It is likely one device is flooding the z-wave network making it unstable. I had an issue with a lockly lock doing that but removing it and re-including it a few times until the network was stable worked.
I would be interested in knowing how to monitor z-wave traffic over the antenna.
If they open a dedicated “help me” post it is something worth exploring.
You can just view the Zwave JS logs to see what’s happening. I was able to find chatty things that way and disabled them.
Hi @petro , Fair to call out the ranting, but this whole thread has been me asking for help and while I REALLY appreciate all of the insightful and well-intentioned replies, it seems there are still some pretty fundamental challenges with my ZWave system that I simply do not know how to overcome.
Regarding what I have tried so far, here’s a partial list (most of which I’ve mentioned in various posts earlier in this thread):
My current status is:
The most generous interpretation I can think of for the above is that I have one or more flaky Z-wave devices (either already on the network or among those pending inclusion) and the underlying Z-wave protocols/firmware is simply not resilient to (or even able to alert about the presence of) a flaky device. (Less generous interpretations include some more-serious flaws in the meshing technology, etc.) It is also possible I’m an idiot who has done something dumb (though I must at least be a somewhat clever idiot, as nobody has managed to catch my mistake yet 
). Or maybe there’s terrible RF interference that I do not know how to detect/measure and somehow affects only some devices on the network (uncorrelated with physical location or proximity to other nodes)? Regardless, I think it is accurate for me to say that the consequences have been super frustrating! 
At this point, I’m willing to try pretty much anything (within reason), short of manually reconfiguring the 50+ devices currently sort-of on the network (and all of the dashboards and automations referencing them), severing power to large portions of my house, or spending untold hours of electrician time temporarily disconnecting then reconnecting switches/outlets one-by-one… I would be genuinely grateful for any help or advice anyone could offer!
(I should say as well that while I have been quite frustrated with the technical experience of using ZWave, I’ve been really impressed with the knowledge and helpfulness of the user community. Thank you!)
Thanks,
Mike
You can flash a second stick with the zniffer firmware and enable it in Z-Wave JS UI to monitor actual transmissions: Z-Wave JS UI
A couple of things I picked up over the years: If you have any devices included with S0 security, pair them unsecure. S0 is very, very chatty and the chances of the communication getting warbled because of that are high. It also asks a lot of computing power, some routing devices cannot handle it if they have a lot of traffic.
S2 security does not suffer from the same problems, or at least not nearly as much. If those still give you problem, ask yourself if you need the security and try to pair unsecure if you don’t. unsecure sounds scarier than it is. For locks and such you would want to be safe, but otherwise it isn’t a big issue.
For pairing issues: I read that some devices lower transmission power during the pairing process for security reasons. They can also refuse pairing through routers. This might explain why pairing is more of a pain than normal use.
@mundschenk-at Thank you! I will look into this!
@Edwin_D Thank you. I have tried to use S2 for all devices that support it. Dumb question but is there a way in ZWave JS-UI to see which security level each device is using? I see a column for “security” but it just shows green checks or red minus signs… I cannot seem to see which level of security the secured devices are using…
@mundschenk-at Thanks for the pointer to Zniffer! Do you know if there is any way to set up a Zniffer without a windows computer? (The instructions you linked reference SI Labs software, and my recollection from trying to use it for controller firmware updates is that doesn’t actually work on a Mac or Linux…)
It might be possible to flash the firmware on 800 series boards with the CLI tools developed for the Z-Wave JS project, but TBH, I’m not sure. I’ve used Bootcamp on an old Macbook for fiddling with proprietary hardware including Z-Wave dongles.
You’ll probably get a more qualified response in zwave-js/zwave-js · Discussions · GitHub.
Green check means S2 Security. Yellow check means S0 Security. Red circle means no security. Hover the mouse over the icon for a tooltip for S2 security level(only on PC of course).
Or, look in HA’s device page, Z-Wave Info panel tells you in plain text.
@freshcoast Thank you!
Confirming that I do not have any yellow checks, therefore no S0 devices on the network. (Most are S2, but a few have no security.)
FWIW, I don’t bother with security on any device. I don’t have locks, if I had them, those would be s2. This might be the root of your issues.
As an additional pointer besides the security level: Some devices, especially power monitoring switches and plugs, are very chatty by default. If you have several of them, they can easily saturate the network. Almost all of them have several parameters to configure their reporting interval (and sometimes also what values to report at all). For example, on my ZW175 Smart Plugs I always set the standard reporting interval to 3600 seconds (1 hour), and I disable reporting of voltage and amperage (V and A) as I don’t need those measurements at all. For power and energy (W and kWh), I set up an offset that triggers a non-timed report when reached (e.g. “send a report when power changes by at least 5 W”), with the value of the offset depending on what kind of device the switch monitors (i.e. for a toaster, the offset can be 200 W, whereas for for an RPi3 I might be interested in changes as small as 1 W). Doing this systematically can dramatically improve overall mesh performance.
Some command classes require setting at least S0 security (and older ones often don’t support S2), like smoke sensors.
Yep, I only have lights and switches on my network, and 5 or so open/close sensors. I use zigbee for all the oddball chatty sensors.
I also disable all V, A, W, kW, Wh, kWh devices as well. IIRC the only remaining sensor I have on my zwave network is a multisensor 5.
Funny, I have it the other way around. I use Z-Wave for power monitoring/smart plugs and miscellaneous sensors, and ZigBee for lights, motion sensors and buttons/switches.
Ah, I like multicast for lights and switches. Everything turning on and off at the exact same time is nice.
ZigBee groups, same principle, but yes, definitely nice.
Maybe if Zooz is telling you it’s a known problem with their controller maybe you need to try getting a different brand of controller?
I’ve been using an Aeotech Gen5 Zwave controller on the original firmware for as log as I’ve been using HA (8 years) and I don’t really remember any serious issues with my zwave network. It mostly just works.
There are issues in the SDK for 700 and 800 series (though largely mitigated and/or fixed in the latest releases), the symptoms are not what @mike15 is describing. I’m also running a ZST39LR (with 45 devices) and don’t experience anything similar.