I continue to have problems with ZWave devices that stop communicating with HA.
The devices appear to stop sending updates and do not return. I do a REBOOT of the HA instance and data comes in but after several hours/ overnight the info goes flat-line (i.e. temp/humidity sensors) or motion sensors stop functioning (“restarting” HA offers no fix). From Feb 2023 until around August the system was rock solid, this problem started around 2023.8.
The motion sensors flash locally when motion is detected but nothing gets through to HA.
The dongle is on a 3’ extension.
I have 3 smoke detectors, 1 motion/temp/humidity/luma sensor and a water/temp sensor.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
System RPi 3-64
Core 2024.1.5
Supv 2024.01.1
OS 11.4
ZWave JS 12.4.3
Server 1.34.0
Dongle- Nortek Quickstick Combo HUSBZB-1 v4.32
thanks for the input.
It appears all the devices (about 6) stop communicating although they are still in the system. The dongle is on a 3 foot extender and the units are close. A motion, temp, humidity sensor is on the desk where my set up is, less than 4’ away.
Device logs just say “became unavailable” once they are communicating I see smoke detectors “wake” and “asleep” after they check in.
I found restarting the add-on brings everything back. It is the most recent version of ZWave-JS.
One comment on another post suggested turning off Watchman, which I did but this did not resolve issue.
I had a similar experience a year or two ago, running HA on a Pi3B+ with 1GB RAM. Devices would disappear over time, and a reboot would usually bring them back.
After many tries to find a fix, I noticed that the Pi memory utliization was hovering around 80+%. That seemed OK, until I realized that the Pi, like most OSes, tries to keep some minimal amount of memory free at all times. It accomplished that by “swapping” data from its RAM to whatever slower storage it has available - e.g., an SD card or perhaps an SSD. So even if your memory utilization is only at 80% or so, you may not have enough memory for HA to operate as it should.
When that “swapping” activity becomes continuous it is called “thrashing”. Basically the system spends much of its time moving data back and forth between RAM and SD card. In the old days using hard disks, you could hear the disks clicking madly. With SD or SSD there’s no moving parts so the system is silent. You may notice it getting hotter though.
As a result, things start to break. My suspicion with the disappearing devices is that a message to a device simply takes longer to get a response than HA thinks is reasonable, so it declares the device dead or “unavailable”.
As HA evolves with new releases, or as you install more devices or integrations, memory needs increase. AFAIK, HA never complains about shortage of memory (RAM). It just starts acting weird in various ways.
In my case, I replaced the Pi3B+/1GB with a Pi4/8GB, running the same configuration of HA by simply restoring a recent backup. Everything started to work fine and has been for over a year now. RAM matters – a lot.
You didn’t say how much RAM your Pi has, but if it’s a 1GB model, I suggest trying a Pi with more RAM. Your problems may disappear just as mine did…
Settings >> devices and services >> zwave >> configure >> devices >> select a problem device >> select 3 dots next to “configure” >> statistics
Here you will find communication stats for the device. Many dropped tx or rx is sign of problem. There is shorter way to get to that info but that is easiest to explain
Note that if all Z-wave devices are battery powered, you can’t build a mesh network with that. So it could well be a connection issue with one or several Z-wave nodes. Make sure you have one or more net-powered Z-wave devices like switches or lamps, then the hub is able to build a Z-wave network. Battery powered Z-wave devices are hybernating (sleeping) so they will not be able to pass signals through to other Z-wave nodes.