Goodbye Domoticz ? OZW 1.6 nightmare

[Logread]

Hi all,

I am writing in large part to vent my immense frustration with the nightmare that OZW 1.6 has brought to my home automation.

I have been running Domoticz on multiple Raspberry Pis since 2016, always with latest OS updates and successive Domoticz versions. Two of my production systems, featuring extensive zwave hardware of many different makes (Fibaro, Aetoec, ...) have been running rock solid until the advent of OpenZwave 1.6 last fall.

Because I have developed a few popular python plugins (Smart Virtual Thermostat, Battery Level for ZWave, NUT UPS, ...) have have tried to stay up to date on successive Domoticz betas to help users in adapting to new versions of the host system.

However, each successive domoticz version since OZW 1.6 was introduced got messier and messier with my ZWave network, to the point that I can no longer include/exclude devices, multichannel associations do not work, Fibaro FGPB-101 Button is no longer recognized, etc, etc...

And now with Domoticz 2020.1 many of my nodes (especially FGS-223 switches) just died...

Enough is enough... I will not rebuild extensive ZWave networks from scratch. Now back on 4.10717 Domoticz on all my production systems (with loss of many months of logs).

If I ever have to upgrade because of new hardware not supported, I will most probably go for a commercial platform.

Too bad because I strongly supported Domoticz, even made some minor contributions to its code and developed several popular plugins... But this OpenZWave mess is too much for me to stand.

[Egregius]

You just have to wake them, refresh the node info or even power cycle them.

[Gerwin]

Hello Logread,

i have a lot's of z-wave devices and i update also to 2020.1 no devices aren't working, after awake al node's every device works again.
i use a long time svt i'm verry happy with these plugin ,so i hope you are trying one time again to update to 2020.1
and stay by Domoticz ,

Gerwin

[cincuranet]

I feel your pain @Logread. In fact I'm too considering switching to some commercial platform - if I ever decide to re-include all the devices (56 at the moment). Over the years I did some small contributions around and I think dzVents is a great tool - probably best on the market, so I'm gonna miss that, but I hope i.e. Fibaro Home Centers will offer some other nice features.

For me the upgrade to 2020.1 and hence OZW 1.6 create a big mess. The Domoticz was crashing with exceptions from OZW, some of my devices were not properly working. Some examples:

* Aeotec MS was reporting temperature fine, but motion sensor was not working. Refreshing Node Info and really manually waking it up (although mine wakes up quite frequently) solved it until next reboot (might be because of OZW exceptions in Domoticz, still an issue).
* NodOn switch, although sending and, based on the LED, delivering the message, was not triggering any switch in Domoticz. Trying to learn new switch did nothing - neither telling me I already have this switch or learning new.
* Same for Aeotec KeyFobs as for NodOn. And even worse, when doing the learning it showed me few time that I already have that switch and showing name of Fibaro switch or wall plug.

And the already mentioned exceptions. It took like 4 reboots to start Domoticz and even then it eventually crashed again.

I'm just happy it didn't fucked up my Z-Wave network on Z-Stick and I was able to revert back.

[mgugu]

Hello all,
Reporting my experience:
Upgraded today to last beta (11836), I did not observe any problem with 77 zwave nodes. It was even not necessary for me to wake up or refresh nodes.
Good luck

[dressie]

I have 32 nodes,11 are powered by 230v and the remaining are through battery. I heard all the horror stories about the upgrade to 1.6.
Well, this week I did the update to 2020. After this I had to wake-up all the battery powered nodes and did a reconnect. Every node came back without any issues, and had no problems since.
It's hard to tell why some have mayor problems and others don't. All I know is that I use the AEON LABS Gen5 stick as a controller and it never has let me down!
I hope the Domoticz community will come up with an solution for those who experiance issues.

[EddyG]

I also had it up and running with all my nodes, the battery ones after a wakeup.
BUT the first restart of Domoticz gave crashes, and could not get it working anymore.
And yes I deleted the cache file, but still craches.
So I went back to the previous stable, and that worked instantly fine.
I am thinking of replacing ALL my Zwave device by Zigbee devices.

[heggink]

OZW1.6 is definitely more susceptible to issues. 3 days ago, I was having increasing problems with 1 plug (popp 3.4kw) timing out. Until then, I was also getting ozw crashes.
When I took the plug out, one of the leads was corroded. I excluded the plug and replaced with a spare ikea plug. Since then, no more crashes (at least not for the past 5 days where I had a crash every other day) and far less OZW timeouts...
Looks like the error handling can do with a little improvement over at ozw...

Sent from phone.