Gotcha with Aeotec Z Stick Gen 5 - Mac Mini won't restart

Just a reminder of an issue that caught me out. I have had some issues with my Z stick losing it's connection during optimisation (which still fails and grays out random devices). During the trouble shooting I must have swapped the USB ports on the Mac mini (or when I moved it into my newly installed Rack). OS Update to High Sierra and 7.2 upgrade later I find the Mini won't even boot up to the Apple logo. With my failing brain cells it doesn't register I had this issue when I first started with Indigo in 2015, my recollection was a PRAM reset fixed it, and after a number of failed attempts the forums came to my rescue. The obscure fix is the Z Stick must be in the USB port nearest the power button.

I still have the issue with optimisation

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Z-Wave                          Optimizing - skipped "024 - Dining" (unreachable)

2 Oct 2018 at 20:08:38
   Z-Wave Error                    send sendPingZwaveCommand failed after 9 attempts
   Z-Wave Error                    restarting serial connection in 5.0 seconds
   Interface Failure               lost connection with interface


And the interface won't reset unless I unplug the Z stick.

Any ideas gratefully received.

Neil

[jay (support)]

Which mini do you have exactly? Also, what's the firmware version of the Z-Stick? It should show when the Z-Wave interface starts up in a line something like:

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   Z-Wave                          connected to Z-Stick Plus (ZW090)  interface on /dev/usbmodem411 (firmware 1.0.0)

I vaguely remember you posting about your workaround before, but I've never heard of anyone else with that issue.

Jay,

I actually have 2 sticks, as I ordered a new one when the problem first happened and I suspected failing hardware (some others reported similar symptoms). The new one also did the same, and I tried upgrading my original which is in place now, but they both behave the same way.

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Starting interface "Z-Wave 2.0.119" (pid 8280)
   Started interface "Z-Wave 2.0.119"
   Z-Wave                          connected to Z-Wave 4.54 static controller interface on /dev/cu.usbmodem1411 (firmware 1.01)

The Mini is a Late 2012 i5 with 16Gb RAM and an SSD.

The workaround wasn't mine, but taken from https://forums.indigodomo.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=14060&start=30 but it does the trick.

No great drama as it seems to only fail during an optimise, bit the first time it happened was during my night time trigger that shuts everything down so it could be related to higher volume Z wave activity.

The stick definitely gets in a bad state, as a reboot doesn't fix it, you have to physically unplug it, and the led freezes on the colour it was cycling at the time.

Thanks,
Neil

[jay (support)]

I have exactly the same mini for testing, so I just tried and viola, it freezes during boot if plugged into a slot that isn't the one you identify. This seems to indicate that there's just some kind of hardware incompatibility between the Z-Stick Gen5 and this Mac model (it doesn't do it when I reboot a couple of MacBooks with it plugged in). I also tried the HomeSeer SmartStick+, which also uses the modem driver, and it works as well.

[matt (support)]

Thanks for the reminder on this. I had totally forgotten about this issue (and the fix).