LZW36 Fan/Light Switch Canopy Module Disconnection Issues

I just got mine in yesterday, installed one last night, it has been fine, has not lost connection. Installed the second one this morning, and it was loosing connection, but would work again after air gap. After reading through this thread, and with my switch not controlling the fan/light, I turned off all power monitoring for it, and manually pushed the light button a couple of times, the led changed, but the light did not come on, then pushed it a third time, and the light came on, and the fan buttons is working again. I did not air gap the switch after disabling the power monitoring, it started working on itā€™s own about a minute after.

I installed the first of four switches on 27 June in a spare room due to the potential of an issue arising as experienced by others. Worked fine until today. My Hubitat and the switch responded to commands but no change was realized in the fan or light. An air gap of a few seconds fixed the issue. Has been running under all the default settings and the room temperature never exceeds 75. I just turned off energy reporting to see if it will work without failure for a longer period.

UPDATE: We may have found an issue and there is a beta firmware that is addressing this. Good news is itā€™s with the switch, so it is OTA (with the right tools).

In a nutshell: Sometimes when the commands are being sent from the switch to the module via 2.4 GHz, and the module also sends data to the switch, there is a logic confusion which makes a separate command from the switch not send to the module.

We are internally testing this for two more days to make sure the release is stable and weā€™re talking about it further tonight at 9pm EST during our weekly meeting.

More to come, but this is encouraging!

@kitt001 ā€“ to answer your question:
The way it was explained to me is that the fan module will send data to the switch (relayā€™s to the hub) every hour (which is the default). Also, if you send a, ā€œmeter getā€ command, the switch will also get an energy/power report.

What may be happening with the disconnects is that since energy monitoring has been disabled, less commands are being sent to cause the conflict. Or if your fan is off (no energy reporting) and you turn it on (energy is now reported) and multiple commands are being sent between the switch and canopy, the conflict causes disconnect issues.

Anyway, more to come!

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Iā€™ve got my USB Stick and Z-Wave PC Controller software ready to go!

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@Eric_Inovelli, THIS IS GOOD NEWS(THE POSSIBLE FIX FROM ALL OF YOU) I have turned power monitoring back on 24 hours ago and no disconnects, but there are zero power monitoring requests that I can see in the logs.

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This is great news. I was literally just about to pull all of my switches out. Crossing my fingers that this works

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Excellent news ā€¦ I was probably going to try rewiring things today from a different power source as an experiment - I didnā€™t really want climb up in my attic anyway :smiley:

Is this firmware update the type that can be done from the Hubitat updater?, or does this require the second firmware file as well, that the Hubitat canā€™t send?

For the record, is there a device that you guys specifically recommend for doing the updates? I donā€™t have one, but I should probably get one, and I might as well get the one that you guys use.

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Seems like there might already be a solution figured out, but wanted to share my experience. I installed the switch on Monday and it was working fine. I had to move my hub closer to get it to pair (plaster walls and on-going renovations means I donā€™t have the rest of my Inovelli switches installed to complete my Z-Wave network). I plugged in the Hubitat hub where I had a Unifi NanoHD access point.
The wifi was being slow (again plaster wallsā€¦), so I moved my hub to its original location and replaced the AP. I was having the fan module disconnect issue yesterday evening. I confirmed that the switch was communicating with the hub and I couldnā€™t get the switch/receiver to re-pair. I did a RF scan on my Unifi controller and I noticed that the switch and receiver were communicating again while that was occuring. After the scan, I turned off the 2.4 ghz radio on that AP and it continued to work, although rather slowly (i.e. it wasnā€™t instant on/off like I had it configured).
I turned off the energy monitoring this morning and will test that with the 2.4 ghz radio turned back on.
I do have a second LZW36 I could swap out, but was avoiding taking down the fan again.

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Weā€™re looking into this right now :slight_smile:

The firmware file that was given to us is a .gbl, which is not supported at this time by the updater. We just sent a message to @bcopeland to see if heā€™s had any luck with getting it to work, so hopefully we hear back. In addition, we just sent a message to the firmware engineer to see if he can send the file in otz or hex format so it can be updated via the Hubitat updater.

Yeah, we typically recommend this one: https://www.amazon.com/Z-Wave-Me-Smart-Stick-Cloud2-Z-Wave/dp/B00VKEH1BQ ā€“ Iā€™ve had at least 30 of these at one point and never had any issues with them (shout-out to everyone who weā€™ve lent these to and havenā€™t returned them!)

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LOL hopefully you get them backā€¦

Iā€™ve been using this one. I have it paired to my Hubitat as a secondary controller and have used the Z-Wave PC Controller software to update about 5 Red Dimmers and 2 Inovelli RGBW bulbs. Worked really well! I will say installing drivers were a bear, but that is most com port devices on windows.

Z-Wave & Zigbee USB Stick

I remember reading somewhere that devices that use the .gbl file have a different bootloader, and that they are not compatible with the .otz or .hex file format.

My one troublematic switch has been working fine for about a week without any noticble issues. Iā€™m not monitoring the power state on it at all. Looking in Home Assistant, when idle, itā€™s always 0.4 or 0.9W. I never see it drop to 0.

I havenā€™t made any physical changes. The only difference is I integrated notifications and LED colors and brightness into Home Assistant to reflect night/day and alarm system status.

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curious if we will be able to update the firmware from homeseer. It appears to require an ā€œOTA .hexā€ file.

If not - I have not opened my boxes yet, would I be able to return them for ones that have the update installed?

Donā€™t want to be a PITA, but my fans are WAY high up and working on them is SCARY as hell. Do not want to have to do it twice. :slight_smile:

I think I may be part of this now. The last switch I installed last night, today I went to turn the fan off and had no control over it. I pulled the gap switch and started working. I will see if it happens again before I add myself to the list.

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Soā€¦ The first switch that I had installed about three weeks ago now just disconnected. I have a feeling that itā€™s been acting up all day because I noticed that it wouldnā€™t turn off the fan when the AC turns on. This only started happening after I installed the third switch yesterday.

That makes two switches acting up. Only after the third one was installed.

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Did you turn off power usage reporting on any/all of them yet???

Just an update here ā€“ we have a few people testing the latest firmware and are seeing some great results. Power monitoring is enabled and no disconnection issues.

For those of you that have a Z-Stick and PC Controller, the file is here if youā€™d like to test it:

https://files.inovelli.com/firmware/LZW36/Beta/LZW36_1.34.gbl

Please note, this will not work on the Hubitat updater at this time as itā€™s not .hex or .otz. Weā€™re working with Bryan to see if he can get it to work.

Thanks for all your patience, weā€™re going to continue testing this over the weekend and if all goes well, weā€™ll roll out the official patch along with a gameplan on updating everyoneā€™s switch who needs it.

Good news so far!

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Glad to hear it seems like an ā€œeasyā€ fix is possible.
Look forward to the Hubitat method being available. :slight_smile:

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.hex is required for homeseer as well. Probably not your smallest install baseā€¦

Mine remain in sealed boxes until some resolution is found or the warranty is about to run outā€¦

Good to know. Weā€™re working on it. If it canā€™t be done, weā€™ll be providing Z-Sticks to borrow so that everyone can update it. Or if youā€™d like to ship it back, weā€™ll do it for you. No worries.

As for the warranty, we will extend it one year from when the fix is deployed :slight_smile:

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