board and powered the low voltage board with 3.3v with a power supply. I could control the low voltage board output with the push button switches as well as add and remove it from my z-wave network. While as before it was not responsive to anything, either through z-wave or through the push buttons.

    I am not 100% sure it's the 3.3v regulator (LT1121cz-3.3) as the operating voltage was nearly the same...so I'm going to take a scope to see if the 15v being supplied to it by U1 is failing or a component with it is failing.

    U2
    https://www.digikey.ca/product-detai...-PBF-ND/890240

    If I can repair this unit I'm sure that's what caused another unit of mine to fail as well, also outside of warranty...

    Check out this gross solder flux mess by Linear though...these devices are indoors and are 1.5 years old.
    Attached Files

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by Conrad_Turbo View Post
      An update. It just got worse and worse and got to the point of the relay clicking on and off probably 200 times a minute...this was going to be a fire hazard. I immediately removed the switch, and since it's a "dud" at this point (it's out of warranty) I thought I'd take it apart and see what made it tick. I have had 2-3 others fail similar to this and they went back on warranty after fighting tooth and nail with Linear. They didn't want to honour their warranty due to the retailer not carrying their product anymore.

      I de-soldered and disconnected the low voltage board from the load switching/PS board and powered the low voltage board with 3.3v with a power supply. I could control the low voltage board output with the push button switches as well as add and remove it from my z-wave network. While as before it was not responsive to anything, either through z-wave or through the push buttons.

      I am not 100% sure it's the 3.3v regulator (LT1121cz-3.3) as the operating voltage was nearly the same...so I'm going to take a scope to see if the 15v being supplied to it by U1 is failing or a component with it is failing.

      U2
      https://www.digikey.ca/product-detai...-PBF-ND/890240

      If I can repair this unit I'm sure that's what caused another unit of mine to fail as well, also outside of warranty...

      Check out this gross solder flux mess by Linear though...these devices are indoors and are 1.5 years old.
      I would strongly suspect it is one of the electrolytics. An ESR meter is the best way to test them. They will sometimes bulge on top. Most power supply problems are leaky capacitors. The mess you see isn't necessarily flux. A lot of manufacturers started using organic (citrus based) in place of volitile solvents to remove the flux and they can leave residue.
      HS4 Pro, 4.2.19.0 Windows 10 pro, Supermicro LP Xeon

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by rprade View Post
        I would strongly suspect it is one of the electrolytics. An ESR meter is the best way to test them. They will sometimes bulge on top. Most power supply problems are leaky capacitors. The mess you see isn't necessarily flux. A lot of manufacturers started using organic (citrus based) in place of volitile solvents to remove the flux and they can leave residue.
        I appreciate the input! I am mechanical...so I only dabble with electronics, but I am surrounded by electrical engineers all day.

        I believe I have a multi-meter that can check the caps, I'm going to scope some of the signals first before I begin removing caps and checking them. I didn't notice any bulging, but I'll definitely take a better second look at it.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by rprade View Post
          I would strongly suspect it is one of the electrolytics. An ESR meter is the best way to test them. They will sometimes bulge on top. Most power supply problems are leaky capacitors. The mess you see isn't necessarily flux. A lot of manufacturers started using organic (citrus based) in place of volitile solvents to remove the flux and they can leave residue.

          Comment


            #6
            I realized that the circuit layout didn't come up, this is what I determined when checking all the connections on the board. I didn't bother with the low voltage board as that doesn't seem to be prone to failure.
            Attached Files

            Comment


              #7
              Welp it looks like this also affects the Evolve LTM-5 switches too as I have one of those now failing with the same condition. I have my new HS switches that just came in and one of them will be replacing this dud device. I've probably replaced $600+ Z-wave switches due to this fault...it's a huge design fault and it seems to happen between year 1-2, conveniently outside of warranty.

              Comment


                #8
                Conrad_Turbo, did you ever figure out what was failing on WS15Z-1? I have several of these dead now. It surprises me that I cannot find any information on fixing them... Thanks.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by rprade View Post
                  I would strongly suspect it is one of the electrolytics. An ESR meter is the best way to test them. They will sometimes bulge on top. Most power supply problems are leaky capacitors. The mess you see isn't necessarily flux. A lot of manufacturers started using organic (citrus based) in place of volitile solvents to remove the flux and they can leave residue.
                  I had bad caps in my Insteon 2413S that were not 'popped' but after replacing 5 of them as per a thread I found, it is back in operation.
                  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


                    #10
                    Originally posted by sbobyr View Post
                    Conrad_Turbo, did you ever figure out what was failing on WS15Z-1? I have several of these dead now. It surprises me that I cannot find any information on fixing them... Thanks.
                    No...but being on a Z-wave group on Facebook I have seen a TON of other people have been having this issue. Honestly wish there was a class action lawsuit as this is a major defect which makes this product useless pretty much outside of warranty. And this is coming from a Candian.

                    My only solution has been to replace with Homeseer switches... Sorry for the late reply!

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X