On/off switch repeatedly freezes, with no resolution except air gap

Switches General Discussion
#1

Quick summary:

I’ve had 5 Red, On/Off switches exhibit the following symptom: Randomly, without notice, they will freeze with the light on. By ‘freeze’ I mean they are unresponsive to all physical button presses as well as zwave commands. The only fix is air gapping them, however, in all switches, the problem has resurfaced more than one time. I have found no common pattern to trigger this freeze. Some are 2-way, some are 3-way. All have a neutral wire. Some have regular zwave automations, others do not.

I presented this problem to Inovelli’s support when I saw it with 3 switches. They graciously replaced them for me. Since reinstalling those switches one has started showing this problem again and two others have started up as well.

Versions of things installed:
Home Assistant (docker linuxserver/homeassistant:2022.10.4)
ZwaveJS (docker zwavejs/zwave-js-ui:8.2.1)
Firmware versions: v1.21 (I have a few with v1.20 but I don’t recall them showing this problem)
Aeotec Gen5 Zwave+ USB stick

I think this problem has something to do with zwave-js-ui. And for whatever it’s worth, I don’t recall having this problem until I upgraded from ozwdaemon to zwave-js-ui. (I’ve upgraded through several versions of zwavejs2mqtt which also experienced this problem.)

I’ve also noticed that my On/Off Switches have a problem in the ZWave JS “Protection v2” section:

Z-Wave_JS_UI
Z-Wave_JS_UI968×668 52.6 KB

Whereas the Red Dimmer switches look like this (seems okay?):

Z-Wave_JS_UI
Z-Wave_JS_UI960×592 56.6 KB

I’ve searched this forum / github / zwave-js / homeassistant forums and haven’t found any similar posts. The closest I’ve found is this one but that only seems to apply to Dimmer switches AND when my switches freeze and I try tapping the “up” paddle 8 times… nothing happens. So, I’m not sure this is my issue – but maybe it’s related? The screenshots in that github post w/ the “Unknown” drop downs look about the same.

Oh yea, also at one point I left Zwave2MQTT “Silly” logging on all night and was able to pinpoint some of the logs immediately prior to one switch freezing (again, randomly). I’m not really sure how to interpret those logs, but I don’t see anything immediately obvious.

Logs (this file is 8mb, bit slow to load):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/josh-m-sharpe/inovelli_red_on_off_issue/main/zwavejs_2022-08-17.log – Search for “did not respond” and you’ll see evidence of the node failing.

Anyways - if anyone has any ideas what may be going on or know of other things I could provide, or test, would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

#2

Any chance a script or automation is disabling local control?

If you take your hub offline for a period of time (day or two), does it still happen?

#3

Well, I have a bunch of Red switches and am using HA with zwaveJS-UI, formerly MQTT. They’ve been good for about 2 years now operating without freezing. I’m not sure what is causing your issue, but I can’t see it being zwaveJS-UI.

If you updated the firmware at some point, try going into the settings and re-sending the parameters to the switch. You could also try unpairing and re-pairing them.

#4

Have you tried updating the firmware on the switches?

#5

Which bulbs are you using? I has issues with a particular bulb with a lzw30-sn in a 3 way with a dumb switch. Reflashing the firmware or swapping the bulbs fixed my issue.

#6

Isn’t 1.21 the latest?

The new Home Assistant apparently has support for telling you that your zwave firmware is out of date. It doesn’t report any of my On/Offs are out dated

#7

1.22 for LZW30-SN
https://files.inovelli.com/firmware/LZW30-SN/Beta/

1.22 for LZW-30
https://files.inovelli.com/firmware/LZW30/Beta/

#8

Those are beta. Does HA allow beta channel vs production channel?

#9

Is 1.20 the only ‘stable’ version since pre 1.16? or has 1.22 been out long enough it’s basically stable?

#10

I’m fairly certain it’s stable. It’s been a while.

#11

You can upload any firmware through the addon. The update feature as part of core only does production AFAIK.

1 Like
#12

So, I guess i’m going to update a few devices to v1.22 and then monitor.

Question though – nobody has addressed the screenshots in my original post. Any idea why the Local Protection State is showing “Unknowns” ? Any chance this is related? Can I ‘fix’ that somehow? It appears that updating to v1.22 hasn’t made that go away.

#13

The local protection is a know issue. I’ll see if I can find the thread.

#14

Think it’s this?

#15

Or this LZW30-SN How to disable relay without SmartThings
Unfortunately due to politics the current red and black series will not get any future firmware updates. There is a link to a workaround in the last post.

#16

All my on/off switches are now v1.22 and the issue persists.

I’m not sure what next steps are here.

Could it possibly be my controller? (aeotec zwave gen5+ FW: v1.2 / SDK v6.7.0). I think this is the latest version?
Does factory resetting the switches mean anything after I updated the firmware? Is that worth trying?

This is probably happening 1-2 times a week across a handful of switches.

#17

The firmware version will “stick”, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s worth trying, but if you recently updated the firmware, it would have done a factory reset after that. Another factory reset couldn’t hurt, however.

1 Like
#18

Ah, no - I assumed the firmware version would stay in place.

I was wondering if factory resetting could potentially do anything. Not exactly sure what a factory reset does… I guess it probably sets all the configuration values back to default? So if I did that I’d probably want to exclude the node - reset it - re-include it?

Does anyone think that might help?