Set expectations for LZW42 bulb on/off/change reaction speed for me please

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#1

I have 4 LZW42 bulbs and I am trying to do some fancy color-change routine, but the bulbs react so slowly that any change must have a significant delay (5 to 10 seconds) before I send another command or they seem to just cache… which seems odd, but I guess that’s better than just discarding the command, right? So am I expecting too much when I want sub-second response to commands or do I need to troubleshoot an issue with my configuration/deployment?
TIA,
Eric

#2

You’re going to cause havac on your z-wave mesh trying to send a bunch of changing z-wave commands to the same devices in very quick succession. There was another discussion here about transitions times with HA. This might be of some help to you.

#3

If you havent switched to the beta firmware yet, I recommend trying it out. It significantly speeds up the bulb response times, especially when changing colors:

I would be careful about the number of times you change colors in rapid succession though, as it results in a surprising amount of data being transmitted (mostly because of the way OpenZwave handles the changing of values). In my own tests, I found that changing the LED color from red to green resulted in 28 packets of information being transmitted for a single bulb:

  1. Color Set command issued to bulb
  2. Bulb acknowledges
  3. Color Get request for RED component sent to bulb
  4. Bulb acknowledges
  5. Bulb sends color report for RED component to hub
  6. Hub acknowledges
  7. Color Get request for GREEN component sent to bulb
  8. Bulb acknowledges
  9. Bulb sends color report for GREEN component to hub
  10. Hub acknowledges
  11. Color Get request for BLUE component sent to bulb
  12. Bulb acknowledges
  13. Bulb sends color report for BLUE component to hub
  14. Hub acknowledges
  15. Color Get request for Warm White component sent to bulb
  16. Bulb acknowledges
  17. Bulb sends color report for Warm White component to hub
  18. Hub acknowledges
  19. Color Get request for Cold White component sent to bulb
  20. Bulb acknowledges
  21. Bulb sends color report for Cold White component to hub
  22. Hub acknowledges
  23. Brightness Set command issued to bulb
  24. Bulb acknowledges
  25. Brightness Get command issued to bulb
  26. Bulb acknowledges
  27. Bulb sends Brightness report to hub
  28. Hub acknowledges

If you are changing colors of multiple bulbs, and in quick succession, I can see how it could cause delays.

#4

I should have stated that I am running 2.30 and it was a major improvement.

Thank you for the write-up on the messaging. I guess changing one bulb every 5 seconds is the best I’m going to get right now.

For the curious, these bulbs are in my front porch and driveway lights, and I’m having them cycle through Halloween colors randomly (using Node Red). I don’t need instant response… but it would have been nice to change one bulb a second as a target.

Thanks for your reply!

#5

If you are comfortable editing config files you can add the following lines to your lzw42.xml file and it will prevent OZW from refreshing the values every time it sends a command (goes from 28 packets on a color change down to just 4). It will significantly speed things up, but HA will no longer know when the color actually changes because it is no longer getting the color reports. I guess you could set it up this way temporarily.

  <CommandClass id="38">
    <Compatibility>
	  <NoRefreshAfterSet index="0">true</NoRefreshAfterSet>
	</Compatibility>
  </CommandClass>

  <CommandClass id="51">
    <Compatibility>
	  <NoRefreshAfterSet index="0">true</NoRefreshAfterSet>
	  <NoRefreshAfterSet index="1">true</NoRefreshAfterSet>
	</Compatibility>
  </CommandClass>

Once you save the config file, you will need to refresh node info on the bulbs you want this to work on. I didnt need to restart anything when I did it.

I am not sure if this works on OZW 1.4 though (I tested this on OZW 1.6 using zwave2mqtt)