Zwave: On vs Off vs Level

Configuration Z-Wave
21

I have two 12727’s, each with an add-on, and they both act this way. I also, for a short time, used one of the add-on’s with a newer 14292, and it acted the same way, too. Do you have polling set for your 14291, and if so, how often is it polled? Could that be why it updates? (My 12727’s update, eventually, when switched from the add-on only because I have polling set for them now.) If you don’t have polling, then maybe yours has newer firmware than mine or something. Hmm…

22

I have no polling setup on the 14291s I do have polling on my GE 12724 3-Way Dimmer Switch. The 14291 switches are zWave Plus so they shouldn’t need polling enabled.

23

Yep, the 14291 is also Z-Wave Plus and I don’t have polling set up for it either. Well, this is weird. I wonder if it’s a firmware version difference. Maybe yours has newer firmware??? Oh well.

24

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ bought it from Lowe’s that way.

25

Hey Steve,

Is there anywhere we could find a list of switches that did license that patent?

26

I think the patent has expired a few years ago, but i don’t know for sure (I bought all of my Z-wave switched in 2013, so long before Z-wave Plus even.

27

It’d suck to have to pay to buy all new switches. Maybe we can flash our devices somehow.

28

What problem are you trying to solve? If you have switches that you need to have ‘polled’ occasionally because they are too far away to get the broadcast message to the hub, you can set that up on an individual switch basis. Just put the polling_intensity: 1 in your zwave component config for the devices you want to have polled.

zwave:
  usb_path: /dev/ttyUSB0
  network_key: !secret zwave_network_key
  device_config:
    light.living_room_lights:
      refresh_value: true
      delay: 2
      polling_intensity: 1
29

I found this pretty annoying when I first started with HA. Now I honestly rarely ever notice. Do you actually use the app for all controls? Not that that’s a bad thing just curious. I find that most my lights are controlled with Alexa/google home, or just automations.

30

I’ve set refresh and polling intensity and I’ve personally found delay to not work. It seems to sometimes work and sometimes not overall.

31

I do, especially when I need to check at a glance.

32

Fair enough. I will say that almost all of my zwave switches and dimmers are not zwave +. Although it sometimes switches from on to off back to on again, it always ends up in the end state I’d want. I never have issues turning something on or off and it not turning on or off. And also 99% of the time (really seems like 100% to be honest), it does end up reporting the correct state. So if I was to glance at my app, it always shows the correct state of my devices. If I make change it may take a second, but in that case you’re not really glancing to check status, you’ve made a change and can be sure it actually happened.

With all that said, I 100% agree it’s frustrating and annoying. The times I have guests in the house and the are using my ipad to turn on/off lights its confusing to them. I don’t think there will ever be a way to get these GE/Jasco switches to report faster.instant.

Hmm, I guess you could make an input Boolean for each switch, turn that off/on and then use some sort of automation to turn off/on the real switch, and then wait for x seconds and switch it back on/off if the light really did not switch off? At least then you’d see it off/on and not be annoyed with the slow reporting.

Actually I might do this myself for a few. :slight_smile:

33

In case you didn’t know, refresh_value/delay is a separate and distinct function from polling_intensity. You could use one, or the other, or both. Refresh will update the HA device the specified number of seconds after it first sees the corresponding Z-Wave device change (either via HA or manually.) Refresh is generally needed for devices that take time to transition (such as dimmers.) Polling is just what it sounds like – it periodically polls the device to see if it’s changed externally from HA.

I have four different types of GE/Jasco devices: older switch, older dimmer, newer (Z-Wave Plus) switch, and newer (Z-Wave Plus) dimmer. And of the switches I have four different combinations of old vs new and 3-way configuration vs not. This is what I’ve found to be necessary to make them behave as well as they can:

  1. If it’s a dimmer, you need to specify refresh_value: true and delay: N, where N is the number of seconds it takes for the dimmer to transition from on to off or vice versa. Out of the box the default transition time is 2.97 sec, so a value of 3 for N has worked fine for me.
  2. If you have a 3-way (or I suppose 4-way) configuration, then polling is necessary for HA to update when an Add-on switch is manually operated. I’ve found this to be the case for both new and old (i.e., Z-Wave Plus or not) devices. What I find works well for me is a global setting of polling_interval: 10000 (i.e., 10 seconds), plus polling_intensity: 1 for each of the switches that are used in conjunction with Add-on switches (i.e., 3- or 4-way configurations.)

For switches that are not part of a 3- or 4-way configuration, whether they’re older or newer, I’ve found that neither refresh nor polling are necessary.

Of course your mileage may vary. I don’t claim that this will work in all situations. I’m just sharing what I’ve found.

3 Likes
34

sorry to dig this back up but i have a bunch of older Jasco and I’m transitioning from ADT to HA on hassio.

Is there a way to define this “refresh_value:” and “delay: 2” for a list of entities?
Or will i need a 3 line entry under “device_config” for ever single dimmer?

zwave:
  usb_path: /dev/ttyUSB0
  # add refresh delays for the GE dimmers
  device_config:
light.living_room_lights:
  refresh_value: true
  delay: 2
35

I haven’t tried it, but I think you can use device_config_domain or device_config_glob. See docs

36

This is one of the things that annoys me about the three GE/Jasco Z-wave switches I have, the delay is atrocious. What potential purchase options are there to achieve “instant update” Z-wave switch/dimmer functionality? I can’t stomach paying $40/switch to have a delay and I know what it’s like because I have three of them.

37

wow, three year old thread.

If you are buying today, you pretty much don’t have to worry about it. Just make sure it’s a zwave-plus device. It should be - I think almost all are and have been for like 4 years or so now.