Mac Mini i7 Quad Core
8 GB RAM
1TB Conventional hard drive
El Capitan (OSX 10.11.1)
Indigo 6.1.4
In my old house, I bought the previous Aeon Labs Z-stick and plugged it into a powered USB hub. It was not recognized as a USBMODEM, but as a USB Serial Port. At that time, I had no available port in my Mac Mini i7, so I sent back the Z-stick. Since I've moved and Aeon has introduced the Gen5 Z-Stick, I just picked one of those up. I had the same problem when plugging it into a powered hub. Fortunately, I now have an open port directly into my Mac. The USB MODEM port appeared as an option and I was able to initialize the Z-Stick.
I noticed that in the Indigo documentation for Z-Wave interfaces, there was mention of acquiring a powered USB hub to allow the Z-Stick to be plugged in vertically, to allow for possible greater range. Unfortunately, as I said above, plugging the Z-Stick into the USB hub was not recognized properly by Indigo. USB hubs should generally work with any device that is designed to USB specifications, but neither generation of the Z-Stick has worked with ANY of my USB2 or USB3 powered hubs with either Yosemite or previously with Mavericks. I'd like to know who might be using either generation of Z-Stick with a powered USB hub. If you have gotten this to work, which Mac did you use, and did you need to use a particular USB hub, OS version, or???
I can now accept this limitation, but what I would like to know is what is the technical issue with using the Z-Stick in a powered USB hub? I've tried several different hubs that everything else I use works with, but neither generation of the Z-Stick and Indigo 6. Since all Macs are made by Apple, which Macs actually will allow the Z-Sticks to be connected via a powered USB hub, as the Indigo documentation suggests has worked relatively well for the developers?
Thanks for reading this lengthy post.