Aeon Labs Z-Stick Series 2 (DSA02203)

[jay (support)]

Yes, Indigo supports both at the same time.

Not what I was expecting, but exactly what I wanted to hear since I just received the delivery confirmation email from Amazon for my z-stick. Thanks for the quick response. I'm looking forward to being able to start tapping into the z wave devices.

After resolving some issues earlier in this thread, my Zwave network has been flawless--- until about 3 days ago. Now I'm seeing lots of "no ack" next to many devices.

My system: Mac OS 10.9, Indigo 6.0.7, Z-wave only with Z-stick for lights and Vera for door locks. Plugins: Vera Bridge, WeatherSnoop, NOAA Weather Plus.

I have restarted the computer, tried different USB ports, and tried resyncing a few devices. The red "no ack" devices will not resync and they time out after 300 seconds. (even if the device is 15 feet directly in front of the Z-stick).

During the "turn on all inside lights" Action group, the Zwave bar fills with green chunks waiting for responses from various devices--- the responses never get back to Indigo, but more often than not, the lights eventually turn on.

Until recently, action groups have responded almost instantly, with just a brief moving green bar followed by a purple bar ion the Z-wave display area.

The Vera Bridge plugin is working fine-- in fact I have some lights (in a separate building) on a Vera, and they work fine, as do my door locks. Their on/off state updates eventually, as is normal for the Vera Plugin.

Is my Z-stick sick? Can it send commands but not receive acknowledgements? Is there interference in the Z-wave network? The only recent change I can recall has been updating Indigo software to 6.0.7-- but that is not likely the cause. I hope I've been thorough with my description of the issues. Thanks for any guidance!

Wow, you have written exactly what I have been experiencing over the last couple of days, nothing to do with the latest update as I updated today hoping it might fix my issues, the only thing that I can think of is that it has something to do with re-syncing devices, that seems to block up Indigo for quite some time and I have noticed that the Z-stick light goes off and stays off, restarting the server gets it back to normal for a while.

Wow, you have written exactly what I have been experiencing over the last couple of days, nothing to do with the latest update as I updated today hoping it might fix my issues, the only thing that I can think of is that it has something to do with re-syncing devices, that seems to block up Indigo for quite some time and I have noticed that the Z-stick light goes off and stays off, restarting the server gets it back to normal for a while.

Not sure if this is possible but I assume that most times Indigo calls the Z-Stick to send/receive a message and the response comes back quickly?

It would be helpful if Indigo was able to flag up the device or devices taking a long time to respond so that they could be investigated.
It might just be one device that is causing the issue that has a knock on effect for the others.

All I get in the log is-

Z-Wave Error no ack/nak/busy reply for setRelayValue (re-sending)
Z-Wave Error send "POOL TABLE LIGHTS" off failed

The green bar stays stuck in the middle for a minuite or two then clears and the lights come on, this has started to happen over the last few days but I have been adding more Z-Wave modules.

[matt (support)]

I'm not sure exactly what is causing the problem you are seeing. The LED going off on the Z-Stick is an indication that it isn't receiving an ACK back from the module, and thus is re-sending the command several times. All those retries slow everything down. Indigo doesn't have control over that level of communication -- it just tells the Z-Stick it wants a command sent to a particular node and the Z-Stick takes it from there.

It sounds like perhaps the routing tables used by the Z-Stick have become bad. Re-syncing devices in Indigo helps to tell the Z-Stick to rebuild the routing table around the node you are re-syncing. So you might have to re-sync several different nodes to get the routing tables fixed. The Z-Stick could be malfunctioning, or another possibility is that one of the nodes used for routing to the modules that aren't reachable is failing (thus it isn't routing correctly). Another possibility, as you mentioned, is interference on the route somewhere.

I would suggest you try re-syncing your modules that are reachable to see if that helps rebuilt the routes to the modules that aren't reachable. If nothing helps then a last ditch effort would be to reset the Z-Stick via the Interfaces->Z-Wave->Reset Z-Wave Intervace... menu item. You'll then need to re-include all of the modules, and then re-sync the devices in Indigo (choosing the new node ID in the UI before starting the resync). Note though that you do not have to delete/add Devices in Indigo. You'll just re-include in the Z-Stick then re-sync in Indigo.

Thanks Matt, I did a re-sync of almost 40 Z-Wave modules and everything seems much snappier and working well.

... And my zwave issue cleared up as well, but I'm not entirely sure what happened.

As I stated in an earlier post, I changed USB ports. I also eliminated my USB extension cable, so that might have done it.

Around the same time, I restarted my Vera device. The vera had between working, but stopped communicating with my locks at some point.

I also stopped the Weathersoop plugin-- it wasn't getting data all the time and had turned red. No, it isn't zwave, it gathers its data from another computer via Ethernet, but it is something I changed, so I thought I'd mention it.

Between those things and well, maybe sun spots, the zwave network cleaned itself up and I have no red items on the list. Back to normal-- everything works.

[matt (support)]

I've had reproducible problems with the Z-Stick and a USB extension cable. It causes strange and unpredictable problems. A powered USB hub works better.

I will give that a try, can you use a usb extension cable with the powered hub? or should the stick go into the hub?

[matt (support)]

Unfortunately, the stick needs to go directly into the hub based on my experience.

Oh great-- thank you for the help. I will try a powered hub. The computer I use for Indigo is in a separate room and I wanted to put the z-stick in the main room with lots of z-wave devices. I have more z-wave devices than when I started, so the z-wave network is likely more robust and seems to be strong enough to support the z-stick while attached to my rather isolated computer.

The extension cable worked fine for a long time, but likely became unreliable. Thanks again.

Are there any interface devices supported by Indigo that support both ZWave and Insteon ? Or do I need to buy 2 seperate controllers ?

[matt (support)]

You will need 2 different USB interface controllers.