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Problems with zwave

Since that update to the 1.x version of Homey I having troubles with my z-wave devices. Fibaro dimmers that never had any problems no show strange behaviour. I have to sometimes use the switch 3 times to switch on or of. Especially those who are also controlled by other zwave switches. I never had this problem before.

Comments

  • are you on 1.0.3 or 1.0.4 ?
  • I'm having issues with zwave too. Homey version 1.0.5.
    Every day my zwave network is down. So the lights aren't switched according to my program. I have two Fibaro zwave plus wallplugs and a Aeotec dimmer also zwave plus.  I have two Fibaro zwave plus door/window sensors. They loose their status. So I can't see if the doors are open or closed. Battery status and temperature is also lost. The only way to reset is to remove the sensors from the zwave network and then add them again. This also means that I have to check all the flows inwhich I use the sensors. Ths is pretty annoying.  Does anyone know what to do? I wanted to remove my Homewizard and completely rely on Homey with zwave. But it looks to be a little to soon to do this.  :# 
  • That's a strange issue :o Can't you just reboot Homey to get everything back? Or pull-the-plug ? Otherwise I would certainly create an issue because Homey should definitely keep its settings...
  • Thanks for your reaction. I have rebooted multiple times because pairing the sensors and checking all the flows is a bit of work.
    Rebooting makes Homey fall into the current program. wich currently is the evening setting where multiple, light are turned on. A couple of these are the Fibaro plugs. When they switch Homey sees or know the status of the zwave plug. (you probably know more about zwave then me ;-) But the door/window sensors don't show their status, alarm on/off, battery status nor temperature (I installed the special extra temp sensor from Fibaro) 
    Just to let you know I have given Homey plenty of time to reboot but even after half an hour no status from the sensors. Also very strange that for no particular reason the status of the Fibaro plugs is lost and that a reboot is nessesary to get the status to recover. This should be covered in the zwave protocol right?  
  • Hi, it can take a while (sometimes even a day) for battery devices to report their status (battery, temperature etc). This is because Homey can't wake a battery device up (this would cost to much battery). If you wake your device manually (mostly for Fibaro devices by pushing the button three times) it should report their status to Homey.
  • Thanks for your I formation. I'll give one sensor all the time it needs. But it's still very strange that for the third day all status info of the sensors and the Fibaro and Aeotec plugs is lost. And that I have to reboot Homey to get it moving again don't you think?
  • could you place them for a test closer to homey?
  • I will try that with the spare sensor. But unfortunately the sensor that I woke up yesterday night has lost it's status completely again.looks like it happens every 24 hrs.
  • I have some progression. By waking up the spare sensor close to Homey, the other sensor somehow woke up. Thank for the advice @Gerjan I currently have temperature reading and also the alarm status. Only the battery status is not displayed. 
  • @mightymarc2005 battery not reporting is a known issue with the Fibaro sensors
  • I have some progression. By waking up the spare sensor close to Homey, the other sensor somehow woke up. Thank for the advice @Gerjan I currently have temperature reading and also the alarm status. Only the battery status is not displayed. 

    it looks like a range issue, more people have this issue, the receiving capacity of homey looks very bad this moment. Problems wit 433 and Zwave.......
  • Could be but I'm not sure. I have the spare sensor now lying 10 cms from Homey for two days, but still no reception of the battery status. Also the sensor that is in use is only 5 meters from Homey and there is an extra zwave plus plus in between. I think something else is wrong. I think someone should have to look into this.
  • In my opinion fully functional and stable Zwave network should have the highest priority. 
  • battery-status is an issue of Fibaro, not Homey... There's tons of messages about issues with battery-levels...
    for instance: http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=175394

  • battery-status is an issue of Fibaro, not Homey... There's tons of messages about issues with battery-levels...
    for instance: http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=175394


    And the range? also fibaro problem?
  • Gerjan said:
    battery-status is an issue of Fibaro, not Homey... There's tons of messages about issues with battery-levels...
    for instance: http://board.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=175394


    And the range? also fibaro problem?
    I agree @Gerjan. The last couple of weeks I have had multiple range issues with Z-wave. Two switches that are only three metres from Homey without any obstacles don't report status or won't switch from a programmed flow. I now invested for almost 300,- euros in z-wave switches and sensors. And now I have to find out that battery reporting is a known Fibaro issue (but nobody mentions this on the Homey app information). My Fibaro sensors FGK-10x also fail to report temperatures. They have worked but just disapear after a while. It would be nice to know what performance you could expect when buying z-wave wear. I didn't expect Athom to support faulty z-wave brands.
    In my opinion a fully functional and stable z-wave network should have the highest priority. This is more inportant than wallpapers and some media functionality.
  • casedacaseda Member
    edited January 2017
    lol,
    @mightymarc2005 said:
    I didn't expect Athom to support faulty z-wave brands.

    if you don't wanna support any "faulty" z-wave brands, then there are NO z-wave brands left, they all have something that is not fully right according to the z-wave specification.

    people buy homey because it can support Everything, so not supporting one of the 3 biggest z-wave brands in europe, it is like banning 40% of all z-wave devices

    we are talking here now only 1 specific (wireless) language that there is out there that athom supports.
    it's getting updated regularly to increase the speed, stability and/or functionality with almost every update.

    don't get me wrong, things are not working as it should right now, but don't just start thinking athom isn't doing everything they can in their power to fix any issues that comes in between.

    they are not a massive company, and there are not a lot of people that can work with the z-wave core (trust me, it is an enormously extensive code)
    it is very hard to pinpoint a (certain) bug(s) which can be only 1 character on the wrong place.
    i'll challenge you to try to find 1 badly placed character in a code with over 10.000 lines of code, placed over multiple files.

  • caseda said:
    lol,
    @mightymarc2005 said:
    I didn't expect Athom to support faulty z-wave brands.

    if you don't wanna support any "faulty" z-wave brands, then there are NO z-wave brands left, they all have something that is not fully right according to the z-wave specification.

    people buy homey because it can support Everything, so not supporting one of the 3 biggest z-wave brands in europe, it is like banning 40% of all z-wave devices

    we are talking here now only 1 specific (wireless) language that there is out there that athom supports.
    it's getting updated regularly to increase the speed, stability and/or functionality with almost every update.

    don't get me wrong, things are not working as it should right now, but don't just start thinking athom isn't doing everything they can in their power to fix any issues that comes in between.

    they are not a massive company, and there are not a lot of people that can work with the z-wave core (trust me, it is an enormously extensive code)
    it is very hard to pinpoint a (certain) bug(s) which can be only 1 character on the wrong place.
    i'll challenge you to try to find 1 badly placed character in a code with over 10.000 lines of code, placed over multiple files.


    When Athom knows they have a wireless range issue, let them show there is a problem, and that they work on it!

    Now we spend a lot of hours testing, changing from Kaku 433 to Zwave, spend a lot of money on new sensors, and it still does not works fine.

    And now you tell us we putt all that time and money into a black hole, because Athom knew the problem was Homey itself and not the other equipment?

    Do you think I was going to this much trouble, if Athom let have let me know that they still had a problem with 433 and Zwave?
  • casedacaseda Member
    edited January 2017
    athom has already told many times that they know there is a range problem, not only 433 but also z-wave
    and they also told us that they are working on this to improve this:

    just a few comments about this i found in 2 seconds of searching:
    https://forum.athom.com/discussion/comment/36272/#Comment_36272
    https://forum.athom.com/discussion/comment/36270/#Comment_36270

    they are not going to keep repeating themselves every topic that is created for this.

    there is a big positive about z-wave vs 433, and that is its mesh network.
    the only reason that it is not working properly is not a range issue that was added, but the way data is being handled inside homey (which increased data handeling almost 4 times!), the main cause of most troubles at the moment.

    like i said in my previous post, they are working on the issues as hard as they can, it's just VERY (and i really mean VERY) hard to debug certain issues.
    i rather have them repair these issues then answer every post that is created on the forum/slack or whatever other communication option there is with the same answer over and over.

    Small edit:
    and it also seems you never worked with filtering wireless data like 433mhz band on a very broad range.
    including alle wireless data that is next to it, like 868 (2x!) and 2.4ghz of the bluetooth and wifi chip that are already implemented.
    not to mention the zigbee chip which is also near those ranges (868 and 2.4) which they also want to activate somewhere in the future.
    it is all something they need to think about NOW and not that later when they really want to activate it
  • Gerjan said:
    caseda said:
    lol,
    @mightymarc2005 said:
    I didn't expect Athom to support faulty z-wave brands.

    if you don't wanna support any "faulty" z-wave brands, then there are NO z-wave brands left, they all have something that is not fully right according to the z-wave specification.

    people buy homey because it can support Everything, so not supporting one of the 3 biggest z-wave brands in europe, it is like banning 40% of all z-wave devices

    we are talking here now only 1 specific (wireless) language that there is out there that athom supports.
    it's getting updated regularly to increase the speed, stability and/or functionality with almost every update.

    don't get me wrong, things are not working as it should right now, but don't just start thinking athom isn't doing everything they can in their power to fix any issues that comes in between.

    they are not a massive company, and there are not a lot of people that can work with the z-wave core (trust me, it is an enormously extensive code)
    it is very hard to pinpoint a (certain) bug(s) which can be only 1 character on the wrong place.
    i'll challenge you to try to find 1 badly placed character in a code with over 10.000 lines of code, placed over multiple files.


    When Athom knows they have a wireless range issue, let them show there is a problem, and that they work on it!

    Now we spend a lot of hours testing, changing from Kaku 433 to Zwave, spend a lot of money on new sensors, and it still does not works fine.

    And now you tell us we putt all that time and money into a black hole, because Athom knew the problem was Homey itself and not the other equipment?

    Do you think I was going to this much trouble, if Athom let have let me know that they still had a problem with 433 and Zwave?
    And then there is that not everybody has those  issues that are mentioned.  That makes it even harder to find where the problem is.
  • caseda said:
    athom has already told many times that they know there is a range problem, not only 433 but also z-wave
    and they also told us that they are working on this to improve this:

    just a few comments about this i found in 2 seconds of searching:
    https://forum.athom.com/discussion/comment/36272/#Comment_36272
    https://forum.athom.com/discussion/comment/36270/#Comment_36270

    they are not going to keep repeating themselves every topic that is created for this.

    there is a big positive about z-wave vs 433, and that is its mesh network.
    the only reason that it is not working properly is not a range issue that was added, but the way data is being handled inside homey (which increased data handeling almost 4 times!), the main cause of most troubles at the moment.

    like i said in my previous post, they are working on the issues as hard as they can, it's just VERY (and i really mean VERY) hard to debug certain issues.
    i rather have them repair these issues then answer every post that is created on the forum/slack or whatever other communication option there is with the same answer over and over.

    Small edit:
    and it also seems you never worked with filtering wireless data like 433mhz band on a very broad range.
    including alle wireless data that is next to it, like 868 (2x!) and 2.4ghz of the bluetooth and wifi chip that are already implemented.
    not to mention the zigbee chip which is also near those ranges (868 and 2.4) which they also want to activate somewhere in the future.
    it is all something they need to think about NOW and not that later when they really want to activate it
    I didn 'd say they do not work hard enough, thats not the problem, I admire their work.

    But I also have seen updates where they talk about 433 improvements. So you expect that problems should be solved.
  • I do understand it is hard work. I know something about programming myself. It is just that I, as a customer, don't have a clue about priorities that Athom makes. What triggered me was a post Emile made in the Software Status: https://forum.athom.com/discussion/1430/software-status/p1
    In week 49, 2016 Emile mentions that, quote:
    "We have 1.0.4 planned for next week, which has some small bugfixes (Z-Wave and some smaller ones) and smaller features (Time & date 'between' Flow cards). From there we'll be finalizing Homey 1.1.0, which will include the long expected Media update."
    Well if Z-wave doesn't work stable and functionality is limited how can you speak about "small bugfixes" Also when we all know how much work this is to solve. In this same post I have to read about media functionality and wallpapers. I'm sorry but this just feels wrong. Also the range issue of Z-wave if read a post by Emile, quote:
    "there's nothing we can do to improve the range actually. We're using the chip as provided by Z-Wave and passed all of their range tests. So hardware-wise it's best it can be, and software wise we don't have access to it.
    It might be your surroundings. Try tinkering around a little bit until you find a better configuration, or maybe add powered nodes so they can route information to other nodes."
    This was in semptember 2016: https://forum.athom.com/discussion/1647/very-bad-z-wave-range/p1
    Just to be clear. I appreciate all the help I get on this forum. It is just frustrating to miss the right information and pointing to other manufacturers like Fibaro for the faulty of battery status  and temperature reading of FGK-10x. And the Z-wave chip manufacturer when many people claim to have problems with the range of z-wave products. 
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