Dome Window/Door Sensor Disconnecting Daily

I have a Dome Window/Door Sensor on my back door that disconnects from the system daily. Odd thing is, I have 3 other Dome Window/Door Sensors and they work fine. I swapped one of the known working ones with the one on the back door and the swapped one that is now on the back door is disconnecting.

The hub was within 5 feet of the sensor and I have since moved it so it is about 15 feet from it. There are other sensors nearby. There are also GE Light Switches. I have been working with Support for a couple of weeks (new Vera owner and this is all the longer I have had the system) and they cannot get it fixed. I have also been working with Dome support and they cannot figure out what the issue is either.

I had an Iris system and never had this issue with their system and sensors. I though that Z-Wave Sensors were better than Zigbee.

I hope someone can help.

Would be great if you could tell us what support told you. Is our sensor reconnecting if you bring it back closer? If so, you have a network problem with your neighbor nodes needing an update after you moved the sensor. I typically do not recommend bringing any device close to the vera for inclusion. I usually recommend the opposite: Bring the vera close to where the sensor will need to be in its final position.
The antenna on the vera is rather weak. I have had cases of devices getting lost because I moved the vera by 2 inches. The other sensors nearby will not help since they are likely battery operated. I would recommend either increasing the number of AC operated devices around it or play with the location/orientation of the vera to see if it gets better,

Support gave me suggestions to move the Vera, which I did. They also told me to swap out the sensor with a known working one, which I did and explained here. Overall they have not been much help. Dome support really has not been very helpful either. Both suggested there may be some sort of interference, but there is nothing in between the sensor and the Vera that could be casing an issue. I have an open concept floor plan and have very few walls. Not sure what else I could try.

I think your neighbor nodes has been messed up and either you can wait for a heal or try to exclude and reinclude the sensor at its final location so that it gets reconfigured. I also don’t really buy the interference argument. Try including at a distance first from the vera first. Also what do you see when it disconnects? Does the vera report “Device not detected” for some time?

I did do an exclude and re-include which seemed to not take. But that was before I moved the Vera. So maybe if I try it now, it may make a difference. What I see is “Device not responding” and it will stay this way until I hit the button on the sensor to get it to respond again.

Ok This sounds like a misconfiguration. It is a battery operated device so it wakes up on a regular frequency which is setup during the configuration process. If the error goes away after you wake it up, it means that the wakeup interval is out of sync. Look into the device/advanced/variables and you should see variables called WakeupInterval and ConfiguredWakeupInterval. Usually these are the same but I have run into cases where an error in the configuration caused them to be different or sometimes an error within the sensor itself got this variable in the wrong unit. The solution is to make that WakeupInterval longer that the ConfiguredWakeupInterval and one of my devices had to have a ratio of 60 between them. It is also possible that your device is on a “failed device list” inside the zwave radio in which case you will have to exclude and reinclude it unless, like me you have your zwave on a usb stick and can plug the USB stick to a PC with which there are softwares which can edit that list.

I have a similar device branded Neo ColCam that had the same behaivour. I noticed that it had “Poll this node at most pnce every” blank and all my other similar devices had it set to 10800. So I set it to 10800 for this device also and it has been working since.

image

I have a universal Fibaro sensor that has the same symptoms. And he’s next to a double Fibaro switch.

Interestingly enough, I have 3 other Dome Window/Door sensors experiencing no issues at all.

Like I said before, the Sensor on the Back Door was having the problem. I physically swapped the sensor from the Side Door (previously working just fine) with the Sensor on the Back Door (previously having issues). The Back Door Sensor (previously having issues) is now located at the Side Door and the Side Door Sensor (previously working fine) is now located at the Back Door.

Now… The Back Door Sensor that is now at the Side Door is working just fine. The Side Door Sensor that is now at the Back Door is now the one having issues.

Considering I have 3 other sensors with no issues at all and I have swapped two of them to determine it’s not a sensor issue, but a Vera issue. I just to figure out what the Vera issue is and resolve it.

I hope all that was clear. Please feel free to ask for clarification. I will do my best to explain further.

Ok so you are saying the issue is sticking with the location, not the sensor. Then it is likely a location (network reach) issue and therefore unlikely a vera issue. Your network topology must have some problem and the signal from the sensor is intermittently not reaching the vera. If that’s the case, I would try to add another repeater in between. The minute you say it is not a sensor issue then it is automatically not a vera issue. The problem with the sensor is usually caused by some vera setup/configuration. It is possible that what you perceive as the vera issue is simply the very weak antenna used for zwave in the vera. It just means you need a more robust mesh.

Hello, I am having a similar problem with my Dome door and window sensors.

I am coming in from the Wink hub (they all worked fine there). I am getting messages such as “waiting for wakeup” (passing a magnet in front doesn’t help), “Error unable to get any information from Node”. The devices pair fine every time. I have tried removing them “unpair” and adding them back to no avail. I have brought my devices right beside the Vera to ensure that I wasn’t dealing with a range issue. I have left my device near the Vera overnight, also no help.