Advanced ZWave

This web-admin page shows your ZWave network nodes and their connection status. The page is only available when you have a ZWave controller set up.

Note: Currently this page does not update after you execute a command that would change the status of the page

Overview

The nodes are drawn as circles with different colors. The normal node is colored grey, sleeping nodes are yellow and failed nodes are red.

The connections between the nodes are red/green lines. The line between two nodes are split in half, and the half going from a node indicates this nodes connectivity to the node on the other end of the line. A green line going out of a node means that this node has connectivity to the other node, a red line means it does not.

Connectivity in this setting means the ZWave neighbourhood status - simply whether the node can see the other node, and thus communicate directly with it. If there is no direct connection, a signal must be routed by other nodes to reach the destination node.

Use

Initially, the nodes are laid out with a preset distance between them. You can move them around by dragging the nodes. It can be useful to lay them out almost like they are placed around your house. The positions of the nodes will be rememered.

On the top are a few command for the whole ZWave network.

• Refresh : this reloads the ZWave network status (as this page does not reflect changes automatically)
• Heal Network : This will get all nodes to update their neighbourhood list and the controller to re-assign return routes.
• Network Update : This will get all nodes to update their neighbourhood list
• Test Network : This will send test commands (that does nothing, a No-Op command) to test the node connectivity
• Soft Reset Controller : This will soft reset the controller (your network will not be deleted or reset)

Clicking on a node will bring up more information about the node.

NOTE: Executing commands on a sleeping node might require the node to be awake first.

NOTE: There is no indication that a command was successful (you could look at the zwave log file though)

Status

This tab shows general information about the node; its status (ok/failed), if it is awake, if the OpenZWave library has queried it for all the information it requires, the LinuxMCE devices the node is mapped to, and some statistics regarding messages it has sent and received. It also show the RTT (round-trip-time) for communicating with the node. This *can* be used in troubleshooting, but nodes can vary greatly in their internal response time, and this time might not always reflect a network problem. (RTT time is in ms)

Commands

This tab show command you can execute on the node (atm. only special commands, and not generic use commands, as on/off etc.).

• Heal node - this will make the node discover its neighbours and assign new routes. This can improve network routing in case there are network problems. Can be useful if a node has low number of green lines.
• Update node neighbours - this will only request the node to update its neighbours (and not assign any new routes)
• Test Node - Send a series of No-Op commands to the node to test the connectivity. This will also revive a node that is considered dead by OpenZWave.

Configuration

This lists the configuration options available for this node. Click on the label to get a prompt to set a new value.

Values

This lists all the values (except the configuration values), that OpenZWave has registered for this node. Some of these are also reported to LinuxMCE as part of the normal operation (like on/off/dimming/temperature, etc.etc.)

Find problems in the network

Look for nodes with many red lines going out of it. This means that this node does not see many of the other nodes. In this case, you can try to execute the "Heal Node" command, to see if the node will discover its neighbours. If that does not help, it can simply be that there are too far between the nodes, or that there are some building structure or electrical noise interfering with the radio communication. It might help to add a new node strategically placed to act as a signal router to establish a reliable connection.