Fibaro Heat Controller (v4.9+v4.10) loses Z-Wave communication after charging

[marcin12 0]

Hi everyone,

 

I’m having a recurring issue with Fibaro Heat Controller / FGT-001 devices and I’d like to know if anyone else has seen similar behavior.

 

My setup:

• Z-Wave JS US + Zooz ZST39R (Z-wave 800 network)

• Fibaro Heat Controller / FGT-001

• Firmware versions tested: 4.9 and 4.10

• Devices already included in the Z-Wave network

• Mounted on radiators

• Charged via micro-USB from a power bank

The issue happens during/after charging.

 

What I did:

• The Heat Controller was mounted on the radiator.

• I set it to OFF before charging.

• I connected a power bank via micro-USB at around 8:00 PM.

• The device started charging normally.

• During charging, Z-Wave communication still worked.

• Around 4:00 AM, Z-Wave JS UI showed the node as alive, and the device reported 99% battery level.

• Around 6:00 AM, the LED was pulsing green, so I disconnected the power bank.

• After that, the device no longer communicated over Z-Wave.

 

At first I thought the device lost communication after I disconnected USB. However, after checking the Z-Wave JS driver logs, it looks like the problem actually happened earlier.

The logs show that during the night, until around 3:34 AM, the node was constantly sending Power Management Notification reports. It repeatedly alternated between:

Please login or register to see this code.

This happened almost continuously, roughly every second / every few seconds. The log file from the night was around 19 MB, and about 99% of it was traffic from this one device.

Around 3:34 AM, the node stopped communicating. So it seems the device became unreachable when charging completed, not when I physically disconnected USB at 6:00 AM.

I saw the same problem on another FGT-001 as well, running firmware 4.9. So this is not limited to one device.

 

After the problem occurred:

• the node still existed in Z-Wave JS UI,

• the device locally still indicated that it was included in the Z-Wave network,

• ping failed,

• commands failed,

• the valve did not react to Z-Wave control,

• the built-in Z-Wave range test showed red, meaning no communication with the controller.

 

So this does not look like exclusion or factory reset. The device still thinks it belongs to the Z-Wave network, and the node still exists in the controller. But after the charging-complete transition, it becomes unreachable.

I find it hard to believe that normal charging should require removing the device, entering standby, recalibrating, moving it close to the controller, or doing a full exclude/include. It should simply charge and continue working.

 

Questions:

1. Has anyone seen this behavior with FGT-001?

2. Is repeated Battery is charging / idle reporting during charging normal?

3. Is this kind of Power Management Notification flood expected?

4. Is this a known firmware issue in versions 4.9 / 4.10?

5. Is there a recovery procedure that does not require exclude/include?

 

Any advice, similar cases, or confirmed recovery procedures would be appreciated.

 

As of now, the only reliable way to use these Fibaro Heat Controllers in my network is to re-include each device every time it is charged.

This makes no sense to me. If this is really how Fibaro designed this device to behave, I will probably fall back to Eurotronic Spirit Z-Wave devices instead.