Powered Zwave Devices Marked as Dead

I had the same issue that one of the micro switch dead after circuit cut. I restarted the HASS several time and still the same status as Dead on HASS but it was detected fine on the Zwave controller.

I followed the secure z-wave method per https://home-assistant.io/docs/z-wave/ and it’s back online now!

Actually, it doesn’t work well. Restarted HASS, the same node goes back Dead (Cache)

So, I’m having a similar issue that MAY be range related. I have the zwave stick and pi in the basement, about 10 ft above it is my closest zwave ge switch which works flawlessly, then about 30 feet from that is the next ge switch that keeps getting marked dead. It has a few walls between them, but it seems silly that it can’t go 30 feet inside my house. I have a battery powered garage door sensor about the same distance from that switch and it’s been flawless.

Is this extreme range for zwave? Maybe I should pick up a plugin outlet and put it nearby just to test the theory.

Those GE switches are garbage. Cooper makes some good ones. Also Dragon Tech (I believe now sold as HomeSeer).

That was my problem when I was starting at least. Now I have about 30 nodes and things are much better (even the GE).

My two cents:

I also struggled with dead nodes when my z-wave network consisted primarily of GE switches.

As soon as I started adding Homeseer switches to the network, the dead node problem seemed to evaporate. I now have 4 Homeseer switches and 5 GE switches, and now they are ALL reliable.

I’ve been using the GE 14291 In-Wall Smart Switches and GE 12724 3-Way Dimmer Switch, not a single issue with them.

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It may be a crucial distinction to differentiate between the GE Z-Wave plus switches like the 14291 and what was available not long ago, the Z-wave NON-plus 12722. My observations are with the 12722 purchased in 2016.

True, I’ve been trying to only purchase switches and such that are labeled zWave+

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I have a GE 12721 outlet on the far end of my home that starting getting marked as dead shortly after I removed a GE 45602 lamp dimmer that lived between it and my other z-wave devices. Plugging that dimmer module back in woke the outlet on the far end of my home back up… so, yea.

I’m in the same camp as others… the more z-wave items that you have on the mesh network, the more reliable it is.

I’ve been running in to the Dead issue today. Screenshot attached from HA. The first time it failed it said “Dead (Dynamic)”, now it’s “Dead (Probe)” (after starting fresh).

I’m planning a much larger installation next month and was planning to install probably ~20 new zwave switches, but I’m becoming a bit concerned about the reliability of using zwave along with HA. Maybe I’ve got a bum device or something though.

I have the Gen 5 Aeotec USB stick.
I only have 4 z-wave devices right now, 2 EcoLink door sensors, a Yale lock, and a Linear/GoControl WD500Z-1 Dimmer Switch. I was transitioning over from SmartThings. I had moved the door sensors and dimmer over from ST to HA and it seemed to be working fine (admittedly only for a day or two). The only other zwave device I had was the Yale lock, so I figured I’d move that over to HA as well. I don’t know for sure if it was related, but after adding it the “GoControl” dimmer switch was showing up as dead. The lock didn’t work in HA either (it showed up, but I couldn’t control it).
At this point I realized I had never set up a zwave network key, so I figured I’d start fresh.
I tried removing all the nodes, but HA wasn’t really making success obvious here. I shut HA down, removed the zwcfg_xxx.xml file, removed customizations/entity registry entries, factory reset the Z-stick, and finally I used SmartThings to exclude all devices (using the General Exclusion utility - this is nice because as soon as the device excludes itself the UI on their mobile app shows a confirmation so you know it worked).

I started HA back up, and I was back to a blank Z-Wave canvas. I had a network key properly set now. I added the Yale lock, and control worked. Then I added the dimmer, it added - but I couldn’t control it yet. I added the door sensors back, and one of them works, the other doesn’t. Now, the lock, although it works it is finicky. It will take 10-20 seconds to react and the state doesn’t seem to sync to HA well/quickly either. This was always instant on ST, so I’m thinking I need to do a full reset again and add the dimmer first, then move on from there. Are there any other recommendations for debugging this?

In terms of distances/placement, all devices are basically in a straight line:
Z-Stick … ~10ft to door sensor … ~15ft and 1 wall to Dimmer … ~15ft, no obstructions to Yale lock & door sensor.

Zwave becomes more reliable as you add more line powered devices. Battery powered devices, which make up most of your Zwave network, can not contribute to the Zwave mesh, and can only forward their communication directly to the Zwave hub or to a line powered Zwave device. In your situation, it looks like the powered device may be offline. You might try positioning the HomeAssistant device closer to the Zwave device or the device closer to HA. Zwave is a low powered radio signal and going through walls etc can greatly diminish to signal.
Zwave requires a commitment to build out the mesh. With more line powered devices, they will be able to communicate with each other and forward communication to the hub. Once you have a few more line powered devices, the Zwave network will become very reliable.

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Thanks! I have to admit, I didn’t think the distance between the Z-Stick and the powered device (dimmer switch) was such that it would be causing this issue. Given the theoretical range for zwave I thought the ~25ft with 1 wall would be okay, but alas I was wrong. It would seem the dimmer is a bit older and is not Z-Wave Plus.
Anyway, I pulled out a long USB cable and moved the Z-Stick about 10-15ft closer (but still behind a wall), and the entire network now comes online and works fairly well (with a caveat, which I’ll make a new post to discuss). Thanks again.

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Again, more devices with designing a good mesh in mind, will fix that.

I also have similar problems with dead nodes, and a really hard time communicating with them from HA. Strange thing is that when plugging the Aeotec stick into my laptop (at the same location as my HA server) and using the commercial Indigo software, everything seems to be working flawlessly. The switches respond instantly, with full status reports etc.

In HA, everything is a lot more shaky. Nodes are suddenly marked as dead, commands are missed, status updates are not received etc. I have just migrated from Domoticz, and would have expected that HA would at least work equally well. But actually, it appears like Domoticz handled Z-Wave more stable.

Since the same hardware setup works very differently with different software, I don’t really buy the explanation that I would just have to buy more devices.

@matli dead says there has been no communication from the device. If there is nothing coming from the device ??? Sadly we don’t know your setup, your home layout, number and types of devices. We don’t know whether you plugged the Zwave stick and re-pairing all the devices or not.
I do know, a well designed/laid out Zwave network will have enough devices that there are multiple paths to and from the Zwave controller. With only a few devices and no path redundancy, you can easily suffer from a flaky network. As you add devices, there will be one magic device, that weeks later you suddenly realize, I haven’t had Zwave problems.

After upgrading my .45 all in one install to latest hasbian I’m having a similar issue. No errors from home assistant itself. It only seems to be zwave. Sometimes after a reboot the gui says there was a problem with zwave. Sometimes it just doesn’t let me control any devices until it has been on a while. One of my switches will show up in the gui, try to change it to off or on and it disappears from the gui and zwave reports it as dead.

None of this happened until I upgraded

I am also having an issue with the HA z-wave support. Programmer by trade, new build, testing in a 1 bedroom, though. RPi 3 B+ running latest Hassbian. Setup z-wave in my config with location of adapter and a randomly generated network key. My first attempt at adding a device with HA was my z-wave Kiwkset 910. Battery powered, maybe 10ft from my RPi with nothing but a desk between them. When right next to it (or at least when first pairing–cant confirm which as I’ve installed it twice, physically, after the pairing process appears to work), the lock seems to work fine. When installed it shows as dead.

Unfamiliar with HA’s history, and I read the entire thread: is options.xml something I should normally find/edit?

Also, I’m not using the Aeotec adapter everyone in here is. Was trying to get a twofer by getting a well rated adapter that included Zwave and Zigbee in one. Possible it’s the stick, but, I’m a bit skeptical. Especially reading everyone’s similar issues.

Trying out my Aeotec Range Extender plug tonight, which, ironically, will be further away than the RPi, so, if that connects than I can mostly rule out range.

Anyone else here have luck with different solutions? Mine shoes as dead “(CacheLoad)”.

With a single battery powered device you can certainly have connectivity issues. Restart HA and view the OZW_Log.txt with tail -f
Do whatever the procedure is to wake up the lock and see what is in the log file. ZWave range Extenders are a waste of money as far as I am concerned. Spend the money on another powered ZWave device, like a plug in receptacle or switch.

Re issues with this device, see a lengthy issue report here: https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/issues/11099. I also experienced the Kwikset randomly being marked dead (despite having several Zwave plus powered devices in close proximity) and needing to re-pair it with the Zwave stick.

I’ve also tried HomeSeer and a Vera Edge and with both all my devices function flawlessly as they should including the lock, with all devices and controller in the same places. So I think there are some OpenZwave quirks with some devices.

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So the only solution you found was to not use HA? I hear you, I’ve got it working on SmartThings just fine and in the same spots… Just trying to avoid using a closed loop online system like ST. So, that is disheartening…