Z-Wave plugin errors; I might have found why

[stefxx]

I have an issue with the Z-Wave plugins for as long as I can remember, connecting to the UZB stick. I assumed this was an issue with the stick, but as this is the only stick that is supported in Europe with HomeSeer that includes backup/restore, I do not have a choice.

This is the error I am talking about:
Z-Net: The Z-Net interface did not respond to the request for the controller capabilities - it may be disconnected or malfunctioning (3).
and
Z-Net: The Z-Net interface did not respond to the request for the HomeID and Node - it may be disconnected or malfunctioning (2).

It keeps retrying, usually successfully after several minutes. But it makes restoring a nightmare because if the UZB doesn't initialize after 30 seconds or so, it just continues with the restore (and fails). And sometimes it just keeps retrying forever. The success rate of restoring is less then 10%.

It is not my system. Over the years I have run HS3 on several Windows and Linux systems, and the problem was always there. However, the problem was getting worse, so that got me thinking. I am adding more and more Z-Wave devices so perhaps there is a relation?

So I took my spare UZB and reset it to factory settings. I connected it to my system and it worked without any errors. Tried restarting HS3 several times, and restarting the Z-Wave plugin tens of times. No errors.

Then I restored my network of 50 devices. And the error was back immediately. I took my system (running on a laptop) outside of my home and I noticed the error was less likely to occur if I moved further away from my house....

Next I modified the backup file and changed a digit of the HomeID. Restored it to my UZB and again, no errors. Not after several restarts of HS3 and the Plugin... I assume because it doesn't receive any Z-Wave signals for that HomeID.

So, my conclusion is that the plugin has a hard time initializing the UZB if it receives (a lot of?) valid Z-Wave traffic in the meantime. Note that all my devices are Z-Wave+ and most of them report instant Watt or other values.

Is this something that can be fixed in the plugin? I have seen several reports of this error on the board over the years, but never a solution. Hopefully this makes it reproducible for the HomeSeer team and therefor fixable?

Thanks!

BTW, the error is the same if the UZB is directly connected to my system or by using the Z-Net...

[SteveMSJ]

I have an issue with the Z-Wave plugins for as long as I can remember, connecting to the UZB stick. I assumed this was an issue with the stick, but as this is the only stick that is supported in Europe with HomeSeer that includes backup/restore, I do not have a choice.

This is the error I am talking about:
Z-Net: The Z-Net interface did not respond to the request for the controller capabilities - it may be disconnected or malfunctioning (3).
and
Z-Net: The Z-Net interface did not respond to the request for the HomeID and Node - it may be disconnected or malfunctioning (2).

It keeps retrying, usually successfully after several minutes. But it makes restoring a nightmare because if the UZB doesn't initialize after 30 seconds or so, it just continues with the restore (and fails). And sometimes it just keeps retrying forever. The success rate of restoring is less then 10%.

It is not my system. Over the years I have run HS3 on several Windows and Linux systems, and the problem was always there. However, the problem was getting worse, so that got me thinking. I am adding more and more Z-Wave devices so perhaps there is a relation?

So I took my spare UZB and reset it to factory settings. I connected it to my system and it worked without any errors. Tried restarting HS3 several times, and restarting the Z-Wave plugin tens of times. No errors.

Then I restored my network of 50 devices. And the error was back immediately. I took my system (running on a laptop) outside of my home and I noticed the error was less likely to occur if I moved further away from my house....

Next I modified the backup file and changed a digit of the HomeID. Restored it to my UZB and again, no errors. Not after several restarts of HS3 and the Plugin... I assume because it doesn't receive any Z-Wave signals for that HomeID.

So, my conclusion is that the plugin has a hard time initializing the UZB if it receives (a lot of?) valid Z-Wave traffic in the meantime. Note that all my devices are Z-Wave+ and most of them report instant Watt or other values.

Is this something that can be fixed in the plugin? I have seen several reports of this error on the board over the years, but never a solution. Hopefully this makes it reproducible for the HomeSeer team and therefor fixable?

Thanks!

BTW, the error is the same if the UZB is directly connected to my system or by using the Z-Net...

Well, that is an interesting observation and I think you are correct in your diagnosis.

I have been using UZB1s for a long time now and suffer the same issues when the ZWave plugin starts up. It doesn't really cause me a problem as I have events triggered by monitoring log messages which restart the ZWave plug-in automatically so I don't really notice it. I'm pretty sure that originally it only occasionally happened but has got more frequent as I have added more devices. It is now consistent on my main network, if I restart HS3 the UZB will always fail the first time but usually initialises successfully when the ZWave plugin is auto restarted. As I say this happens in the background so unless I look at the log I don't really notice and restarting HS3 is not something I do often.

About a year ago I added a second network at a second home which uses a UZB1 plugged into a Raspberry Pi which connects over a VPN to my HS3 box using ser2net, basically like a ZNet. When I start HS3 the local UZB1 fails to initialise 1st time, as noted above, where as the remote one usually initialises straight away. The remote network has far fewer devices so this supports your theory, although I never twigged that that might be the reason for the difference. Both UZB1s have the same firmware version, 5.4 if I remember correctly.

I suspect the issue lies with the UZBs rather than Homeseer, but I haven't searched other forums to see what experiences people have with UZB1s on other systems.

Apart from this issue on startup the UZB1s work really well.

Steve

[stefxx]

I suspect the issue lies with the UZBs rather than Homeseer, but I haven't searched other forums to see what experiences people have with UZB1s on other systems.

Maybe. I guess the plugin expects an answer to a request but instead it (also?) receives some data from the network instead. If it could just ignore that and/or "flush" the receive buffer first, it might be fixable I guess...

With the size of my current network it has become a real issue now, so I really hope it can be fixed.

[bartbakels]

Hi,

Same issues here sometimes with my uzb

[HaPe]

I think the problems with the UZB is less frequent with the latest betas of the Z-Wave plugin.

[stefxx]

I think the problems with the UZB is less frequent with the latest betas of the Z-Wave plugin.

I am currently at 164. Unfortunately I do not see any improvement (actually, it got worse but I did add quite a few new devices recently as well).

[HaPe]

I'm running firmware version 5.07 on the UZB.

[stefxx]

I am still running 5.06. Problem seems to be the same with 5.04 and 5.05. I did not upgrade to 5.07 yet because I think I read somewhere that it didn't support a restore yet.

Can you confirm that a Z-Wave restore works with 5.07?

Thanks!

[HaPe]

Never ever tried to do a restore.

But got this now when i did try:


Checking file...
Starting restore operation.
Unsupported version of UZB detected, only supports 5.2,5.4,5.5,5.6 version is 5.7. Contact HomeSeer support.

[stefxx]

Thanks for trying. I am holding off on 5.07 until this is resolved

[rjh]

We try to ignore data when we do the restore, or any operation to the network. We will have to test to see if some data is getting through or the Z-Wave chip is just too busy. We need to read and write data to the chip and maybe it has problems if its busy processing z-wave traffic. If that is the case, the only solution is to stop Z-Wave traffic when you do the restore.

[stefxx]

We try to ignore data when we do the restore, or any operation to the network. We will have to test to see if some data is getting through or the Z-Wave chip is just too busy. We need to read and write data to the chip and maybe it has problems if its busy processing z-wave traffic. If that is the case, the only solution is to stop Z-Wave traffic when you do the restore.

Thanks Rich. Note that this is a general initialization issue, not specific for a restore (a restore just happens to initialize the UZB).

And how do I tell 50 devices to stop Z-Wave traffic temporarily? Power the whole house down?

Let me know if I can help. Perhaps you can create some kind of debug version so you can see what is actually going on at a busy Z-Wave network like mine?

[stefxx]

Hi Rich,

Did you change something in the latest beta? I just tried 173 and noticed that the issue was virtually non-existent anymore. I enabled the PI about 20 times, and I did see the errors maybe one or two times, but the initialization continued and everything worked fine.

Hopefully this is not a just coincident...

[stefxx]

Mmm... Maybe I reacted too soon.

If I connect the UZB to the Z-Net, the issue is still there. No change. Nearly impossible to get the device initialized.

However, if I connected it directly to my HS3 system (through USB), it seems to be a lot better and if the error occurs, it is being handled better.

Does this make sense?

[stefxx]

Never mind, it seems to be a coincident after all. Issue is still present in build 173.