Aeotec Z-wave stick not working

[nuneya]

I'm trying to setup Aeotec Z-wave stick on FreeNAS, but have run into a strange issue. The stick has a light that turns on when you plug it in, but nothing happens when I plug it into any of the USB slots. The lights turn on for any other computer or USB port I've tried on.

Confused, I went into the BIOS and plugged it in while in the BIOS (I have X9SRL-F board), and it turned on immediately. Excited, I continued booting into FreeNAS, and midway through the boot the lights turned off.

There is no output in dmesg when I plug it in/out or on the serial console. What is going on?

 

[Chris Moore]

First, what is a "Aeotec Z-wave stick"? Even if the manufacturer has a driver for FreeBSD (do they?) that doesn't mean it will work with FreeNAS, which is an appliance built on FreeBSD with many significant custom changes.

 

[nuneya]

It's a usb device used for connecting to z-wave devices. There are a few guides around the interwebs for using it on FreeNAS (and FreeBSD), e.g. https://community.home-assistant.io...on-freenas-11-with-auto-start-and-zwave/20158, so there is presumably some support for it if at least some people are able to use it.

 

[dlavigne]

Which build version of FreeNAS (from System -> Information)?

 

[nuneya]

FreeNAS-11.2-BETA3

I've hit an additional wrinkle - I tried restarting to BIOS again, and now the light is not turning on. The motherboard beeps upon inserting and removing the device, but no lights.

Could this be a motherboard and/or BIOS config issue?

 

[Chris Moore]

Could this be a motherboard and/or BIOS config issue?

Not likely because a USB device, like any other device you plug into the system, is presented to the operating system as an address space. The operating system needs a driver to handle low level communication with the device and an application to handle user interaction with the device.
In many operating systems this happens auto-magically because the OS detects the hardware signature and goes out to the internet to grab the driver for you so that it just works and the most you need to do is install an application. In this situation, you may need to do more research on what you need to do to make it work. Those other people that had it working, were they also using the BETA version of FreeNAS? I think that could actually work against you. I installed the latest nightly and it wouldn't even let me get on the network. It was totally unusable and I had to roll back.

 

[nuneya]

Since a good mystery must keep on giving, after removing and inserting the stick what must have been a hundred times into different ports, suddenly the lights came on, and I see the device as /dev/cuaU0, and it shows up in dmesg, and works fine. But obviously I couldn't stop there - removing and inserting a couple more times worked, and then stopped working again, and now I'm back where I started from.

Does any of this make sense?

 

[kdragon75]

Sound like a broken device...

 

[nuneya]

I can try returning it and getting a new one, but it does work on a windows machine with no issues whatsoever.

 

[kdragon75]

I can try returning it and getting a new one, but it does work on a windows machine with no issues whatsoever.

Try another OS on the freenas box?

 

[nuneya]

In case anybody else runs into this - I tried a different stick and it was still the same issues. Eventually I gave up and bought a HUSBZB-1 instead, which worked immediately without any issues and has zigbee support as well.

 

[dvand]

Just seeing this thread now but I have the same z-stick as you described as not working and it works fine on my system. X10sl7-f and freenas 9.10.



Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

 

[tprelog]

I'm trying to setup Aeotec Z-wave stick on FreeNAS, but have run into a strange issue. The stick has a light that turns on when you plug it in, but nothing happens when I plug it into any of the USB slots. The lights turn on for any other computer or USB port I've tried on.

Confused, I went into the BIOS and plugged it in while in the BIOS (I have X9SRL-F board), and it turned on immediately. Excited, I continued booting into FreeNAS, and midway through the boot the lights turned off.

There is no output in dmesg when I plug it in/out or on the serial console. What is going on?

I have been using the Aeotec Z-wave stick with Home Assistant on FreeNAS and I wrote the guide you have linked to in your second post. For me the Aeotec was plug and pray. You must have had a bad stick. Glad to know the HUSBZB-1 works also since I have one those too (although I have not used it yet) Also that guide is outed at the time your trying to follow it. I've have update guides for using iocage on FreeNAS 11.1 here and FreeNAS 11.2 here.

 

[nuneya]

Thanks, I'll take a look at the new guide as well in case there is anything in there I could use. FYI I have had 0 issues with HUSBZB-1 so far, and it works as expected for ZigBee as well, so I happily dumped my Smartthings bridge setup.