Zooz ZE29 Outdoor Motion Sensor - Dropping message with invalid payload

Hi everyone - hoping I can get a bit of help here!

I have a Zooz ZE29 VER 2.0 Outdoor Motion Sensor (Z-Wave)

When “motion” occurs, I get the following in the Debug log.

DRIVER Dropping message with invalid payload

The screen capture of the Control Panel seems to indicate that the Zooz is there but there is not the main info.

I have tried a bunch of things hoping I could stumble on the solution, but no luck so far.

I have three Z-Wave devices:

  1. The USB Controller
  2. The Zooz Motion Sensor
  3. Flood Sensor

Here is another screen capture of the nodes.

Here is my config (let me know if I missed anything that would be helpful!

  • Home Assistant 2023.10.5
  • Supervisor 2023.10.1
  • Operating System 11.1
  • Frontend 20231005.0 - latest
  • zwave-js-ui: 9.3.0
  • zwave-js: 12.2.3
  • Running in a VM
  • Zooz ZE29 VER 2.0 Outdoor Motion Sensor

I appreciate your help!
Paul.

It looks like the interview of that device was not successful. Try to reinterview it from zwavejsui and then go manually wake up the device. When it succeeds the UI should show the device type and name.

It’s also possible that the zwave mesh is not strong enough for that device to work. The messages you are seeing could indicate packets are corrupted because there is not enough signal strength. Given you have 2 nodes, this is likely. The solution here is to get some zwave repeaters or smart plugs and locate them physically between the stick and the device. The other item it to make sure the stick is on an extension cable and located away from the computers, WiFi routers, etc.

Thanks for the pointers. The distance is only about 10 feet. So it shouldn’t be that.

I tried the other suggestions and no luck at all.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Paul.

You could try bringing the device inside and put it next to the controller and see if you can exclude it and reinclude it.

Just to close this out. I excluded the device, then included it and somehow it worked. No idea why. But it is in my UI now. I am posting a follow-up question.

THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR HELP!