I purchased 2 of the ZEN57 small relays. They were both going into the hardwired connection of towel warmers. I’ve been successful getting 1 paired and fully operational in home assistant. Unfortunately, the 2nd unit will not pair with home assistant and my zooz z-wave 800 dongle. There is no switch connected to this. At this point, I’ve attempted to reset the bugger a few times and am still unable to get a successful pairing with my 800LR zooz zwave dongle. I’m not even sure it’s resetting.
The device has power and a slow blinking green LED.
When I initially got it into pairing mode and provisioned on the z-wave network, it never completed. I was hoping to test the relay by ensuring I could reset the device before trying to return it.
I tried to exclude it from the network by doing the pairing steps again. While entering the hub’s exclusion mode, I press the device button until I get a fast blinking LED light. It fast blinks for a short bit then goes solid red for 2 counts (I believe it is considered 2 counts), then back to slow blinking. The node is not excluded from the zwave network.
Next step appears to be resetting the device so I can exclude and attempt to re add the device.
When resetting the device with 1 press followed by holding down the button for 15sec, it returns the solid red LED then returns to green slow blink. Following this, I attempted to re-add the device and it still will not complete the interview.
System is using the zooz zwave 800LR dongle and home assistant. I’ve successfully although not always seamlessly populated my zwave network with 24 devices. Several zooz switches and dimmers along with other devices.
Being that one of my relays is setup and working but is located even further than this one from the hub, I don’t believe range should be an issue for where this 2nd unit is located.
Hello, and Welcome to the forum!
A couple of questions:
In Home Assistant are you using ZWave JS or ZWave JS UI?
How are you joining this to Home Assistant?
By scanning the smartstart code and letting it auto-add,
OR
By entering inclusion mode in ZWave JS/UI and then pressing the z-wave button on the ZEN57 three times?
If using the smartstart code, are you attempting ZWave LR or ZWave mesh?
If using the manual inclusion mode (not scanning smartstart) and pressing the z-wave button 3 times, does the ZEN57 react to the 3 presses by the LED flashing faster?
From there, do you ever see the prompt to enter the DSK code in HA? if so, after entering the DSK code, what message do you get back in HA? (Added or not and what level of encryption)?
Lastly, is the ZEN57 itself inside a metal electrical box or other metal enclosure?
That data will give more clues for us to assist.
Thank you
I had an epiphany last night identifying the problem and then I read your response…so, I’ll answer all your questions:
Zwave JS
Joining by Start Inclusion, Scan the Code, and also press the button (still mostly a newbie and this was one step that I wasn’t sure was necessary but incorporated it when the 1st attempt to be identified failed)
Using LR not mesh (big shop+house building)
I do get the fast blinking green LED consistently when doing the 3-button press
It would be added (not sure about the encryption level) but would report as still being interviewed and never complete.
Epiphany is this towel warmer has a metal cover plate (as does my working ZEN57+towel warmer setup). Although one setup is working, I thought that might be just enough to create communication problems with this location. When I mentioned that to my husband who did all the electrical work in this place, he mentioned it actually has a metal electrical box not a plastic one like the working setup. I had no idea and didn’t even pay attention when troubleshooting. He believes we can swap the box out but I need to pick up a remodel box and then we’ll start the process over.
I’ll update this thread once we’ve reworked the box situation. Thank you for the questions and inspiration. If there’s anything you picked up that I could be doing differently, let me know.
That all makes sense. I’ve had some similar challenges with the zen58 (the 57’s low voltage cousin) in metal boxes as well. In some cases I got it to join but after some time it would go non responsive. So I moved it to a plastic box inside the house and things were good. I also have one running in a metal box in mesh mode with another node very close that so far is working well. There are a ton of influencing factors of course.
It would be great if these little relays had an external antenna to route outside the box.
I suppose to test you could leave the cover off the metal box and pull the 57 out into the air and see if things join and work better. That may eliminate other variables.
I’ve been working on getting the network to add the relay in and seem to be staying stuck with a status that the device has been provisioned but not added to the network.
The relay is now pulled out from the box so it is clear from obstructions
I added using ZWAVE JS add device and scanning the code
I’ll see if the network completes the add overnight
My USB dongle is attached to a mini PC in my network rack. I do have the hub on a 3’ extension. So my next add attempt will be to relocate the mini PC+HUB closer to the relay and outside of the rack room.
This device has never completed the inclusion step but I’ve had other easily added devices that disappeared from my network (some self inflicted others I don’t know why they vanished) and it is a struggle to get them added subsequent times. Just venting.
It sounds like there is more happening in the mesh than just the zen57. I haven’t run JS is a while so my frame of reference is JS UI, so forgive me if this isn’t available in JS:
Would you mind posting a screenshot of your zwave network graph? And / or your node list? Feel free to redact as necessary.
Keep in mind that a few nodes missing from the mesh can cause massive problems. Zwave basically tries over and over to heal itself and find lost nodes. This gets exacerbated as the nodes try to send updates. It can get so busy trying and retrying that it in effect stops a lot of normal communication. (Almost like a denial of service attach against itself). Especially true of the node it thinks is missing is node 1. The missing node / health problems really need to be solved before adding more. IMHO.
Also is your network rack location rather remote from other nodes in the network? Does it have any barriers beyond wood and Sheetrock - like metal studs, plaster/lath, concrete etc?
Not to steer anyone away from a Zooz dongle, but the ZWA-2 may be a silver bullet solution here. Especially if mounted centrally in the home somehow.
Another trick that I did in an office where the Zooz dongle was trapped in an IT closet with metal studs in the walls was to install a ZEN15 just outside the closet door. It acted as a repeater and really solved a lot of issues. Almost all office devices started to route through the 15. I only used it because I had it on hand already. Probably the better option would have been a ZAC38. Or a ZWA-2.
Got it working by using the search for device and entering in the PIN via ZWave UI integration (and with the relay out of the box). Although HA added the device and I can now control it, it has a much larger set of entities. But it works, I’ll disable entities I don’t need and move forward. Thanks for the tip of adding a repeater and I’ll definitely look into those. And I’m going to look into the ZWA-2 for a future upgrade.
The network rack is very central in the building but on a 2nd floor. This relay is one of the closer devices to the dongle. I don’t have any metal studs to worry about just the location where the relay is being installed having the metal box (which we’ll replace) and there is tile on both sides of the wall (still may create an issue when we get it back in the wall). At least now we know it’s usable and we’ll resolve the location challenges to keep it working.
Final Update: the metal electrical box has been replaced with plastic and relay is communicating just fine to my Z-Wave dongle. So even with a metal faceplate and tile on both walls around the electrical box, communication is working in my setup.
