Dormant Z-Wave Network / Rebuild Question

Configuration Z-Wave
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I had set up Home Assistant in August 2020, but didn’t do much with it and eventually turned it off due to competing priorities. This ran under a Raspberry Pi 3B along with an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5 running on firmware V1.1.

Fast forward two years and I have some additional time and my 5th Grade son has some interest in tech projects. Together, we recently started using Home Assistant for our home. We kept the Z-wave network on the Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5 stick, but ended up completing reinstalling Home Assistant Core 23.6 / 10.2. The setup went very smooth and the new install detected my 2 year old Z-Wave network (form the Z-stick). However, there were some issues. Most of these nodes were wired-in always on nodes comprised on primarily light Leviton Z-Wave 300 Series (before Z-Wave Plus) light switches. However, some of the nodes were unresponsive. In Home Assistant, changing the state of switch would often result in the UI being correctly updated. However, when trying to change the state of some switches, the UI would update, but a few seconds later revert to the previous state. The nodes that work are dependable, but the nodes that don’t work just aren’t working as expected.

We took a few steps to try and reconcile this situation:

  • We performed a network heal; this did not fix the problem.
  • We did a z-wave unpair followed by a z-wave pair with the z-stick for the problem nodes; this did not fix the problem. We repeated this along with additional heal operations and still are facing the same issue.

What should we consider for next steps?

  • Should we be on a newer version of the Z-stick firmware (currently on V1.1)?
  • We’re considering saving a backup, updating the firmware, and factory resetting our Z-stick, but we’re wondering if there would be a simpler way. If we do reset the Z-stick will we need to do anything to delete the current z-wave devices?

Any help of guidance would be appreciated! Thanks in advance for any help!

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Probably won’t on its own - dont spam-heal the network, it rarely does more good than it does slow your network for 24 hours. It’s better to target heal problem nodes and routes. For that you need tools - Im really digging the revised map in recent versions of ZWave JS UI - but I digress.

Signal or repeater may not be the issue - but good start.

Yes, but there are caveats. If Im not mistaken, the backup format on the version of the stick you have wont be compatible with the stick after the firmware is updated.

Considering you’re basically starting over anyway it may be better to start from scratch if it were and eliminate any potential issues. With a long dormant network it’s going to take some troubleshooting to figure out what shape its in before finding the magic combo of repair, join disjoin forced route, etc to get you at top shape. Whereas current revisions of ZWaveJSUI provide a lot of newer defaults and tools to help the user. Im a fan.

If you reset your stick Zwave JS / JSUI Should detect that (It’s just reading what the stick config is afterall) and will wipe itself. BUT you will need to run a Zwave exclude against any of those devices before you will be able to re-add them.

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You’ll need to get off the 1.1 firmware at some point as until you do that you’ll never be able to move an NVM backup to a replacement stick. Most of the new gen5 ship with 1.2.

So an option is to start over with a 700 series.

Either way, start with getting the stick on a powered usb hub with an extension cable. Get the stick mounted on the wall in a spot that keeps it away from metal, etc. The powered USB hub should keep the proper voltage on the stick Getting it away from the PI reduces RF interference. You can upgrade the stick to 1.2 from a PC using the Aoetec utility. I just did that it worked fine.

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