TL;DR: Installed Z-Wave Switch. Worked perfectly for many weeks then starts showing up as dead (still responds to manual control). Eventually stops responding to manual control. Completely disconnecting/reconnecting device made it work for a short period of time (e.g. days). What’s going on?!
I’ve purchased and installed a bunch of GE Z-Wave switches and dimmers that I’ve installed without much trouble and I’m actively using them with HASS. I’ve only got a single switch (GE Z-Wave Plus Wireless On/Off Switch), all the rest are dimmers.
Since purchasing them in November, the switch has died on my twice. Both switch experienced the exact same behavior. I installed the switches and had everything up and running paired with the Z-Wave network and was able to control everything using Home Assistant. After a few weeks, the device suddenly stopped responding to Z-Wave commands. I was still able to manually switch the lights. I was able to factory reset the device once, force remove it from the network and then re-add it. It continued working for a day or two and then dropped off the network again (still worked manually) and was unable to reset it. I called Jasco support and they sent out replacement. While installing the replacement, I got paranoid and disconnected everything verified all of the wiring and reconnected it. Lo and behold it came back to life again, but it was short-lived, dropping off the network in a few hours.
So, I went ahead and installed the replacement and just like before everything worked perfectly for more than a month. The the same thing. All of a sudden one day the device stopped responding to Z-Wave commands and then started showing up as dead. I took a bit longer to call support about this one so after a few days of it continuing to work manually it stopped working all together. Called again, got sent ANOTHER replacement (I can’t say enough great things about Jasco support!) and did the same thing. Pulled out the existing device fiddled with the wires still no response, disconnected and reconnected it and all of a sudden it starts responding again. I’m still using the first replacement right now (been a few hours) and I’m waiting to see if the behavior repros but I’m dying to know if anybody else has experienced anything like this. Is there anything semi-obvious that could be causing this? While writing up this message I realized that I never tried cycling the power at the breaker box to see if it had the same effect as disconnecting and reconnecting. I’ll be trying that next if this dies.
Random points of data:
I’m going to take the fact that the devices worked flawlessly for multiple months as proof that everything is installed correctly.
It’s possible that there is some “settling” going on in the switch box. But the fact that the devices continue to work manually for a period of time seems to rule that out.
The fact that factory reset also made the device work for a period of time also seems to rule out incorrect wiring.
I have had about 17 of the on/off switches in my setup since about 2013 (I used SmartThings up until late last year when I switched to HA). I also have 3 of the GE Dimmers.
Over the 4+ years I’ve had them, I’ve had two go bad at about the 3 year mark (manual control didn’t work) with no ability to resurrect them. Since all my switches are “gen 1” they’ve upgraded a few times since then, I just wrote it off as Early Adoption pitfalls. One of them just stopped working completely one day and the other failed “slowly” where about 1 in 5 commands or manual actuations didn’t “take”. Then over a month or so, it went as bad as I’d have to manually toggle the switch about 10 times to get the light to turn on/off.
For what it’s worth, you should try pulling the air-gap switch out and push it back in - that should do the same as disconnecting the wires from the back of the switch.
With SmartThings, about once every 3-4 months, one my switches (at random) would just drop off the network, but if I used the “Replace Device” function in ST, then toggle the switch a few times manually, it would come back. I always thought it was a quirk of SmartThings. Although there was some talk over on the ST forums that the “gen 1” GE/Jasco switches had a firmware bug and since they were before z-wave plus, there’s no firmware update capability. I haven’t had them on Home Assistant long enough to know yet. If I hit June with none of the GE/Jasco switches dropping off the network, then I’m pretty sure it was a ST problem.
Looks like I’m expecting the same thing… I too thought it was a SmartThings issue (sorry guys!) but now that I’m migrating to HA, I realize they don’t work any better,
What in your experience are the most reliable switches? They don’t need to be Z-Wave. I like the few Lutron Pico remotes that I have and they integrate nicely with HA. Maybe I should give their switches a try?
I’ve only used the Jasco ones and it’s only the switches that have caused me issues. The dimmers have all worked perfectly. Maybe there was just a bad batch.
I just had my first GE switch die. Resetting the power didn’t fix it. It’s reporting as dead in HA. I’m glad I have a few spares I bought when they were on sale.
Any update on this? I’ve been experiencing this too for a few months and usually I can just flip the breaker and it comes back online.
I’ve also got a few of the cheap Monoprice Z-Wave door sensors that stop responding too, so I just chalked it up to Z-Wave/HA flakiness since I have no prior experience with Z-Wave.