Goooooosfrabbbbba, ZWave is really getting on my nerves....

Nah - my house is ZWave and the lights in that video are nothing compared to what's on our house.


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What kind of video display is that?


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How do you even begin to test for interference problems? .

You could always use an inexpensive RF spectrum analyser such as http://www.rtl-sdr.com/about-rtl-sdr/ or an RF explorer. Both would give you an idea of any rf interference,

Colin

Looks like I found the interference, it was a plugged in camera of all things. It does use RF to communicate with it's home controller that's fed into a computer, so apparently that's gone bad. Apparently it happened to go south right at the same time I upgraded Indigo from beta 6 to release.

Sorry to cast any aspersions towards Indigo, it was just WAY too coincidental for my taste and was actually just a huge coincidence. I'm really sorry I was actually giving consideration to firing up my Vera again to replace Indigo until I realized my Vera also didn't work...

Matt & Jay, I'm sorry I doubted the software. You guys have always put out a quality release time and time again and I should have put more trust in you. Mia Culpa, Mia Culpa, Mia Culpa.

So, Matt, RF interference for the win! I suppose the upside of this hassle is I have the better Gen5 with longer range and more reliability now .

Thank you for your help <3.

For those that may encounter similar issues here was my diagnostic process:

In my diagnostics I found that I didn't even need to have Indigo nor the computer it ran on on at all, the problem persisted even in the normal linking method of the Z-Stick (pressing the center button), I found that if I was more than about 5 feet away that it wouldn't include or exclude at all. My test became that I would change something then try to use the Z-Stick include method on a plugin in module that I had and if it worked for more than 5 feet then exclude it and move the controller 5 more feet then rinse and repeat. If I got more than 15 feet away and it was working then I could focus on the thing I just changed to see if I could break it again.

So:

• Turn off all iPad's and iPhones and do the above test
• Turn off all Bluetooth and do the above test
• Unplugged EVERYTHING in one room, do the above test
• Unplug EVERYTHING in the next room, rinse and repeat until I could get 15 feet away from the Z-Stick and include/exclude
• Plug in one thing at a time, one outlet at a time then rinse and repeat
• Once I found the plug that forced me back to within my 5 foot range then test it exclusively again until it worked
• Once identified I got Indigo up and running again and did extensive testing with the built-in include/exclude functions at longer and longer distances to make sure everything was working
• Before committing to the fix I reset the interface to clear out all the now-excluded devices so I could start at device #2 again - this isn't required, but I like things neat

I was lucky that it was the 3rd room that was the culprit, my next step after every room was unplugged was to start cycling the fuses in the fuse box and, one at a time, doing this test over and over again until I found an in-line module (i.e., Insteon switch or outlet) that was at fault.

What kind of video display is that?

I think it's a handcrafted LED matrix driven by an rPi. Greg posts the details of the changes to their setup each year. Start here then work your way back in years:

http://thehormanns.net/new/christmas2016.phtml

That is a pretty impressive light display. I've seen some similar ones before but that really has some cool nuances.

Greg's a really cool guy. IT guy for P&G. I know him from World of Warcraft. He was one of our guild's main tanks or healers for years, but a couple years ago P&G outsourced their IT staff. He ended up staying with them working for the outsource vendor, but was so busy with work that he stopped playing WoW. His wife still plays.

[jay (support)]

Matt & Jay, I'm sorry I doubted the software. You guys have always put out a quality release time and time again and I should have put more trust in you. Mia Culpa, Mia Culpa, Mia Culpa.

All will be forgiven once Homebridge Buddy is available (have seen at least one plea for help getting Homebridge working)...

[matt (support)]

Seriously, no problem. These issues can be very frustrating and difficult to track down and I'm glad you found the problem and are headed back in the direction of having the system running again.

Every time we do a big release Jay and I cringe a bit because we know there will be, at the same time, some problems people encounter that are 100% not related to the upgrade but appear to be. All we can do is try to gather the evidence and investigate to see if it is an Indigo bug or just an unfortunate coincidence that frames Indigo as the problem. Generally we are pretty good at recognizing which of the two buckets a problem goes in, but sometimes it is difficult even for us to tell.

All will be forgiven once Homebridge Buddy is available (have seen at least one plea for help getting Homebridge working)...

It's coming, I promise. It's actually all ready to go I just need to finish up my page on here for it and change my GitHub from the protected mode it was in for beta and make it public. I've already added to my schedule for tomorrow - I had planned for this weekend but then THIS crap happened.

I'm glad you found the problem and are headed back in the direction of having the system running again.

Me to! SOOOO happy to have my house back again.

There you go Jay, I put it up there. Still things to be done but access has been granted .

[jay (support)]

Excellent!

Colorado4Wheeler, any tips on finding the interference?

I think I have the same issue. I had massive communication issues (no-ack before resetting everything)on what was previously a solid network. I have about 20 devices.

I have tried optimizing, resetting z-stick and re-adding devices, excluding and including, etc. The only way the z-stick will talk to a device is if it is within 2 feet of it.

I have tried your local exclude and include trick with z-stick and it will only work when within 3 feet.

Does it sound similar to the issue you experienced?

I did.

I was hoping for some other trick or validation that is probably my issue.

I think I am going to try the extreme route by opening breakers. My indigo Mac Mini is on a UPS so I should be able to shut things off and still test.

This sucks!

Update on my issue.

It was interference. My thermostat got into a bad state and was continuously transmitting. I found it by buying one of these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0129EBDS2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Also bought an antenna to go with it. I used the free radio scan software SDR# and saw a huge peak around 908.4MHz

I just walked around to my z-wave devices until I received the strongest signal and found it to be one of my thermostats. I did a hard reset on it, excluded it then rejoined and it is fine now.

The cheap SDR dongle from amazon was totally worth it.

I hope this helps someone else

-Chris