Z-Wave Devices Going Unavailable, Need Help Resolving

Hey everyone,

I’ve been using Home Assistant with Z-Wave for many years and have been managing my Z-Wave devices through the Z-Wave JS UI add-on. I have a combination of ~50 powered / battery operated devices. Over the past six months, I’ve noticed an issue where devices randomly become unavailable throughout the week. However, if I ping the device, it comes back online.

This has been causing problems with my dashboards, which auto-populate light controls, and also with automations that don’t trigger because the device is unavailable.

Has anyone else experienced this issue? What could be causing it, and how do I go about fixing it? Any advice would be appreciated!

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If it recently started, then I would suspect there is some new radio interference present. However, there’s not much you can do about that unless you can control it. Did you perhaps add a new routers?

You can set up an automation to periodically ping all the devices if that resolves it, though.

The only similar thing I have experienced is if there are too many devices sending out power reports too frequently it can flood the network and make devices unavailable.

Sorry I can’t be of more help.
-David

Does anyone have a script example that pings all Unavailable devices like this?

This looks promising:

Got the same issue since some weeks but I cannot say if it is happening since a specific update or something.

I am currently having around 85 zwave devices with a zwave.me razberry board on a raspberry4.

Which hardware are you running?

I have the exact same problem, with more info: The devices are NOT unavailable in Z-Wave JS UI, only in Hass. Har anybody seen the same thing and found a fix for it?

What happens if you restart ZW JS UI? Does the device come back online in HASS? Does the Interview status show COMPLETE (green) or does it show PROTOCOLINFO (red)?

Sorry, I can’t answer that right now. I fixed all my devices (it’s in a house with a wife…) after I wrote the post. I have to wait until it happens again, it is very erratic. It can take a day or two (which it didn’t) or it can take a week or two. I will get back to the thread when it happens again. If it does, I have decided to build that Pi from ground up again, while keeping the configuration files for the Docker images of everything. That may solve it, I see that this build is two years old, I thought it was newer.

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@glenmm OK, I have another one (I have had a few others but, they had to be fixed at once because they were in use). This is how it looks in Hass:

This is what it looks like in Z-Wave JS UI:

Restarting Z-Wave JS UI did not change anything, it only lost a couple of more devices (now the ID Lock 150 is gone too). Running a ping make them come back at once, both the lock (which is on battery, so I find it weird that it should react to a ping that fast if that was really what happende) and the siren. Any ideas from that info?

I’ve not experienced your exact case (with the ping restoring the device) but the single Configuration value is similar to the issue I have seen when the ZWJSUI is restarted - it loses all the Node information. Under Advanced, try to re-interview the node and see if it comes back with more values. The issue I had was with the Zwave stick being secondary, and not primary SUC/SIS. Was there ever another zwave controller on your mesh?

The values arrive as soon as I do the ping. I have had this running for seven years, it was set up in March 2018. The same controller all the time, and no extra controllers. I have so much powered stuff, like floor thermostats, that there is no need for extra controllers.

The family that has rented parts of my house close to six years is moving out in one and a half month and I am seriously considering excluding everything I have, device by device, to set up the network all over again, with a newer controller. I just need to find out what controller will work best with a Pi 5, Docker and Home Assistant, it doesn’t seem to be completely straight-forward, with the newer 700 and 800 still reported as buggy in the documentation. I am wondering though if the HomeSeer G8 800 Z-Wave Stick may work with the correct firmware.

You might want to try chatting on the ZWJSUI HA Discord about your issue, they’re very helpful.

Thanks, but I think I will try the full new setup first. I think I’ll go for that Home Seer G8. I have the experience that my problems often are one-of stuff. :grin: