Played with it multiple times and made no progress. Thinking maybe I was editing the wrong file, I looked for other instances of manufacturer_specific.xml, but couldn’t find any others.
As an experiment, I then decided to delete all my other devices from manufacturer_specific.xml (backed it up first) and rebooted. They should all show as Unknown Device now, right? But they don’t, they are all showing up correctly in zwcfg_xxxx.xml and in HASS.
I’m very confused. Is there a new way HASS/OZW is using to look up devices? Am I missing something important? Did I do something stupid (first time for everything, right?)? Please help. I’m pulling my hair out.
The controller itself caches the information about devices. I believe zwcfg_xxx.xml is used to speed up startup so that the OpenZWave software doesn’t need to load all that info in every time.
I am fairly sure that to get manufacturer_specific.xml and specific config file settings* to apply, you need to exclude and then re-include the device (remove node / add node).
* If you want your device recognized it’s not enough to put it in the manufacturer_specific.xml - that file also refers to a per-device specific config file in
that describes the device and its configuration parameters. I manually created these for one device I have, it was tedious.
See this page for instructions. See the manufacturer-named folders here for many examples. If so inclined you should submit your changes back to the OpenZWave project and they will include them in the next release to help others.
For the record, the device does NOT need to be excluded and then reincluded in order to get the information from the updated manufacturer_specific.xml. Also, not all devices have/need a specific config file (though mine does.) Many devices simply do not have any configuration options.
I was able to resolve the issue by properly updating manufacturer_specific.xml (as described in your link to OZW) and then:
Stopping HA (sudo systemctl stop home-assistant.service)
Removing all of the information related to this node from the zwcfg_xxx.xml
Restarting HA
Took about 10 minutes for OZW to reread the manufacturer_specific.xml
Good to know - I still have a bunch of Leviton dimmers that were added before appropriate device specific files were available that show up as Unknown. I thought I had followed the procedure you lay out and it didn’t work to properly identify those dimmers, but I will try again.
For the sake of posterity the mistake I made was modifying zwcfg_xxx.xml while HA was running. I think OZW rewrites the file on shutdown. I had to rename my devices after deleting them from zwcfg_xxx.xml, but they are all recognized correctly now.
Yes, zwcfg_*.xml is written when the Z-Wave mesh is stopped, which happens on Home Assistant shut down. If you’re hand editing the file then it has to be done with Home Assistant shut down.