My ZWave network is esentially unusable (invalid payload errors), I am planning to start over with a different contoller. Right path? Other advice?

Configuration Z-Wave
1

I am currently running HAOS on a Beelink mini PC.

Core 2025.2.4
Supervisor 2025.02.1
Operating System 14.2
Frontend 20250214.0

With:

ZWave JS 0.10.0
Aeotec Z Stick 7 Plus on USB extension
About 16 ZWave devices, all ZOOZ (switches, smart plugs, scene controllers, etc)
950 square foot house with plaster walls. Every single device is within 25 feet of the controller. Most are within 15 feet.

Switches work great locally. Controlling switches from my dashboard works great maybe 40% of the time. Another 40% of the time there’s a delay of 1-5 seconds. Another 20% of the time there’s a delay of 30-60 seconds. Those 30-60 second delays usually come when I try to send operations in quick succession. I don’t mean automations sending many commands in the same instant, I mean if I go down my dashboard and click on 3 or 4 toggles at a modest rate of about 1 per second my entire network pukes on itself for the next two minutes and absolutely nothing will work right. This happens multiple times per day.

It’s almost always the same error messages popping up by the dozen in my ZWave JS log:

2025-02-18T21:58:50.641Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T21:58:50.662Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T21:58:50.796Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T21:58:51.000Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
Stopping logging event forwarder
2025-02-18T22:28:34.864Z CNTRLR « [Node 014] Received update for a Supervision session
2025-02-18T22:28:39.319Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:28:39.533Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:29:16.685Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:29:16.710Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:29:17.007Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:29:17.068Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:29:17.629Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:29:19.616Z CNTRLR   [Node 019] Timed out while waiting for a response from the node (ZW0201)
2025-02-18T22:29:45.234Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:00.220Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:08.273Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:08.539Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:08.874Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:12.261Z CNTRLR   [Node 012] Timed out while waiting for a response from the node (ZW0201)
2025-02-18T22:30:17.113Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:36.012Z CNTRLR   [Node 013] Timed out while waiting for a response from the node (ZW0201)
2025-02-18T22:30:36.514Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:36.615Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:38.903Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:39.739Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:41.937Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:42.265Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload
2025-02-18T22:30:42.596Z DRIVER   Dropping message with invalid payload

I did notice many of my ZWave devices were spamming the logs with “Last Seen” notices that were coming sometimes once per second, so I disabled all those entities and so far no noticeable improvement.

As far as I can tell this is related to a seemingly ongoing firmware fiasco related to my 700 series controller. I’m reasonably tech savvy but I went down the road of trying to work on that/try different firmwares I got frustrated and even more confused.

I have a Zoos ZST39 LR (800 series) in hand. My current plan is to basically start over. Clear all my zwave devices and uninstall ZWave JS. Install ZWave JS UI and re-include everything with identical naming so my automations work.

Is this likely to work? Since I’m starting over, is there anything I may have screwed up that I can do properly this time to make this easier on myself? I like fiddling with home automation but the hours I’m racking up on my ZWave network just trying to get basic functionality is getting out of hand.

Do I need to go through an exclusion process on all my devices or can I uninstall ZWave JS, install ZWave JS UI, and just start including like I did when I took it out of the box?

Thank you for reading.

2

Disabling entities has zero effect on your Z-Wave network, the devices are still spamming. You need to address the source of the problem by updating the device configurations to make them quieter. https://zwave-js.github.io/node-zwave-js/#/troubleshooting/first-steps

1 Like
3

Is it possible we’re referring to different kinds of “entities”? What I deactivated was within the ZWave device configuration (they were called entities) and it definitely removed the “last seen” thing not only from my HA log but from my ZWaveJS network log as well (set to debug mode) and as far as I can tell they are no longer chatty in that respect. Everything still constantly falls flat on its face however.

4

The last seen entity just updates whenever a node in your network sends a new message. Disabling the entity doesn’t change anything in the Z-Wave network.

1 Like
5

Question, did you have this working in the past?

I had a functional zwave system on <=2025.1.1, however have been getting similar errors when I updated to 2025.2.x. I rolled back and the issues seemed to go away, updated and now their back.