My Z-Wave network has been pretty stable since switching to Home Assistant. However, my Z-Wave Blinds and my Z-Wave locks have all gone offline and are listed as dead. All other Z-Wave battery-powered devices still work. I have tried healing the network, but that didn’t work. I also removed and readded the devices (had to bring them close to Home Assistant), but as soon as I reinstall them, they go offline (e.g. dead node). Any ideas?
Regards,
Ultrajones
If they work when close to the controller, then IMO it’s almost always a “mesh not strong enough issue”
If that is the case try adding more powered (repeaters) devices to help strengthen the mesh.
What add-on are you using?
PS: is this the Ultrajones dev of the HomeSeer Plug-ins?
Thank you for the reply. I have over 20 HomeSeer Z-Wave switches that are supposed to include a Z-Wave signal repeater feature. Does anyone happen to know if the repeater feature is enabled by default? I can easily control most of those switches, but cannot reach my Z-Wave blinds or Z-Wave locks that are less than 10 feet from one of those switches that are supposed to repeat Z-Wave signals. Any ideas?
Yes, I retired from HomeSeer plug-in development earlier this year and switch my entire system to Home Assistant. Everything has been working great so far except my Z-Wave setup.
Regards,
Ultrajones
The normal for mains powered nodes is to be a repeater.
It sounds like your blinds are requiring security either S0 or S2, just like your lock.
Check your zwavejs security keys, make sure they’re set, also check your zwavejs logs for errors.
I had a lot of Z-Wave quirks with HomeSeer - for the most part it worked fantastically but there would be random jams, delays, and devices not responding. Could work perfectly for hours and then for 5 seconds everything is backlogged and catches up.
My blinds and door lock were the worse. HomeSeer is adamant that this is a factor of life with Z-Wave, that you need to have the door lock within no further than 3 hair widths away from the Z-Wave stick, and even then the fact that it so often ends up in “unknown” state is simply how it is. I even wrote a script that detected when the lock was in unknown state and would start polling the lock to try and correct it - instead of the door being left unlocked multiple times a day it instead only happened once or twice a week.
Installed Home Assistant in place same gear and not only have I not had a single Z-Wave issue, but the blinds and door lock has been 100% reliable without any scripts what-so-ever. None of this optimisation crap, whether whole thing or being insanely selective over doing it with specific ones, everything just simply left as is. Works an absolute treat.
Doesn’t help troubleshoot why you ARE having an issue, but my home is quite large and spread out and I have even put a Fibaro implant inside my chicken coop at the end of my backyard… without a single care in the world everything is in range and it would be because of the mains powered Z-wave switches behind every light switch creating the massive mesh. Yes, the repeater function is a mandatory part of Z-Wave devices if they are powered so all your devices should be passing it along. I believe there is a hop-count limit perhaps, so if you had a long string of them that would become an issue.
Oh one thing I have found that doesn’t work will with the repeater system - at least in my experience, Aeotec SmartSwitches don’t work through Fibaro repeater devices. Unless the SmartSwitch can reach the Z-Wave stick itself, or another Aeotec (powered) device, then you’re out of action. But those SmartSwitches aren’t very reliable, I wasted money on a lot of them and I’ve almost replaced them all over the years as they’re not very good.
That might be the issue with your blinds perhaps.
Your lock though that’s another story - I going from memory here, but I think only a secure-included device can repeat another secure device. So your lock could only be repeated by say a Z-Wave switch that is running secure, otherwise it has to talk direct to the Z-Wave. And for inclusion it first has to talk direct, then it can relay. I think thems the rules, I prefer my lock to talk direct give my stresses of house being left unlocked courtesy of HS.
Hope something here is of value? 
This isn’t correct, unsecured nodes still pass the packets along just fine.
I temporarily moved my Home Assistant about 15 feet (into the room where the Z-Wave blinds are located) and everything is working again. I don’t understand why the Z-Wave repeaters aren’t doing their job.
Is your zwave stick connected directly to your device or do you have it on a usb extension cord?
If directly connected, grab a usb extension and use that to connect your stick to the device.
If possible, add some more powered devices to your mesh.
It’s interesting the different experiences we have. As I had problems around HS inclusion/exclusion system since the day I started ~7 years ago, but the network overall was more stable then my HA network is currently.
The differences between the two in my case; I moved to a 700 controller (fully patched 
) I learned today that I have some unruly energy devices which MAY be causing my stability issues. So in my case, I’m not sure if HS’ system could better handle the unruly devices or the 700 controller just doesn’t deal with them the same.
This is a great idea. I’ll give it a shot.
I am using the Home Assistant Blue along with the Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5 Plus. It only has USB 3.0 ports.
I have over 30 powered Z-Wave devices, so the mesh should be really meshy
I originally thought my Z-Wave issues were caused by energy devices sending updates once a minute (I have about 20 of those), but I reconfigured everything to only send an update every 300 to 600 seconds. That change didn’t help. I also enabled debug to confirm I don’t have a device that’s sending too many status updates.
Seems my Z-Wave problems were resolved by simply moving my Home Assistant system, then extending the Z-Wave USB stick using a 16’ USB extension cable. Thank you everyone that responded.