Aeonlabs usb stick supported? needs restart after each add

Hardware
1

Hi,

needing support for several Zwave devices, Im investigating adding a usb stick to the Pi. Since the most popular stick sold in my surroundings is this: https://www.robbshop.nl/aeon-labs-usb-adapter-op-batterijen-en-zwave-plus?sqr=usb&

and it isnt listed on the HA page concerning USB Zwave devices please let me ask if anyone here has some experience with this Aeonlabs usb-stick.

Also, since I cant really find a page on setup: would this require extra steps or will it be ‘discovered’ automagically…

thanks for having a look.

2

It is supported, however if you are using a raspberry 4 it will not work out off the box. The usb port on the raspberry 4 is not compatible, you need to put a USB 2.0 hub between them.

3

Thanks for chiming in!

in this case that doesn’t really matter, I’d be using it on a rpi3…

any special setup required? Hope no additional ssh terminal installations… I am running HA on Hassio.

also, supposedly one can walk around the place to connect to the various Zwave devices, and then plugin it in the Rpi? Does that really work alright, or will the Pi / Ha be frustrated by the disconnection of the physical USB stick when one does that.

4

If you don’t have a big house you won’t need to do that. I never needed to detach my Z-stick from the Raspberry Pi to add devices. It worked quite well about 10m away and through 2 concrete slabs :slight_smile: I also found out that using USB extension cord improved reception quite a lot, as opposed to being attached directly in RPi’s USB port.

5

cool! thanks.

have a big house though…

will see tonight, when it arrives :wink:

so, all I need to do is plug it in and have HA discover it? How do I enable the thing/make Ha see it?

I take that is needed before I can add a Z-wave integration?

6

The documentation has all you need to get started:

7

ok cool,

feared ‘connect your controller’ https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/z-wave/#getting-started implied more than is said… :wink:

we’ll see what happens!

8

o well, this is what I feared:

22 leads to

15

and even that wont accept it.

Apparently I need to do something else than stick the stick in the usb port…

this is my hardware:

26

so I would have thought the default value to be sufficient?

update

forget my ramblings above… of course it wasn’t the default, but the next one…

got the zwave integration succes exclamation mark :wink:

9

but…

this is the second step: If I enter the Zwave config panel and click Start network a circling icon starts and never stops:

49

the stick keeps flashing, red, blue, yellow. Log says Driver failed…

I think I was able to add a device, taking the stick to a location, click it for include mode, and add the device was confirmed by a blue steady light for 2 seconds or so.

using it back, I see nothing changing in the HA interface, either the config panel, or the integration panel under Z-wave:

13
131023×101 7.37 KB

so, the stick is recognized, I even have a log and several other files in the /config and can include a device.
It is not displayed in the frontend and the stick keeps cycling the flashing colors…

what to do?

2019-11-29 21:42:43.017 Always, OpenZwave Version 1.4.3440 Starting Up
2019-11-29 21:43:06.708 Info, Setting Up Provided Network Key for Secure Communications
2019-11-29 21:43:06.709 Info, mgr,     Added driver for controller /dev/ttyAMA0
2019-11-29 21:43:06.710 Info,   Opening controller /dev/ttyAMA0
2019-11-29 21:43:06.710 Info, Trying to open serial port /dev/ttyAMA0 (attempt 1)
2019-11-29 21:43:06.710 Info, Serial port /dev/ttyAMA0 opened (attempt 1)
2019-11-29 21:43:06.710 Detail, contrlr, Queuing (Command) FUNC_ID_ZW_GET_VERSION: 0x01, 0x03, 0x00, 0x15, 0xe9
2019-11-29 21:43:06.711 Detail, contrlr, Queuing (Command) FUNC_ID_ZW_MEMORY_GET_ID: 0x01, 0x03, 0x00, 0x20, 0xdc
2019-11-29 21:43:06.711 Detail, contrlr, Queuing (Command) FUNC_ID_ZW_GET_CONTROLLER_CAPABILITIES: 0x01, 0x03, 0x00, 0x05, 0xf9
2019-11-29 21:43:06.711 Detail, contrlr, Queuing (Command) FUNC_ID_SERIAL_API_GET_CAPABILITIES: 0x01, 0x03, 0x00, 0x07, 0xfb
2019-11-29 21:43:06.711 Detail, contrlr, Queuing (Command) FUNC_ID_ZW_GET_SUC_NODE_ID: 0x01, 0x03, 0x00, 0x56, 0xaa
2019-11-29 21:43:06.711 Detail, 
2019-11-29 21:43:06.711 Info, contrlr, Sending (Command) message (Callback ID=0x00, Expected Reply=0x15) - FUNC_ID_ZW_GET_VERSION: 0x01, 0x03, 0x00, 0x15, 0xe9
2019-11-29 21:43:06.711 Detail, contrlr, Notification: DriverFailed
10

update:

after having tried the Aeonlabs usb stick on 3 perfectly running pi’s, and having no luck at all, apart from a few minutes of running z-wave network, I must conclude this is not a happy combination.

The stick is recognized on the Pi, I can add the integration, but that is as far as I get. Cant startup the network, on either port, cant add any device as a consequence.

tried it directly, or with a usb extender cable. Nothing helps, the stick is flashing and thats where it ends…

too bad really, would have been a grand combination.
If any of you has any hints/tips, please don’t hold back!

11

Marius, this is exactly my set up, I was on acm0 default though.
Have you included the z wave header (you must have done)
I have my key in the secrets file though a missing one wouldn’t do this
How did you start the integration ?
My stick was plugged in on first boot and everything went right first time.
I’ll look and see if I made any notes, though usually I don’t if it went exactly as planned.

The stick has disco lights, they always flash red blue yellow (unless you turn them off) I’ve just got used to them.
I have a test rig set up to formally introduce any device to my network, I configure it and then Bury if in the wall, so I’m always < 2m when adding node.
Don’t ever use the button to pair, I’ve lost certain attributes when doing that.

12

The Aeon labs z-stick definitely works with a RPi3. That was my setup for about 18 months before I changed to a NUC. There must be a setting / config wrong somewhere. Hopefully you get it sorted but sorry I can’t be of any more assistance as my setup is now different

13

I forgot to mention that I also have another zwave network going. Would that interfere? Need a second because the existing is proprietary and doesn’t support several devices I want to add…

14

I wouldn’t have thought so. It would be no different to your next door neighbour also having a z-wave network.

15

but what could that be? If the integration ia added successfully, do I need anything else? Not in configuration.yaml? Or anything else concerning hardware, or maybe websocket or so?

Also, after adding the integration the list is empty, and is set to auto update. I do need the network to be started first and then add devices? Or is that independent somehow.

I now try to include a new device by taking the stick out of the usb socket, press the button and include the device (as is written in the stock manual)

the HA integration states a different method. Which should it be?

16

Well I set up z-wave before ‘integrations’ existed, so I have a small config entry simply saying something like:

z-wave:
Port thingy

Sorry, on my phone and not easy to check my actual config right now

17

I see, well, please let me ask if you can have a look when you get to your HA setup.

all I can see next to the log OZW log i posted above it this in the HA log:

2019-12-01 14:25:05 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.core] Error doing job: Future exception was never retrieved
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/concurrent/futures/thread.py", line 57, in run
    result = self.fn(*self.args, **self.kwargs)
  File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/zwave/__init__.py", line 894, in _finalize_start
    poll_interval = network.get_poll_interval()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/openzwave/network.py", line 873, in get_poll_interval
    return self.manager.getPollInterval()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.7/site-packages/openzwave/network.py", line 564, in manager
    raise ZWaveException(u"Manager not initialised")
openzwave.object.ZWaveException: 'Zwave Generic Exception : Manager not initialised'

because of this post by @freshcoast , I’ve retried * /dev/serial/by-id/usb-0658_0200-if00 port again, and now could indeed start the network! and see the usb stick in the integrations page.

Now how to add the devices… I can click the usb stick, it starts flashing blue, I click the device and I see a 2 seconds blue led on the stick. then click again and flashing stops. All as in the manual. But, reconnecting the usb stick to the Pi doesnt give me a new device in the integrations page yet.

update

well, some progress made! It appears I have to restart after each added device for it so show up, and get a proper reading in the config. Changed topic title accordingly…

Ive made it to 2 switches now, and will see how I get these to publish to the mqtt broker.

18

I am having similar issues. Are you saying that you need to restart the Z-Wave network, or hass? After much fiddling (cant really call it anything more), I see the second device, but it says unknown and I cant get any more info from it.

It doesnt look like there are a ton of people doing z-wave on RasPi so what I thought was going to be pretty straight forward is proving to be a bit of a struggle. Here’s hoping we can find some collaboration here.

19

was talking Hassio, didn’t think of trying the Zwave network… will try next time.

20

Did you run in to the problem of adding dialout to the homeassistant user? I am thinking that this may be my problem. Im running hass.io and seem to run in to OS limitations often, but then find out that I am not doing it right. Im hoping this is another one of those situations.