snow_tires Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 I have a bunch of Q Motion shades in my house, and they work fine for a while then randomly a handful of them will go offline. So some of the shades stay online and some fall offline together. The batteries are fine, I can't figure out why so many of my shades go offline at the same time. The only way I've been able to fix it is to disconnect from the network and then connect it to the network again with the tug commands and Composer Pro. This is so frustrating. This problem keeps coming cropping up every couple of weeks. My family and I hate the shades because this problem keeps happening. I'm not a dealer, I'm an ex-control4 employee so I have Composer Pro access, but can't really call into tech support because I'm not a dealer. Anyone have an idea what is going wrong? Here is a link to my project file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11v2mI8grZeh1XSKvhxnECYA3t4qZfSrJ/view?usp=sharing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceanDad Posted March 27, 2022 Share Posted March 27, 2022 Battery operated Q Motion shades can be painful like this. Make sure that they are not at the edge of the mesh - maybe add some light switches into the project to bump the zigbee strength up a bit where the shades are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAV Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 You're far from alone. Boost the heck out of your zigbee, or get a CA1 as close to them as possible. Another theory I have, is height is an issue. It's like zigbee is on a waist height (light switches) and the shades being high, and on outside walls always, and they don't link well. If adding devices, put them opposite the shade, not on the same wall as the shade. Any chance it's related to a power outage? Or a device they all communicate through loosing power? In my experience, qMotion shades quickly give up finding a connection once lost, or if they reboot before the Director can reboot completely, and never try again. A tug to wake up the shade, will often make them look again and connect. Not an engineer, just my painful experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow_tires Posted March 28, 2022 Author Share Posted March 28, 2022 I have 70 zigbee devices in the project, which I know is close to the limit. Here is something odd. I have 10 shades in my family room, and I have 3 more shades upstairs in my master bathroom. On the same day, 5 of the shades in my family room and 2 of the shades in my master bathroom went offline. They don't come back with a tug command. There are many light switches all around these shades. And the ones in my master bath are only 10 feet from an HC800 acting as a ZAP. So it doesn't seem like a zigbee problem to me, but something Control4 is doing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 Yep, range is the key. Ideally a separate controller for ONLY the blinds and whatever devices you use to reach them. Range/Coverage = great, these shades work well. Range/Coverage is anything but great - shades fall offline Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 Just now, snow_tires said: There are many light switches all around these shades. And the ones in my master bath are only 10 feet from an HC800 acting as a ZAP. So it doesn't seem like a zigbee problem to me, but something Control4 is doing? Many switches does not equal a stable path. Also, 'loose' ZAP won't help all that much either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RAV Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 First thing I'd do is make the HC800 it's own zigbee server, and move items over based on proximity to it. (Control4 stopped the ZAP recommendation some years back, separate servers now the recommendation) qMotion are problem children with Zigbee. Everything has to be perfect or they go off. I'll bet lots of money (how about how much I lost dealing with this exact BS?) that it's zigbee issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HRT Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 From my experience with these shades at a few jobs, they are only 90% and up reliable if they are directly connected to a zserver. No going through nodes like dimmers. At one job I had to install a few CA-1's around the house just for the three rooms of shades and they haven't fell offline since (they were falling offline every time power went out or random events (had to factory and re identify every time to get them back into the system) The mesh was good and strong at the house as every light was on the system and spread out well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceanDad Posted March 28, 2022 Share Posted March 28, 2022 Possible wifi interference ? What sort of 2.4Ghz network activity is there, especially on Channel 1 ? I notice that you are using Zigbee Channel 13. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmonty2 Posted March 29, 2022 Share Posted March 29, 2022 I have had this issue at 2 customers homes. Both happen after a power outage. I talked to Qmotion and they told me the shades were on a older firmware and need to be updated. The problem is the only way to update them is to remove them from C4 and put them on a zigbee server from Lagrand, then they can update them. I have apt. to do this but I may try to put the shades on a seperate zigbee server first. I have 3 wired ones and the rest are battery, they all stop working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceanDad Posted March 29, 2022 Share Posted March 29, 2022 1 hour ago, kmonty2 said: The problem is the only way to update them is to remove them from C4 and put them on a zigbee server from Lagrand, then they can update them. Curious how this would work. Some kind of hub that is connected via the internet to receive a firmware update ? Mine have been rock solid since I reworked the zigbee mesh. Of course, I'll jinx everything just by typing that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted March 30, 2022 Share Posted March 30, 2022 On 3/28/2022 at 11:35 AM, HRT said: From my experience with these shades at a few jobs, they are only 90% and up reliable if they are directly connected to a zserver. No going through nodes like dimmers. We've had no issue doing this - PROVIDED we had a separate mesh from the main one, with selected dimmers to create the mesh. IE have a 'dedicated' zserver/coordinator, ONLY for the blinds and the dimmers in use to create the mesh (of course, from a user perspective this is transparent, just wanted to point that out) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HRT Posted March 30, 2022 Share Posted March 30, 2022 11 hours ago, Cyknight said: We've had no issue doing this - PROVIDED we had a separate mesh from the main one, with selected dimmers to create the mesh. IE have a 'dedicated' zserver/coordinator, ONLY for the blinds and the dimmers in use to create the mesh (of course, from a user perspective this is transparent, just wanted to point that out) I do have one job they are apart of a large mesh and never had a problem? But the other three we did before we stopped selling the product all needed to be setup this way and it was a direct recommendation from the manufacturer and Control4. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snow_tires Posted March 30, 2022 Author Share Posted March 30, 2022 Ok, I've changed my project so that I have my main mesh for the house on my EA5 as the zserver/coordinator, and then I have an EA1 for the shades in my family room, and an HC800 for the shades in my master bedroom. Hopefully this helps Thanks for the help everyone! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary Leeds UK Posted March 30, 2022 Share Posted March 30, 2022 We have Q Motions Blinds and when they go off line its always the Battery Running Low Forget what its says in Composer - Replace the Batteies and everything is Fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dew1551 Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 i have Q-Motion shades, three of them grouped together and i have a problem with 2 out of three responding and one not. it is not the same one that does not respond. Batteries are new. they work 100% worth the hand held qmotion remote. often raising and then lowering will make all three work but not always! can anyone advise what is causing this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chopedogg88 Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 I have several Qmotion shades in my house, some are POE and some are battery. The POE ones are older (leftovers from a job done years ago), so presumably on a different firmware...not positive. Unfortunately I've had intermittent issues with the shades dropping offline, at least as far as my EA5 thinks...but is it a signal strength issue? I don't think so? I have a strong mesh with many C4 zigbee lights, locks, etc. The shades are all in my great room with all these other devices. And here is the kicker...if I go into Composer, and some shades show OFFLINE and aren't responding, while at the same time others right next to them do respond. Then I change the debug mode from off to print, or vice versa, hit the SET button to save the change, and viola, like clockwork the shade goes from OFFLINE to ONLINE, and then starts responding again! At least for one time...then stops responding again. This comes and goes...sometimes (for months at a time), they all work perfectly with no issues. Please explain!? I've tried calling Qmotion and Control4 support to no avail. Clearly to me, it seems like a driver programming issue (bug) since as soon as I make a change in the driver, they wake up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OceanDad Posted March 31, 2022 Share Posted March 31, 2022 4 hours ago, chopedogg88 said: if I go into Composer, and some shades show OFFLINE and aren't responding, while at the same time others right next to them do respond. Then I change the debug mode from off to print, or vice versa, hit the SET button to save the change, and viola, like clockwork the shade goes from OFFLINE to ONLINE, and then starts responding again! Never tried that. Thankfully mine have been good for a while now. Curious about the possibility that it might also be a firmware bug - I just don't like the sound of what it might entail to update the firmware in each shade. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cdcllc Posted April 1, 2022 Share Posted April 1, 2022 I don’t know whether there is such a thing as a zigbee sniffer, but it would be interesting to see the hand shaking / lack there of, going on when the shades go offline. This sure feels like the QMotion shades might need a bit more latency tolerance at a lower level in the stack. Don’t know how you can positively identify root cause without a log of messages. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.