Device and entity status are not the same?

I’m in the process of migrating from Homeseer to HA. I moved all my devices into HA. I am in the process of recreating many of the automations I had in Homeseer. One issue I’ve noticed recently as I’m building automations is that the device status is different than the entity status on a few of my devices.

For example, I have a binary Z wave switch (Homeseer WS100+) connected to a light. When I added this switch as a device it automatically created a switch entity. When I changed the icon of that entity from a switch to a light it created another entity and made the entity with the switch icon a hidden entity. Ok, no issues there. I assume this is just normal HA behavior. The light entity appears on my HA dashboard. Where I run into problems is both entities appear to not be connected to the actual device. If I turn the light on/off via the HA dashboard the dashboard updates but the actual device status does not change. Conversely, if I turn the light on/off by pressing the switch or if I send a z-wave command to turn the light on/off the status of neither entity changes yet the light is going on & off. Is there something I need to do to re-connect the entity to the device?

I should mention I have multiple dozens of other zwave dimmers and switches where the entity and device status change in unison. Maybe I just need to remove the device and re-add it to HA but I figured I’d ask before doing that.

You didn’t change the icon. You changed it from a switch to a light. This a unique function available only on switches.

what do you mean “device status”. If you are looking at a status entity, that’s just telling you if the node is alive or dead. It will only change if the device is dead. The state of your switch (or replicated light) is on those entities.

The device status I mean is if the switch (and by extension light) is on or off. I’m not talking about the status reported from zwave that you were referring to which it’s not reporting dead BTW. I simply mean the entity shows the light is on and it is not on. I can turn the switch on and off and the entity never changes in HA and vice versa, I can turn the light entity on and off in HA and the actual switch does nothing.

It will turn on if I send it a zwave command that the on or off switch key was pressed. So I know the switch is working over zwave.

Are you sure you’re using the correct switch? Can you take a screenshot of the device page?

Is the z-wave switch connected by wire to the light, or was it paired in Home assistant? (i.e. is is a smart switch and a smart light, or a smart switch with a dumb light)?

I’m pretty confident I am. I’m not at home currently to quadruple check. I’ll post a screenshot when I get home later.

The light is wired directly to the switch.

How old are these switches? Pre or post 2016?

All but three of them were bought during a black friday sale in 2016. The other three were bought in Oct 2016.

Sometime in 2016, a patent Lutron had expired. This patent basically separated lutron switches from all other switches. The long story short is, anyone that wasn’t lutron had to manually poll their switches and lights for state changes, where lutron could just send status updates instantly.

Homeseer may have hid this from you by polling states behind the scenes. If this is the case, you’ll need to build an automation that does this as well.


Here’s a screenshot of the device page for one of the switches I’m having issues with. Scene 001 is pressing the ON button. The event was detected over zwave however the entity is still off.

Ok, thanks for the information. I think there may be a firmware update available for these switches. I may see if updating the firmware solves this issue. I generally don’t update firmware unless I’m having a problem and now I am.

edit - Just checked the Homeseer firmware page. I’m running 5.15 and instant status was added in 5.16. Looks like a firmware upgrade should fix my issue.

edit 2 - Updated to 5.17 and the status updates to the entity are working as expected.

Thank you @petro for the help

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