Hello Community,
I am new to the Home Assistant community and have already learned a lot from the forum.
I have the HA running on a Pi 4 on a SanDisk Extreme Pro in my system and everything is working fine.
I use a Z-Stick Gen5 from Aeotec for the Z-Wave devices.
In addition to the Aeotec Smart Switch 7 (ZW175), I also use some Devolo Home Control Smart Metering Plug MT02792 as socket switches.
I also use a few Devolo door/window contacts and water detectors.
During operation, I noticed that some devices always took a very long time to transmit a switching command or a status and I had to search a lot.
Through a few tips in various forums, I then found a clue and looked at the error log in the Z-Wave JS UI and the picture looked like a movie. It ran continuously. All Devolo plugs transmitted countless jam messages to the controller. I gradually removed my 17 Devolo plugs and the network calmed down and the commands were implemented very quickly.
When I look at a Devolo sensor compared to the Aeotec sensor of another plug, it is also much more detailed. But simply too detailed due to the amount of data. It seems to me to overload the wireless protocol.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any information on whether you can configure these update intervals on the Devolo and I couldn’t find any way of limiting this problem.
I believe that the plug transmits up to 15 other sensor data with every single change in status of a sensor.
I would be reluctant to discard all Devolo sensors and replace them with alternative products. Does anyone here at the end of the community have any ideas or tips?
Thank you for your answer. I thought of that too, but the default for the parameter is 720, which is also set. The unit is 5 seconds. The reporting period would then be 1 hour. Unfortunately, this does not work for my problem.
My problem is that I have about 20 of the Devolo plugs in use and they make so many status updates when the end devices are switched on that even a door contact no longer gets through or switching commands lead to an error in the log or some node no longer reacts to a ping and exits.
I have currently disconnected all Devolo plugs and everything else is running smoothly.
I have read that the association is always entered as a principle in the node and have left it there. So is it not necessary for the Z-Wave plus devices and can/should it be removed if you find such errors?
What, where and how can I configure Poling in the setup? I haven’t read anything about this. This point is still new to me.
What is the load on the switch. How does that compare to parameter 3? Perhaps show us a history chart of the watt load. Also, what messages is it sending to rapidly?
Try adjusting parameter 3 and 4 to increase the change threshold to reduce reporting. If that doesn’t work perhaps try contacting them and if they can’t fix it, then return it.
I have contacted Devolo Support with the following question.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I tried to integrate the switchable socket in a place where notebooks and monitors are also connected.
After a few days, I noticed a slowdown in all actions in the house with devices that run on the Z-Wave protocol.
After taking a closer look, I realized that the socket was transmitting an incredible amount of data regarding fluctuating energy data. Consumption data during fluctuations is particularly noticeable.
In its documentation, I found a reference to messages as soon as the current consumption changes by 5%.
Since a notebook tends to fluctuate in standby mode, this is an extremely high number of messages.
Can this function be influenced via the configuration in the socket?
I received the following answer:
There are no corresponding parameters available to change the reporting behavior of the switching/measuring socket.
It therefore seems that the device does not have a function for limiting traffic.
Would the idea with the association be a workaround or would there be other ways for HA to limit this traffic?
As already mentioned, this only affects the Devolo plugs. All others work as they should
Good progress at least we know those plugs cannot be adjusted to work properly.
What @cornellrwilliams is suggesting is that by deleting the lifeline association the switch will have no destination to send the messages to and hence won’t send anything. To delete the lifeline association, requires that you are using zwavejsui and you’d go into the associations tab, find the association to node 1 and delete it. Then you’ll need to create an automation in HA to periodically poll the switch state and power. In theory this should work, I’ve never done it myself.
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Myself, I’d try to return the devices and get a device like the Aeotec that supports the configuration needed. Or if you can’t return them use them for static loads like lamps, fans, etc.
I too was surprised when I put my TV on a smart switch and the load would vary by 100 watts.
yes ok, then I have understood the topic with the association a little more than before.
I removed the group without replacing it and created an automation.
I linked this to a condition and let it query one of the values every 10 seconds as a test.
It works. It is more work but at least I can continue to use the connectors. I first suspected that the plug would continue to spam even if the group was deleted, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Are there any other disadvantages to removing the lifetime group that you should be aware of?
10 seconds is too fast. While it may work with a single device, once you add more things are going to slow down. I would not poll any more frequently than 10 minutes.
Super. One consideration, when polling more than one device, space the polls out in time so they do not all occur at the same time. In the example script, add a delay before polling the next device. I try to space polls out by at least 30 seconds.
I have a few water pumps in the cellar and I switch them off as soon as the output falls below a certain value. So that works quite well. The workaround I’ve worked out is quite good.
The water detector reports flooding, the socket switches the pump on and also switches it off again promptly when the load falls below the limit. There are only three pumps and if I then check the values when the pump is switched on, it should work and no pump will run dry.
I then use the other plugs as simple switches or for pure switching operations. It’s a shame, but then I can continue to use the plugs. Unfortunately, due to the current company situation at Devolo, I don’t expect that there will be new firmware with more functions for the plugs.
