"Can't Detect Device" UI7 on ZWave battery devices - root issue identification

[Aaron]

Looking for your input/help figuring this out.

Hypothesis...
Bug with how the Vera is creating Neighbor Devices is causing communications to fail?

Why that Hypothesis...
Tech Support noticed ALL of the failing devices have Neighbor Nodes to the two same devices (5 & 135) BUT those are NOT ZWAVE devices!  (5=Irrigation controller; 135=device created from the Ping Sensor app)

Possible Fix...
Anyone know how to manually/permanently remove Neighbor Devices withing the Zwave configs?



Seems like everyone, or almost everyone, who migrated from UI5 to UI7 has this issue.
 - Don't know if this is related but ALL of my Motion Sensors NEVER show the proper status, they never show a tripped state.

My basic testing:

1. pull batteries for ALL my battery operated ZWave devices - and put them back in. For a while, the ?Can?t Detect Devices? message did go away on all of those devices that are actually in use. But a few hours later that message returned.

2. As a test, I excluded and included one of my Motion Sensors. While it no longer, ever, shows the ?Can?t Detect Devices? message it still NEVER registers a state change (tripped).

[RichardTSchaefer]

You are misunderstanding this .. Z-Wave nodes are identified by the AltId in a vera device.
You need to find the Vera Devices that have an AltId of 5 and 135

[Sender]

You are misunderstanding this .. Z-Wave nodes are identified by the AltId in a vera device.
You need to find the Vera Devices that have an AltId of 5 and 135

Richard,

what is the difference between a device number and an altid?

[michaelhinchey]

You are misunderstanding this .. Z-Wave nodes are identified by the AltId in a vera device.
You need to find the Vera Devices that have an AltId of 5 and 135

Richard,

what is the difference between a device number and an altid?

Just in case anyone needs clarification here is the answer here.
Thread:  http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=27218.0

A Z-Wave device has two identities: Within the Z-Wave network, it has a Node number; Within Vera, it has a Device number. When you add a new device it usually gets the next number of each type - one higher than the last added device.

When you are controlling and programming devices with Vera you usually refer to them by Device number. The actual control via the Z-Wave network uses the Node number.

On the Settings tab, ID refers to the Node number.

On the Advanced tab, id refers to the Device number and altid refers to the Node number.

Neighbors are the Node numbers that are within communications range of a device.

In AutoRoute, there may be several routes separated by commas. Each route is a Node number - or multiple Nodes separated by periods - followed by a dash and a score. The score indicates the latency of the route and small numbers are better. There may also be an x suffix which indicates that the route failed when last tried. Note: This does not necessarily mean that it doesn't work...

 

[rafale77]

A couple of weeks ago, I came back one day and ran into a massive number of my devices reporting the "can't detect device" problem.
For the first device I did a reset of the device, deleted it from the vera and paired it again. What I noticed before doing it though was that the device (a switch which happen to have a direct association to another device) was actually still functioning properly within the zwave network. The direct zwave association had no problem but does not rely on the Vera. Having 20+ devices having this error. I decided to try to recover from a backup... and it worked!

My conclusion is that the Vera Plus with the current firmware is very prone to memory/data corruption which causes all kinds of havoc. I had the intermittent error in "Lua code or startup Lua " come and removed by restarting the Luup engine which was already a sign of memory corruption but was resolved with the last firmware.

[Wallace4793]

Hi,

I am having all sorts of probelms with "error code 1 - cannot detect device" after upgrading to UI7. I have had to restore to default and add all my devices again but still devices work for a while (sometimes minutes, sometimes hours) and then report the error code 1... to confuse matters they do react to vera and switch off/off but do not show the status changes in the UI and report error code 1.

Is this an issue with UI7. My unit is a vera lite.

John

[battars]

I've asked this same question in another thread regarding a deadbolt - apologies if it counts as a repost:

Is anyone with a fresh install having this issue? I currently have a Vera 3 on UI5 but I'm contemplating starting from scratch with a Vera Plus. I'm wondering if some of these quirks are related to upgrade bugs. Thanks

[Shaigan]

I've started a fresh install on a VeraPlus on UI7 1.7.1786 and I've got some "Can't Detect Device" problems on battery operated devices like two Everspring HSM02 and a Fibaro FGD221; and some startup crashes some times to times.

As a personal advice, if your UI5 Vera3 is fully functionnal, just wait the resolution of those bugs before upgrade it.

[Aaron]

I've started a fresh install on a VeraPlus on UI7 1.7.1786 and I've got some "Can't Detect Device" problems on battery operated devices like two Everspring HSM02 and a Fibaro FGD221; and some startup crashes some times to times.

As a personal advice, if your UI5 Vera3 is fully functionnal, just wait the resolution of those bugs before upgrade it.

Exactly... Amazing that Vera llc made the firmware 3x worse (more major bugs) than ui5 and still haven't fixed it. They are so inept ui7 might never be usable.

 I'm staying on Vera 3 with UI5 and looking at moving to Homeseer, just haven't had time.

[shallowearth]

If you are on an Edge the last good firmware was    1.7.1248,
After that they took an update to the z-wave chipset, which is when the can't detect device problems started.  I highly suspect most of these issues are do to that chipset firmware update, as it changed how routing and healing works, and gave more control directly to the z-wave firmware vs the Vera firmware.

Unfortunately you can't just down grade to this firmware, you also have to ask support to down grade the z-wave chipset firmware, also if you don't have the version of PLEG that works on this firmware you out of luck there too since the current version is not compatible.

Such a shame, things were on the right track with UI7 until that point.  I am hanging out there until they work out the buggy z-wave chipset issues that cause the detect device issues.

[battars]

I've started a fresh install on a VeraPlus on UI7 1.7.1786 and I've got some "Can't Detect Device" problems on battery operated devices like two Everspring HSM02 and a Fibaro FGD221; and some startup crashes some times to times.

As a personal advice, if your UI5 Vera3 is fully functionnal, just wait the resolution of those bugs before upgrade it.

Thanks for the advice. I may end up just running the VeraPlus and the Vera3 simultaneously and independently of each other, unless there's hope that the bugs will be resolved in the near future?

The garage opener device I have requires UI7, and I figured a fresh start would be a good opportunity to start fresh in a much more methodical way, but there's no point in introducing more bugs into the system.

Does the VeraPlus have a "good" firmware version that didn't have all of these device detection issues?

[Shaigan]

Does the VeraPlus have a "good" firmware version that didn't have all of these device detection issues?

I think "no"... ll firmwares are bugged.

[shallowearth]

Unfortunately the Plus shipped with the higher versioned firmware than the Edge so had the problem on day one, that is why mine is still in the box.

[Aaron]

I figured out why they call it Plus... Plus more bugs, Plus more frustration, Plus it's a great paperweight

[Don Phillips]

I just ignore the "can't detect device" on my 2 door sensors. I suspect they go to sleep to save power but will send a signal when the door is opened. It is functioning just fine, but the error can be annoying.