Aeotec Smart Switches 7 send updates erratically (Intel NUC, Aeotec Z-Stick 7 controller)

Configuration Z-Wave
1

Hi there,

I moved to a new house recently and I’m slowly rebuilding my Home Assistant environment. I moved from RPi 3b+ to an Intel NUC and upgrade the controller from the Aotec USB stick Gen5 to Z-Stick 7. I had a few issues at the beginning because I was using an USB extender and I was getting a ton of ACK timeouts on the controller. I removed it and now it is fine. I have a few RX/TX dropped though, not sure if it is an issue or not.

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I’m facing a weird behaviour with the Smart Switch 7 plugs which I have for a while now and I have never had any issues so far (at least not this kind of problem). Even if I sent the reporting interval to 60 seconds, some plugs won’t send any updates. Sometimes, maybe 2 or 3 hours later I will have an update.

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I notice something: if I configure everything in one go (reset to factory defaults, reinclusion) without unplugging the device from the power socket, the plug will send some updates (kwh, A, W) every 60 seconds. The moment I unplug/replug the switch, it starts not working.

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I don’t understand what can be wrong. My devices seem paired and working well from a Z-Wave standpoint. I had in the past some issues with the Home Energy Meter which which stopped reporting as well. It was related to groups in Z-Wave configurations. In my current case, I can see that each device has a rule by default:

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Any thoughts on this? Should I contact Aoetec as well to see what they have to say?

Thanks,

G.

2

I have 3 of those switches working fine. The config looks different though, parameters at different numbers. For example, I do not have parameter 101. There are at FW 1.3.1

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3

Thanks. In which country are you living? I cannot seem to find a more recent firmware that 1.2 for the European socket version.

What controller do you have? Z-Stick 7? I’m almost tempted to install the Gen5 one as I still have it…

4

As an update, the only plug that was working flawlessly stopped around mid day today… No idea what is going on.

5

It’s possible the US and EU smart switch 7 are completely different configuration wise.

Looking at my US smartswitch 6, its configuration layout looks similar to yours. So it seems that the EU smart switch 7 uses firmware derived from US smart switch 6. I am using an aoetec gen 5 stick.

You may want to try backing off the update rate from 1x min to every 10 minutes to see if it’s stable at a slower rate.

This is what the smart switch 6 config looks like

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And the groups

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6

An update on this after exchanging with Aoetec support (very reactive and detailed by the way):

  • FW 1.3 for EU plugs fixes the weird behaviours with the values not being reported at the right time
  • Sadly, once updated, the switches aren’t reconignized by Home Assistant anymore (ping works but it fails interview)
  • The only option I have for now is to factory reset each and every one to reinclude them :frowning:

The support guy from Aoetec was talking about "a replacement pair option2 in ZWaveJS UI but I cannot seem to find it.

Firmware is available here: Dropbox - ZW175_Smart_Switch7_EU_V1_03.exe - Simplify your life

7

Turn off Z-Wave JS UI. Factory reset the device. Turn on Z-Wave JS UI. Choose “Replace” in the node management screen, replace the device with itself, which is no longer part of the network.

Turning off Z-Wave JS UI is necessary so that it doesn’t respond to a “device reset locally” message which the device might send when being factory reset. If Z-Wave JS receives that message, it automatically removes the node from the network.

If you have a spare controller, you can also exclude the device using that controller (then factory reset if needed). Your main controller won’t see the exclusion, and replace will work the same way.

8

Thanks for the detailed explanations :wink:

How do you manage the differences in total kwh between the two switches? I described my problem here: Swap of Z-Wave plugs - How to fix statistics?

9

@gdesfeux I have two Aeotec Smart Switch 7. When I bought them they were on firmware 1.2. I Updated one of them to 1.3. But both do not report any changes of electric parameters (power, energy, voltage, current), neither in Home Assistant, nor directly in Z-Wave JS UI. I have set [5-112-0-91] Power Change Threshold to 1 W and [5-112-0-111] Automatic Reporting Interval to 30 seconds. No updates. Only when I click the reset button in section “Meter v4” the switches update their values once, but only once.

Did you manage to get continuous updates from your Smart Switches?

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10

Ok, I fixed it; my Aeotec Smart Switches 7 now report changes of electric parameters immediately. This took quite some time…

First, I updated the devices from FW 1.2 (European Version) to FW 1.3:
https://aeotec.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000270359-update-smart-switch-7-eu-v1-03-zw175-c-

Aeotec themselves seem to be confused if it is called V1.3 or V1.03. Anyway; updating is easy with zwave js ui, but the device doesn’t know anything of your z-wave network anymore afterwards. Thus, you can neither exclude it nor include it again.

You’ll have to reset your Smart Switch 7 by pressing the button for 20 seconds; see
https://devices.zwave-js.io/?jumpTo=0x0371:0x0003:0x00af:0.0

Now, remove failed nodes from zwave js ui. Be aware this will remove all inactive nodes, so power all nodes which are currently offline.

Afterwards, remove the device from Home Assistant.

Now the Smart Switch 7 can be included into the z-wave network again.

Go to Configuration v1 and set thresholds to appropriate values for example
“[14-112-0-91] Power Change Threshold” to 1 W and
“[14-112-0-92] Power (kWh) Change Threshold” to 1 kWh

Also be sure to enable automatic reporting
“[14-112-0-101-2] Automatic Report: Power” and
“[14-112-0-101-1] Automatic Report: kWh”

And now the most annoying part: assuring you really have an active lifeline group with your z-wave stick. The group should look like this:
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I’ve got four Smart Switches 7 and with all of them, the group was shown but non functional. Click on ‘refresh’ and see if the group is still there. If it is not, recreate it. Then check if the device reports changes of the electric values as expected. If not, refresh groups again and recreate if necessary. If you still don’t get the updated electric values from your device, remove it from the power source, wait some seconds and plug it again. Check if the lifeline group is there, refresh and recreate it if it is gone.

I had to took all these f*** steps to get it working. Now the Aeotec Smart Swichtes 7 seem to work stable and reliable – as they should have be doing out of the box.

1 Like
11

What a pita.

I’d consider changing the power change threshold to greater than 1 watt as this may generate alot of zwave traffic. Take a look at it and see how often you are getting updates. Typically this would be set to a meaningful change based on the load you have connected.