Zwave losing 'switches'

Just started moving from a 700 stick to 800. Starting fresh (uninstall/reinstall of Zwave JS UI).
Added 30 things out of 120, mostly Jasco light switches) and they are adding well. Did a heal and for some reason that also kicked of a reinterview of everything(?) which now the devices are all missing their ‘actions’. Meaning things like switches are unavailable even though they show healthy.
If I reinterview them, they succeed but still no switch ability. If I manually turn the light on/off and reinterview, the switch ‘button’ is coming back.
This isn’t a valid option for everything though and I question it will survive another “heal”. For things like my zen17 relay I can’t easily trigger the relay.

To better explain:

Here you can see there isn’t a section under Values for the switch.
I can ping it and the reinterview succeeds (goes back to Complete in the grid)

Just manually turned the light on and it showed up with no HA interaction from me:

this does not make a sense to me. Why a heal, when everything goes well?

I previously didn’t do many heals but when trying to figure out why my 700 setup wasn’t working, came across some posts that said to do it after adding a number of items.
Either way, it shouldn’t cause any negative behavior like this, right?
Really it shouldn’t cause a reinterview at all so not sure why it’s doing that when I kicked off the heal.

So I just did a reinterview of that single device and lost the switch again

Meaning it doesn’t appear to be the heal itself, only that the heal kicked off the reinterview

i think, you have to slow down. Especially, things like heal are traffic heavy. You are building a new mesh network and have to give the system a chance to settle and figure out the correct paths. I usually do not add more than 3 devices a day , just be gentle with the network. Maybe I’m overcautious, so be it…

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Also, some devices do need some punishment on the other side. I figured out many times, that if devices do not join the network with all correct entities, just re-interview them, until they behave brave.
Neocam multi-sensors are a nice example. The need to be re-interviewd 4-6 times sometimes, before they join with all sensors available. Zwave is nice, and when stable, then really stable, but it needs a lot of patience when building a network. And I mean A LOT :slight_smile:

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Thanks but I don’t think this is a load/traffic issue. When the switches show, they are responsive.
Additionally the heal was fast and Ive purposefully avoided security to help.

I second what @BebeMischa said.

Think of this like a freight train not a sports car. One device beaconing on the network can be enough to bring your mesh to it’s knees. Mass heals and interviews are two things that are known to cause problems.

Build from the controller outward Add a few ensure they’re working properly and move slow.

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Appreciate the input but I don’t see how this can be a load thing though based on the behavior showing. Even with 120 devices I’ve never had this happen. I did heals with that number and the load has always manifested as slow or dropped responses which is different here.
To be clear, I didn’t added all 30 at once. They were over the course of 8 hours and honestly I’ve added a lot more than that at in a day when on the 700 stick.

Let’s ignore the heal and mass interview. That happened hours ago and completed quickly so I don’t think it’s still lingering.

I just tested again:

Reinterviewed a switch: The “Binary Switch” accordion disappeared.
Manually pressed the switch on the wall: Binary Switch showed up (didn’t touch my mouse)
Reinterviewed again: Binary Switch disappeared again

This seems like an issue with the interview process. Is there anything helpful I can look for in the logs?

That’s the approach I’ve been taking since starting fresh. I add the light switches in the room closest to the controller, ensure they respond, name them, do some “real work” for a bit, then move to the next room. When the Binary Switch shows, the switch responds extremely fast.

Granted, I haven’t done any reboot since I start added them. Wouldn’t think it would be needed but will do that in a bit.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t hate for this to be a me rushing it thing :slight_smile:
I’ll restart and then let it sit until tomorrow to see what state it gets in.

No one is here to look for some hate :stuck_out_tongue: We all are here to achieve some goals, to help each other…
We spend our free time to find solutions. We are a community :wink:

Well, we also need to consider, 800 series controllers are just just showing up from behind the corner and we all need to observe, what it is bringing on the table. It is new and it needs to be discovered.
It’s normal, that the behavior we are used to from 700 and 500 series is the first, we will repeat to get things working. But time could show us, we have to rethink.

I’m still on a 500 series zwave.me, so things could change a lot. (Still so f…ing happy with it, seeing all problems with for example 700 series Aeotec)

On the other side, some characteristics of a Zwave network will never change. I think, that one of taking it easy and slow is one of them.

We will see, where you get tomorrow, and yes, we are here to hear you then again :wink:

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As much as I was skeptical at the time, looks like you two nailed it :slight_smile:
Decided to give it an extra couple days for good measure and just now reinterviewed the light switch right next to my desk. Didn’t lose the switch or do anything weird.
Lesson learned - don’t rush it (or at least panic when I do).

I haven’t done another heal and probably won’t as I don’t want to risk it reintervieiwing everything just in case.

So far the 800 seems ok.
I am not getting dead nodes per se like with the 700 but I am seeing notes that while they show alive, haven’t checked in for a bit (these are mains devices) which gives me some pause. So far they are all responding when I act upon them so maybe it’s just normal for that device and I will keep monitoring.

Since I am not adding any security to the devices this time around, I am hoping that will keep things faster as well.

Will continue to add a few devices …slowly…

Thanks again!

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