You probably should go ahead and set a network key even if you don’t use it now you likely will later if you get additional devices. However, I don’t think that would prevent you from pairing even if the device was secure because if you can’t pair a device securely I think it will by default drop back to un-secure pairing.
I know that there are some zwave devices that are extremely finicky with the pairing process. It might even come down to holding your mouth right to get it to work!
One last thing to ask tho is have you restarted your HA after trying to pair the device?
@finity yes, plenty reboots. And I thought the same as you about keys. I read somewhere it auto generated it, but maybe that’s using a different distro / platform choice. But it looks like I needed to specify it.
@freshcoast yes, my understanding is “remove node” puts the z-stick into exclusion mode. Also tried this a few times as well.
Some threads from couple years back reference udev rules. Still applicable?
they are generally still applicable but not in your case since the Z stick itself is being discovered and z wave is being configured by the system. That only solves the problem of zwave getting errors due to the usb device path changing periodically so the system can no longer find the stick.
something else you might try is to factory reset the fibaro device (not the stick) before trying to pair it. I’ve heard of that fixing pairing issues before.
I was expecting to easily be able to see live data, i.e. temperature and light levels that should have regular values (unlike the motion sensors that are based upon movement which might not be there) and the device seems to be listed permanently as “sleeping”.