Vizia RF+ Issues

2MuchTech

Member
I need some help from someone in the community who has lots of experience with Leviton's Vizia RF+ system... I've got an OmniPro II with the Leviton Z-Wave/RS-232 module (VRC0P) to link my OmniPro to my numerous Vizia RF+ switches and other Z-Wave devices (e.g. KwikSet door locks). Most of the time things work well, but sometimes I get quite lengthy delays between issuing the lighting command to my OmniPro and the actual lighting change happening. I've also had periodic problems where some lights won't turn off after the OmniPro's automation script preprogrammed time, so apparently some of the commands get lost completely on occasion.

I'm trying to troubleshoot using the Vizia RF+ Installer Tool (ver 1.1.2.0), and I need some help interpreting the results. If I run the Hop Count And Link Quality diagnostic and specify the VRC0P as the Source Node, it reports a combination of 1 and 2 hop counts for all of my devices. Re-running this tool back to back will produce different results for the Link Quality of some of the devices. Is it normal to see a device's Link Quality go from 0% to 100% between runs?

Next I try the Test Route diagnostic, using one of my switches as the Test Node and the VRC0P as the Destination Node (it doesn't seem to work if I reverse these, so I guess the VRC0P doesn't support being the Test Node?). Repeated re-runs of this tool yield different results. For some devices Route 1 is the only one that ever passes, but sometimes all 4 routes will fail. As an example, I have a VMRX1 switch that is one (1) hop away from the VRC0P, but of the 4 routes listed in the results of the Test Route tool, it only seems to pass on Route 1... yet this switch shows ~42 Neighbor Nodes in the Installer Tool. If it has so many Neighbor Nodes, shouldn't it also have several different routes to the VRC0P? If I run the Link Quality Test diagnostic between the VRC0P and this VRMX1 switch, back-to-back re-runs yield results ranging from 0% to 100%.

A few additional notes: All of my devices have a Reverse Association back to the VRC0P (and some have additional Reverse Associations back to some of my multi-button Vizia RF+ switches). I have tried Network / Repair Network, Diagnostics / Rediscover Node\Network, and Diagnostics / Update Routes. So far I'm not seeing improvement.

I've got ~53 Vizia RF+ devices in my network. A few are on the outer perimeter of the house and probably don't see very many other devices directly, but many are in a tight enough arrangement that they should have a pretty dense mesh network. Why would I have erratic connectivity between the VRC0P and some of my devices? According to the Get Network Information / Neighbor Nodes report, my VRC0P has 30+ neighbor nodes.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.
 
I have 20-25 ViziaRF but only over perhaps a 1700sqft footprint. VRCOP in basement level with only 1 ViziaRF 10' away, but 2 more are directly above it on the first floor. The only advice I can give you is that RFIT sucks, I have divergent results on sequential runs one after the other. I just did this a few days ago.
 
I opted to throw in the towel and get a SmartThings hub. In theory I should be able to use that as my primary controller, replicate to the VRCOP, and drive over the VRUSB with my car then setting it on fire then pounding the remains with a hammer then pissing on it.  Because, uh, yeah, thats how much I despise VRUSB/RFIT, its total crap and nothing is to be trusted.
 
Whining aside, if you're experiencing delays on lights, is your zWave traffic congested? Does the Omni do polling? (if so, stop).  Or, what if you set the problem lights to be associated with a keypad or controller, so manual changes get instant-status sent. I wonder if that would convince RFIT to code a better route to it.
 
I too was having large delays ( not quite as bad as you) on my all Leviton Vizia RF+ system I had  32 nodes.   I contacted Leviton tech support and after many tries and back and forth and rebuilding my network more than once was basically told that the VRCOP should really not be used for more then 24 nodes due to network traffic.  i was planning on trying some of the other controllers i.e. vera but decided in the end to slowing replace my VIZIA RF with Lutron Radio RA 2.   So far so good.    Still keeping Zwave for locks.  Good luck and others on here have had better luck then my experience so hopefully they will chime in.  I too messed with all the diagnostics on the leviton installer tool and checked routes etc and got similar results that you noted but it never helped.    FYI my house is 3 levels and about 3100 Sq Feet..
 
IVB said:
I opted to throw in the towel and get a SmartThings hub. In theory I should be able to use that as my primary controller, replicate to the VRCOP, and drive over the VRUSB with my car then setting it on fire then pounding the remains with a hammer then pissing on it.  Because, uh, yeah, thats how much I despise VRUSB/RFIT, its total crap and nothing is to be trusted.
 
Whining aside, if you're experiencing delays on lights, is your zWave traffic congested? Does the Omni do polling? (if so, stop).  Or, what if you set the problem lights to be associated with a keypad or controller, so manual changes get instant-status sent. I wonder if that would convince RFIT to code a better route to it.
Based on my experience with RFIT, I would have to agree that it seems half baked. The program isn't well designed from a user interface point of view, and the lack of recent updates seems to indicate they've abandoned work on the product. I've noticed their Vizia RF+ switches have come down in price quite significantly in the last several months... I wonder if they're phasing out the entire product line. I hope not... I just installed most of this stuff within the last 12 to 18 months.

So if you use a different system to set up the Z-Wave network, can you still use the OmniPro to control things? I'm guessing "yes" if the VRC0P is still in the network. The OmniPro is the focal point of my entire security and home automation system, so it's not very practical for me to just switch to a different Z-Wave controller unless the OmniPro can still interact with all of the devices as it does now. I'm frustrated that the OmniPro seems to have become frozen in time, particularly since Leviton bought HAI, but the thought of replacing the entire thing is extremely unappealing. I suppose eventually I'll have to if they don't ever release any more significant improvements to the system... The other systems that have come on the market recently are running circles around the OmniPro in terms of compatibility with new stuff and cutting edge interfaces and features. It's pretty sad when a non-Leviton Z-Wave controller has more granular control over the Leviton switches than Leviton's own controller does (e.g. The ability to programmatically set the color of the LEDs on the multi-button switches/controllers).

I wasn't aware that the OmniPro could be set to poll or not poll the Z-Wave switches. I thought the entire point of going with Leviton Vizia RF+ was to get the built-in bi-directional communication that the other Z-Wave switches don't have.

And how can I tell if I have Z-Wave network congestion? Is there a diagnostic in RFIT for this?
 
Dogman said:
I too was having large delays ( not quite as bad as you) on my all Leviton Vizia RF+ system I had  32 nodes.   I contacted Leviton tech support and after many tries and back and forth and rebuilding my network more than once was basically told that the VRCOP should really not be used for more then 24 nodes due to network traffic.  i was planning on trying some of the other controllers i.e. vera but decided in the end to slowing replace my VIZIA RF with Lutron Radio RA 2.   So far so good.    Still keeping Zwave for locks.  Good luck and others on here have had better luck then my experience so hopefully they will chime in.  I too messed with all the diagnostics on the leviton installer tool and checked routes etc and got similar results that you noted but it never helped.    FYI my house is 3 levels and about 3100 Sq Feet..
Yikes! They told you 24 nodes max? That's less than 10% of the Z-Wave spec. It seems awfully hard to believe that a company would design a system with such a restrictive limit on the number of devices. I've spent a LOT of money on Leviton products (not to mention my time installing everything), so I will be a very unhappy customer if they tell me their system can't support my application, especially since I've never seen anything about the OmniPro / VRC0P being limited to such a small number of devices.

The fact that it works well for me most of the time would seem to indicate that it's not a system overload issue. If a large number of nodes generated too much traffic, I would expect to see consistent delays with every Z-Wave command. My problems are intermittent, although certain switches seem to be a lot more prone to experiencing delays that other switches. And while it's a little early to say this for sure, it appears that the switches with the problems may have changed since I did all of the network re-discovery and reprogramming again last night. If each reprogramming results in different switches with communication problems, it probably isn't a network traffic issue at fault. This leads me back to the question of the redundant routes. Do you know how these routes get set up? Is it the Z-Wave switches themselves that figure this out, or does the Installer Tool do the heavy lifting? If it's the IT that does the work, I can see how the issues I'm experiencing could occur... the IT itself reports wildly varying signal strength from run to run, so if they didn't take enough samples before deciding on the optimal route, they could easily have it creating a route that's prone to periodic failures and delays. If in fact it is the IT that creates the routes for the entire network, then maybe there's a better Z-Wave network setup program out there that could solve my problems. Do you know of any Z-Wave diagnostic programs that can analyze an entire network and report on per-node performance?
 
Yes that is the number they told me on the phone and as you mentioned the zwave network can take considerably more.  I mentioned this to the technician and he acknowledged this but reiterated their recommendation is to not use more than 24 nodes 2-way associated to the VRCOP . I toyed with buying another VRCOP and creating a second network just to keep them separate and keep the network traffic down but never did.   I have never seen the 24 number quoted in any of their documents only what I was told on the phone.   I ran the Leviton stuff for about 4 years and would not always get the delays either .  I did connect up to a computer a few times and watch commands execute and it seemed like sometimes there would be long delays but I have no idea why.   My system was pretty compact as well i.e all of the nodes were within 30 to 40 feet of each other and the VRCOP was right in the middle.   I always had multiple routes  available too.  I associated every node with the VRCOP because I wanted updated status on all of them.   Have you tried calling Leviton Tech support ?   They are difficult to get to but maybe they can offer something to help.  I just gave up since I spent 4 years and lots of $ were not a very satisfying solution in my case.   Others on here have had better luck though.   I will say that the ZWAVE system never missed a command ie sending a command from ELK via VRCOP .  My issue was latency and status updates was never very bullet proof.   I had a few nodes in my garage for landscape lighting and my Hot water recirc pump as well as my water feature.  They were constantly out of sync with the VRCOP.  I re-associated them many times with the VRCOP and even replaced my VRCOP with the Version 3 a couple of years ago and one of the switches to ensure it wasn't a device issue but no changes.  .  These nodes were only about 30 feet away from the VRCOP but there was a wood floor in between so maybe that had something to do with it.   In the end I was just too annoyed with messing with ZWAVE so I decided to change.   My wife also likes the RADIO RA switches better any way (More colors).  My only complaint is they still dont have an in-wall switchable radio ra receptacle only plug ins.   I still have a small Zwave network running with just a few nodes and it is much faster updating and responding.  Only 11 nodes left,
 
I haven't tried calling Leviton yet... I honestly have more faith in the people in this forum than a support person at Leviton. Your conversation with them doesn't do much to boost my confidence in their ability to get to the bottom of this problem. I just cannot believe they think it's okay to tell a customer that 24 devices is the max to use when the Z-Wave spec supports more than 10X that amount. The real zinger is that all of the Z-Wave literature I read promoted the virtues of ADDING more devices to make the network more reliable by creating more potential signal paths!

I might expect this type of surprise out of someone building hardware in their garage, but a company such as Leviton? It's very disheartening to see how clueless they must have been when they designed the VRC0P. I can't imagine that this bodes well for the OmniPro line now that Leviton owns it.

Trying to stay focused on finding a solution... Are any of you aware of any third party Z-Wave network programming tools that can replace the Leviton Installer Tool (and still let the VRC0P serve as the interface between OmniPro and Z-Wave network)? Surely there are other solutions out there for setting up a Z-Wave network. I'm still thinking that most of my issues are due to improper configuration of network pathways, thus leaving some devices "stranded" with only a single unreliable pathway back to the VRC0P.
 
You may be right I just wasn't patient enough or smart enough to figure it out .  I agree on the Leviton thing.  I picked them over the other manufacturers of Zwave because of their reputation and they also had a 5 year warranty on all of their stuff.  Hopefully someone here has better and more informed answers for you.
 
They may have been basing that number on the assumption that the VRC0P was being used to poll those devices, in which case almost any number over a handful isn't really too practical if you want to have reasonably low latency. If you are using all devices that report status async and the automation system makes use of that, most of the time there's nothing happening at all on the Z-Wave network (other than low level network housekeeping stuff that the nodes themselves exchange.)
 
Dean Roddey said:
They may have been basing that number on the assumption that the VRC0P was being used to poll those devices, in which case almost any number over a handful isn't really too practical if you want to have reasonably low latency. If you are using all devices that report status async and the automation system makes use of that, most of the time there's nothing happening at all on the Z-Wave network (other than low level network housekeeping stuff that the nodes themselves exchange.)
 
The overwhelming majority of my Z-Wave devices are Leviton switches (various models in the Vizia RF+ line), so unless there's a configuration setting that I have to check, I assume the VRC0P isn't doing polling.  I have 3 KwikSet locks in the network, and I have an Aeotech Z-Wave Range Extender.  I think everything else is Vizia RF+.
 
Do you have any insights into why I'm seeing inconsistent link quality reports from Installer Tool?  And why wouldn't there be 4 Routes showing up for most of my devices if my mesh network is relatively dense?  Even if you have 1 Route that seems great, wouldn't you want alternates in case something happens to the primary route?  Either I'm not understanding what Installer Tool is reporting, or something isn't getting configured correctly in my mesh network.  Is there a report I can run that will dump the entire mesh network's routing table so I can post it here for others to review?
 
Some additional information that I don't think I reported before:  Not all of my Z-Wave network failures seem to be related to VRC0P (i.e. I think it really is a mesh network configuration problem).  I have a few Zone and Scene Vizia RF+ controllers (the wall switches with 4 rocker switches or 4 pushbuttons), and in a couple of cases I have one or more other Vizia RF+ switches associated with a button on more than one controller.  For instance, I have a set of switches that control back and side yard flood lights associated to a Zone switch on 3 different Zone Controllers.  The idea is that I might want to control these flood lights from several different places in the house.  Sometimes 1 or 2 of my 3 Zone Controllers will still have the green LED lit for the button in question, even though all of the associated switches are no longer On.  This indicates to me that sometimes a Zone Controller fails to see a status change in one of its associated switches.  This seems to be consistent with my other problem(s) of long delays before a switch activates from a remote command, and sometimes not ever getting the requested action.
 
My gut feeling is that with better diagnostic tools (or better training on how to use the existing tools :) I should be able to track down the source of the problem and correct it.
 
My VRC0P recently had issues and I had to reset and reinclude it into my network. Prior to this, things worked pretty good and status was updated quickly. Example, looking at my OT7 and locking a door. The door would immediately lock and the status would update. Now, the door still locks but it takes like 15 seconds for the status of the lock to show up. Other units just seem to be slower but still work. My network has about 50 units. I've also ran all the various diagnostics and repairs. Things still work, but are just slower than before. SJ
 
SJHart said:
My VRC0P recently had issues and I had to reset and reinclude it into my network. Prior to this, things worked pretty good and status was updated quickly. Example, looking at my OT7 and locking a door. The door would immediately lock and the status would update. Now, the door still locks but it takes like 15 seconds for the status of the lock to show up. Other units just seem to be slower but still work. My network has about 50 units. I've also ran all the various diagnostics and repairs. Things still work, but are just slower than before. SJ
When you run the Test Route diagnostic, are you generally seeing more than one successful route for your devices? And do back-to-back re-runs of this test show consistent results or do you get wild variations?
 
The VRC0P never does anything by itself. It's just a passive secondary controller, again other than any ongoing, low level house keeping stuff that any mesh network engages in. Any polling is done by whatever is using the VRC0P to access the Z-Wave network. The fact taht the modules support async reporting doesn't really mean anything, the thing accessing the Z-Wave network has to know how to (and actually correctly) make use of it.
 
IVB said:
I have 20-25 ViziaRF but only over perhaps a 1700sqft footprint. VRCOP in basement level with only 1 ViziaRF 10' away, but 2 more are directly above it on the first floor. The only advice I can give you is that RFIT sucks, I have divergent results on sequential runs one after the other. I just did this a few days ago.
 
I opted to throw in the towel and get a SmartThings hub. In theory I should be able to use that as my primary controller, replicate to the VRCOP, and drive over the VRUSB with my car then setting it on fire then pounding the remains with a hammer then pissing on it.  Because, uh, yeah, thats how much I despise VRUSB/RFIT, its total crap and nothing is to be trusted.
IVB, how is your SmartThings Hub working out? Are you able to have it control your Z-Wave lights and still have the OmniPro control them as well? If you have SmartThings turn on a light, does the OmniPro system recognize that the device got turned on? I'm guessing it would, since turning on a light at the physical switch shows up on an OT7. If you use the OmniPro to turn on a light, does the SmartThings Hub know the light is on?

It looks like the SmartThings Hub is getting a lot of connectivity with third party devices, and that has my interest. For example, Amazon's Echo can control the SmartThings Hub, so you can get easy implementation of voice control of your Z-Wave lighting. Before I buy a SmartThings Hub I'd like to make sure it can co-exist with my OmniPro II system.
 
works awesome, I love it. Integration with the Echo is key, I rarely use a device to manually turn on/off phones, just voice.
 
I have an Elk, but use the VRCOP with CQC. I'd imagine it would work fine with the Omni, since replication from ST to VRCOP is easy.  There's a SmartApp called Pollster to ensure the ST knows about manual or other changes. CQC knows about lights getting turned on/off.
 
Get one. Its only $100, works great for several of us. Then go buy an Echo. Or two. I'm contemplating getting a 3rd...
 
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