Z-Stick Plus (ZW090) Gen5 Lockup / unresponsive problem

Posted on
Sat Dec 14, 2019 7:21 pm
mediabox offline
Posts: 48
Joined: Apr 15, 2016
Location: chicago, il

Z-Stick Plus (ZW090) Gen5 Lockup / unresponsive problem

Have an issue where my Z-Stick lockups - usually 90sec or longer. Found it wouldn't turn devices on/off and I noticed the LED ( which normal flashing) was not flashing on the Zstick. Eject and reinsert usually solved it for a day or so. Found that a distant device (Node81 0x51) was having comm issues. Indigo would send commands, but no reply was heard. This normally triggered the lockup / unresponsivness for some time.

Did a few things like remove/re-add nodes in that area of the house that are needed to bridge to this far device. And always had issues sync'ing to this far node 81 - but sometimes I would cheat and bring the device closer to sync would be successful. I noticed when sync failed or when trying to turn on/off (Node81 0x51) the Z-stick would lockup (Z-stick LEDs would be constant on or no lights on). Usually Indigo logs would show lots of re-sends and no RCVD packets, and re-init of the interface.

Any suggestions? In summary, I've tried:

- moving to different USB ports on the MacMini
- relearning device and devices nearby to aid in the mesh network
- replacing the Zstick gen 5
- (very recent) disabled my retry's to communicate to Node81. This exacerbated the Zstick lockup. Retries was something like:
1) turn off node 81
2) delay action 3 minute, turn off node 81
3) delay action 5 minutes turn off node 81

There are other error like:
module 073 included in controller does not match device "Masterbed Fan" type (controller module type: zwDimmerType/zwDimmerType (4, 17, 4), indigo device type: zwDimmerType (4, 17, 8))

Which not sure they contribute to the issue but seem innocuous. I've attached a log showing what happens when I turn device off and sync. Thanks in advance.
Attachments
comm_with_node0x51_causes_zstick_lockup.txt
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Posted on
Sun Feb 02, 2020 10:56 pm
mediabox offline
Posts: 48
Joined: Apr 15, 2016
Location: chicago, il

Re: Z-Stick Plus (ZW090) Gen5 Lockup / unresponsive problem

Turning on debug helped figure this out a little, I could see when things were struggling. Took a while and think 99% better. After re-syncing devices, and swapping things out, I did what Aeotec support suggested which was 'possible bad zwave device on your network - sometime hard to fix'. So I started to power zwave devices completely off in suspected area, and even replaced a few. Think I had a bad zwave wall switch. When deenergized (pulled out the little tab) for 18 days (and syncing things after to retrain devices in certain areas of the house), the problem went away. With the wall switch deenergized, the logs show on average 1 "no ack/nak/busy reply" a day. With this wall switch energized, I get 1 every 30 mins. Though maybe not super fair, I didn't resync nearby devices.

So question becomes, is there a good way to find poorly performing zwave devices? Is there a z-wave Wireshark tool that decodes zwave? Or a spectrum analyzer just to see the rf emissions from a device?

Posted on
Wed Feb 05, 2020 12:27 pm
matt (support) offline
Site Admin
User avatar
Posts: 21411
Joined: Jan 27, 2003
Location: Texas

Re: Z-Stick Plus (ZW090) Gen5 Lockup / unresponsive problem

Thanks for the follow-up message, and sorry we didn't respond to your initial post. It fell through the cracks somehow.

I don't personally have any experience with Z-Wave troubleshooting controllers, but I believe there are a few of them. Here is an example of one.

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