I was having enough little gotchas with my z-stick gen 5 that I decided to update to a z-stick gen 7. It took me two days, but it’s done now, and “working”. In retrospect, seeing all the threads about problems, I’m not sure why I did this, as I immediately started having problems with nodes dropping off and needing to be pinged. It looks for all the world like the 700 series is just a lemon of a design, and no amount of smart people can fix it.
I’m debating going back to the 5, but I don’t really know what the pros and cons are between the two. I have never been able to get a reliable z-wave network built with security enabled, so “more security” is nice, but not a win if that’s a major pro of the 700, because I’d prefer operable to secure.
Can anybody succinctly say whether the 700 is worth it? Is there some feature that will make it a clear win sometime in the mythical future when the bugs have been fixed?
Did you check to see if there’s more recent firmware for the 700 series stick? This is mentioned in the docs since older firmware is known to be buggy.
Yes, I updated the firmware on the 7. The ongoing problem is that nodes will drop and need to be pinged to be revived. There are entire threads devoted to ways people have worked around this with HA automations (Automate ZwaveJS Ping Dead Nodes?). I want these devices to be reliable (i.e. always work and not need to be babysat), and with such a prominent set of big bugs in the product that have taken more than a year to resolve (https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/issues/3906), and such difficult firmware upgrade processes, the technology feels kinda unreliable to me.
I experience no such node drop issues when using my 700 series stick, no pinging measures are in place either.
If the issue is occurring for you, provide driver logs per the instructions at the bottom of that issue, in a new issue so Al can troubleshoot with you.
Regardless of whether you experience the problem or not, my question is about what benefit the 700 provides over the 500. So far, I don’t ascertain any differences from the interface, I have higher latency on some controls, and the same type of disappearing nodes… is there a specific reason to be on the 700 (bleeding edge)?
There’s no specific reason, the 700 series chipset is supposed to support Z-Wave LR (Long Range), so that’d be the benefit of having a 700 series controller. In end devices better SNR and lower battery consumption.
Technically the 800 series would be the “bleeding edge” at this time.
If you’re having issues, by all means swap back to the 500 series controller, but if you’d like to help Al analyze and potentially fix the issue you’re having, supply logs.
I have about 40 zwave devices and have zero issues. if you are having issues with 2 different zwave sticks. perhaps the issue is something else? maybe it is an issue with the host device and not the zwave stick itself?
This is not at the top of my list of possibilities. What type of issues would the host exhibit that would make you suspect it as the source of the problem? In response to similar suggestion from Aeotec, I moved the whole thing to a different host, and to a different part of the house. The stick is on a cord and well away from all other electronics. I continue to have problems.
FWIW - auto pinging the nodes that stop responding has stabilized the network’s performance from a user perspective.
Also FWIW, I’ll be happy to supply logs to Al, but I don’t want my HA/Zwave things to take up all my time. I’m afraid I’d just be another frustrating person who doesn’t know how to tell him what’s wrong.
Wade I have the same issues. 99.9% chance of firmware issues, there are just too many people. In the Zwavejs and other forums many deny that is what it is. I have around 38 zwave (and about same zigbee). The latest firmware reduced the issue but it remains. I can reproduce the behavior consistently and easily. The issue for me only occurs when I am doing a lot of switching at once (serially).
My only solution to switching many devices at once on or off (like turn all lights off), has been to only switch 3 devices at once, then wait 10 seconds delay, then switch 3 more, etc. That stablized the devices stopping and requiring pings. I also made an automation that detects dead zwave and pings them and that does work; but it does not fix automations doing a lot of switching. Only the 3 devices/10second delay has worked reliably/consistently in automations. Zigbee has no such issues with a lot of switching, but would cost me too much money to switch all those lights to zigbee. Smartthings zwave is how I had the lights originally linked and I had no such issues with switching a lot at once (serially not multi thread but still quickly). I changed to Aoetech Zwave Stick 7 many many months ago. It is on a >3ft cord help up high. Placement in house does not affect this issue; same result.
Understandable frustration really. Does the log indicate that the node isn’t responding or the controller?
If it’s the controller, that could be an issue with the hardware you’ve connected to sometimes the kernel or other serial software can cause the controller to have timeouts.
If the timeouts are on the nodes, that could be due to a firmware issue (on the stick) OR RF issues.
Maybe post a snippet of your log when you’ve seen the issue occurring?
Since 6 months I’m complete over on Z-Stick 7. ( 9 years fibaro never problems)
First got some problems because I forgot FW upgrade.
That helped al lot but not all.
I did a complete heal network ( over 14 hours waiting)
And it’s quit stable now, but yes like told here also lot of switching in short time can cause node deads.
I hope FW upgrades of Z-Stick and ZWaveJS in future can solve this.
But I’m good for 99% of time now.
And 9 years ago Fibaro had also this problems with there z-wave system so I know how things could be and there is hope with new z-wave and fw upgrades.
Only I don’t know if I could help with logs or debugs to improve z-wave js or Z-Stick 7
Zwavejs2mqtt can dump driver logs into a file for you to download.
The official zwavejs addon, I have no idea, other than the logs tab in the integration. You have to keep the tab open for the logs to populate, unideal.
That is what I thought as well, until I tried S2 with an old Gen5 stick and found out the firmware would not support it. I had to upgrade the Gen5 to firmware to 1.02.
