Z-Stick not connecting

My new wireless Insteon stick came in today. I temporarily removed the Z-Stick from its USB port and plugged in the Insteon stick. Once the Insteon stick was enabled and working, I moved it to another USB that was less convenient. No problem. Then I plugged my Z-Stick back into its USB port and Indigo cannot see it. When I try to configure it, I get "Waiting for Z wave interface". I even tried the paperclip hard physical reset (which succeeded, according to the red and blue LED sequence) but it no longer can be seen by Indigo. Otherwise, the Z-Stick is flashing its normal sequence of red-blue-yellow when plugged in to the previous USB.

I know this is off topic, but I remove a fully functional Z-Stick for 15 seconds and Indigo no longer can communicate with it. I restarted the Indigo client and the server. Nothing. This is not unlike my problems with my 2413U controller, which just inexplicably stopped communicating with Indigo when I replaced an Insteon module.

I suppose I can buy yet another interface (the Z-Stick in this case) and assume that interfaces just die when I'm doing anything with Indigo, but none of this makes any sense and buying interfaces is starting to get expensive.

[jay (support)]

It's extremely unlikely that Indigo is killing your interfaces (though it could be your Mac). Questions:

1. Which Z-Stick are you using (Series 2 or Gen5)?
2. If you unplug the Insteon stick, does the Z-Stick work?
3. Is the Z-Stick plugged directly into your Mac or a hub?

Also you haven’t tried installing an old driver for it have you? I did that by accident a while ago and caused all sorts of odd behaviour! (Afaik the gen 5 model doesn’t require any drivers to be installed on recent MacOS’s)

Which Z-Stick are you using (Series 2 or Gen5)?
If you unplug the Insteon stick, does the Z-Stick work?
Is the Z-Stick plugged directly into your Mac or a hub?

It's a Z-Wave Plus Gen5, about 18 month old
The Z-Stick does not work, whether or not the Insteon stick is plugged in
The Z-Stick was previously plugged into a hub that it worked with, but when it failed to communicate, I plugged it directly into my Mac Mini's USB3 port and tonight, that worked. I do have a Dynex USB2 hub that you (Jay) had mentioned seemed to work with the Z-Stick and I'm going to give that a try. The only port I had in my Mac Mini was the USB that my external SuperDrive was plugged into. I'm going to see if the Dynex hub can help resolve my port availability.

It appears that my problems in connecting or more specifically, re-connecting the Z-Stick were similar to problems with my replacement Insteon dual-band MODEM. In Indigo, I had to uncheck an incorrect port when I moved either device to physically different USB ports, whether directly to the Mac or through a USB hub. That was something that I had not realized even after diddling with the system for over six years.

I also discovered that my original Insteon dual-band MODEM, while it worked most of the time, apparently did not actually function as a dual-band device and I was constantly moving signal bridges around and adding filters to various pieces of equipment. The new MODEM, with a much later firmware version, works really reliably. I think a lot of the flakiness and signal quality problems with Insteon were related to the MODEM itself. It finally failed and would not work at all, for which I am grateful. I finally feel that I have a reliable system, incorporating 3 wall-mounted Echo Dots and 1 Amazon Echo, using the Alexa-Hue Bridge. This plug in is truly a great addition to Indigo. I'm looking forward to trying the new version.