HA doesn't know switch and dimmer status since the last Z-wave JS UI update - SOLVED

After spending hours and hours getting a handful of the z-wave devices on HA I finally succeeded and had them working flawlessly for a few weeks.

And then the Z-wave JS UI update came. Since then HA doesn’t know the status of Homeseer WD-100 dimmers and WS-100 switches when they are turned on/off by pressing buttons on the wall rather than via HA.

The event does show up in log but HA ignores it:

I also noticed odd behavior when turning on a dimmer via HA: it would turn on right away to the last-set brightness, however HA would show it as 1% for ~5 seconds and then suddenly show the correct %. It was showing correct brightness right away before this update.

Other Z-wave devices like flood sensors and fire alarms seem to be working fine.

How do I make HA know the switch/dimmer status again?

HA is running as HAOS on a mini-PC via Proxmox with Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5.

Have you tried reinterviewing the device(s)?

Reinterviewing doesn’t solve the problem but does retrieve correct status. For example, the dimmer is off, I turn it on and set it to 100%, HA still shows that it as off. Once I reinterview that dimmer, HA updates and shows it being on at 100% correctly. Then I manually adjust it down to ~50%. HA doesn’t update. I reinterview again, and now HA shows the correct dim level now.

Basically I have to reinterview each device every time to find out if it’s on/what’s the current dim level.

Another observation: these Homeseer dimmers and switches have double-click and tripple-click actions. They all work just fine! HA registers them and runs the automations. It’s own on/off status and dim level are the only things HA fails to register.

Check to make sure your controller is registered in the lifeline group of the Z-wave devices… Sounds like it isn’t somehow. If the controller isn’t registered, the device won’t update values.

It’s not in any group and there are no groups (and weren’t before upgrade either, when everything was still working).

What is a lifeline group? How do I add it?

Go to the device in question, not the controller. Should look some like this and have at least 1 entry

Got it. It does have Lifeline:

There was Z-wave JS UI upgrade today, didn’t fix the problem; also broke the smoke detector integration…

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@mterry63 you mentioned the controller, not the device being in the lifeline group. The devices are in it, but the controller isn’t. Is that the cause of the problem? How do I add the controller to the group? It doesn’t show up in UI dropdown.

SOLVED!

I ended up updating WS100+ and WD100+ firmwares to the latest ones and that restored HA’s ability to know the device status. So weird. Why the old firmware was just fine for years on SmartThings and on previous ZUI version but suddenly required new ones now? Oh well…

The FirstAlert Z-Wave smoke detector is completely lost since last update and nothing seems to help but that’s another thread. Thanks all for help here.

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