Z-wave slow startup (10+ minutes?)

Configuration Z-Wave
1

I have roughly around 50 z-wave devices in my home, home assistant does its job and all works fine if all is started.

Sadly, it takes a minimum of 10+ minutes before i get the signal from home assistant its up and running (i actually have a push notification for it, so i know when i can expect it to be ‘stable’) looks for the zwave ready signal.

Is this intended? If i make changes to my z-wave setup, rename a z-wave device for example. In order to see the new name i have to restart hass as far as i know. Hence, another 10+ minutes. Changes a few devices will take me up to an hour to keep everything in check.

Can i change anything? I know it starts up, discovers the z-wave devices, but after that it start to poll all the devices and checks them all which takes a long time. Openzwave saves these details in the cfg, so why not read out that instead? (have no clue how it works though)

2

Same question

3

find out what devices are taking so long. Most likely those devices are just out of range and it takes a bit to catch the data. Once you find out the device, put a zwave extender in between that object and the closest object. Zwave has a range of like 10 or so feet object to object.

4

Since i have now 70+ devices, the only valid answer here “it takes that long, its normal” the downside of this all is that playing with new component means restarting hass. If you have a automation you want to test that requires one of your z-wave devices (chance pretty big in my case) it takes 10 minutes again. Sure it does respond but very slowly during the initial startup fase. After the 10 minutes its quick and rock solid in my case.

I just wish it would not scan the entire network and check al neighbours etc etc. I mean, it saves this in the zwavecfg xml and you can always manually do a healthcheck/neighbourhood scan. Imho this should be an option but i have no idea how the whole zwave internals work.

Mentions that replacing all with z-wave plus would improve some but not all. Z-wave is not bad imho but the startup makes it a pain. Even my original Fibaro home controller had that issue (but there you could add/remove on the fly without restarting Fibaro HC) but there you didn’t have the customisations and freedom as you have here.

5

So i have 85+ devices and it takes about 1 to 2 minutes at most. I don’t think 10 minutes is normal.

6

All are zwave plus with you? I have all kinds of devices, smoke/lights/blind/doors. In the logs i can see it asking for its neighbours everytime it boots. I have a automation that sends me a push when its ready.

- action:
  - alias: ''
    data:
      message: Z-wave done
      title: Home Assistant
    service: notify.ios_ierik
  alias: Zwave network ready
  id: '99
  trigger:
    platform: event
    event_type: zwave.network_ready
7

I have a mix, not all of it is zwave plus. I don’t check for zwave ready, but i’m getting reports from all sensors and lights within 2 minutes. At times I don’t even wait for the 2 minutes If i’m renaming things. I’ll just go about my business.

8

Renamin can be done the moment it starts up, i also get reports coming in pretty quick. It will be slow during the startup but reports will still come it, although with a delay. This is normal but to be fully up and running “quick” it takes that 10 minutes for me. Don’t misunderstand partial working for fully started :slight_smile:

9

Thank you for your information. I just added a Z-Wave.me UZB as a secondary to my HC2 with +/- 100 physical devices so it’s still configuring the devices… Let’s see how that goes… I’m trying out hass, “to put my HC2 experience in perspective”.

10

It takes more time then HC2, HC2 can be done on the fly and is more polished. Hass on the other hand gives more freedom. Ideally you would want your zwave devices run seperatly as a api. So you can restart only hass and not your z-wave. There are components to hook up a vera controller but all those solutions seems to be “asking for something that should not be needed in the first place” ofcourse the guys did great work with hass and if i remove the delay of z-wave i would have pretty much 0 issues with hass.

11

Thanks! I have a lot to learn about hass, so I try to keep an open mind and shut up in order not to say anything stupid. As I can see, lots of scanning and checking happens at the start of the Z-Wave component, even after “entities” got detected and “zwave.cfg” got stored… There’s lots of logging, I’ve got a clone of the “openzwave git repository” on my disk so I can start digging - quite the opposite of an HC2. I can confirm it’s about 10 minutes before everything settles. BTW I’d like to keep my Fibaro to update the firmware of my FGT-001. Just the fact that there’s an in interface to Vera is intriguing!
Have fun with HA!

12

I still have my old HC2 to update my Fibaro modules. Not the most efficient way but it does the job. You can use the openzwave control panel which has more options and does allow you to add and remove without restarting. Do keep in mind because you also have a lot of devices it logs all to the gui of the openzwave panel (ozcwp) and because of that the page becomes so big over time that you need to start over because it will hang chrome (and i have a descent pc) what i did was first use openzwave control panel then rename all devices in there and make sure everything looks ok. Once done you can then use it in HA. (people would say use zwave inside home assistant but you have to restart after you add a device, which is why i choose the openzwave panel if i have to do multiple changes) and rule of thumb. BACKUP your zwavecfg xml, i had it go broke for some odd reason and that is your config which holds all your names in it.

p.s. feel free to look me up on discord if you have any question (since i was a Fibaro user too)

13

Thank you very much! I followed your advise and ozwcp is now “plowing through the startup” so to speak. I store all configuration like zwavecfg xml in local git. I’m also going through the source code of openzwave, this will take a lot of time. I don’t want to hijack this topic so I’ll only post back if I now something relating to “slow startup”. I’ll start new topics if I need help or find something worth sharing! This is not my final setup, I will scratch everything (including my linux host) when I know how to control and maintain homeassistant. BTW I know you were a Fibaro user :wink: Have fun!