The Lower Stairwell is a GE switch in a Plastic wallbox. Lower Landing is a Zooz Zen21 in a plastic box, The Zooz is actually a bit further away from the Hubitat hub than the GE because it's in an inner wall (like toward another room) whereas the GE switch is at the bottom of the stairs with nothing around it, so it should have a better signal.
Are you thinking it's a signal strength issue?
I should point out that the GE switch is a 2-way. One GE non-zwave link switch at the top of the stairs and the zwave one at the bottom. This is how GE does n-way. One is the zwave driver and the others are just mechanical wired to the zwave switch. I do like the way Zooz does it though. Cheaper and better.
They both look slow considering they are switches, I'm using the ge enbrighten driver. I have the same configuration with one active the other a dumb switch. They might benefit from a dedicated repeater (gen 7) nearby or an outlet.
Yes. Why not swap the two 2-way switches so that the Z-wave is in the other location?
It's how the house was wired. Hot in at the bottom, traveler going up the stairs. I know the signal seems weak, but the weaker one is the one working. Such odd behavior. I'm willing to purchase a few repeaters if I can prove that it'll help. any way to prove this out other than moving the hub into the lower landing for a few days?
I can’t see that a few days would be required. You should know in a day or less.
Our house is quite a bit smaller than yours and I have repeaters in almost every room and at least 2 zwave + switches and probably one or two outlets per room and I had it that way with SmartThings as well. I think this Gen 7 ZWave is having severe growing pains. Moving the hub is a possibility to test it but for $30.00 the aeon gen 7 repeater was fairly painless, I had a lot of trouble with the ring repeater joining, but I’m a total believer in throwing hardware at a performance problem.
I'm not sure how many I'd need, as the z-wave signals are all over the place. The hub is on my second level in the middle of the house. I'll buy a few and see if it helps. Why wouldn't I have this issue with SmartThings though? Is their z-wave radio stronger?
Also consider the "Ring Range Extender (2nd Gen)" it's cheaper and has a battery backup and can tell you when the power goes out. Price is very worth it..
https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Ring-Alarm-Range-Extender/dp/B07ZB2VP4K/
That one looks nice, but " * Requires the Ring Alarm Base Station and only boosts the Ring Alarm system network"
I have no Ring devices whatsoever.
Nope you don't need any ring devices they pair directly with HE! I just added 2 to my system.
They DO have to be paired via S2 and you also need to press the button on the device for 3 seconds before starting pairing to get out of Smart Assist/include mode and into "basic"..
edit sorry the above is wrong... you need to exclude it per the link in my post below.. apologies!!!
For a novice like me I had trouble getting the ring Range extender to join, finally sent them all back and paid the extra to eliminate the aggravation and standardize on Aeotec. If you are technical you will have better luck than me Im sure.
I don't know why ST seemed to have better coverage, once the gen 7 stabilizes it is supposed to have better range, and according to the new long range zWave spec, it will work on the gen 7...
Yeah the sort of tricky part is getting it out of "Smart Include" mode.. but not too bad.
This is just exhausting!! I moved the hub into the middle of the house, right at the top of the stairs. Automations worked for a few hours, and now none are working, even though the zwave device says OK and the motion sensor caught motion.
This one is just an example, they are all about the same. Some show the link speed, but still don't work.
I'm just not sure this is an issue with signal strength. Some are at 100 and don't work either.
Anything I should try? I'm ordered some range extenders, but honestly, I'm about to give up. Why would they work for an hour, then stop? Any OS level diag I can root around in on the hub?
I don't think you should worry about the routing speed unless it is consistently 9.6. All of mine show 100 or 40.
It is interesting that the Lower Landing pairing is S2 unauthenticated - maybe exclude and pair that one again as no authentication for giggles?
(you may have already done this I did not read too far back in the comments)
I'll try. I'm not sure about all this S2 stuff. But to get it to Authenticate I'd have to pull them all out of the wall to read the code on the back. So, I just pushed next and left the code empty when I paired them. Could this be an issue? I don't think SmartThings did anything with S2 stuff.
Right now, none of my z-wave devices are working at all. 1 of them won't even work physically, so I have to cut power (again) to get it to re-set.
I'm not even joking, it's almost like I get it all working, have a cup of coffee, and they stop working. Endless cycle, daily, since I switched.
Contact support this does not seem normal.
I have 2 C-7's in operation currently at different locations. The switches/dimmers are Zooz Zen 23/24 with a few GE Enbrightens for the fans. I am not having the difficulty you are... you could also have a bad device somewhere in the mix. I had that happen twice on my main hub ( currently a C-4) and my Z-wave network got very erratic.
Once you exclude the lower landing, reboot and see if your other stuff works.
totally frustrating, have you disabled some of your apps, support suggested this for me, I disabled all but motion automations and simple automations and devices that were problematic. as it started running better I brought them back on. You disable apps and devices by clicking the plus sign on the upper right of the screen, I found it hard to see.
Yes, I'm down just just a few right now: Sonos, Hue, IFTTT (which I'm not even using now that they charge to do anything useful, but that's a different subject), Life360 and Maker API. I hate to disable these as they all are working.
So, the switch in the garage is Zooz Zen21, it failed completely, so I'm re-adding it now. Then I'll try the Lower Landing. Problem is that it doesn't seem to matter if it's GE or Zooz, they all fail eventually. This Z-wave radio seems broke. I have contacted support twice already. So far, nothing other than generic: "have you tried rebooting?", "have you tried excluding and re-adding?" Funny, I got that last one after I installed my first 2 switches and was having issues. No, I haven't tried to remove what I just added to an out of the box hub....so..ya..frustrating.
Maybe I'll end up using SmartThings hub for Z-wave switches, Home Assistant as a bridge to Hubitat and SmartThings....ugh....maybe I'll just swap out all lights for Zigby lights.
What model motion sensor do you have? If it's battery powered try fresh batteries. Battery powered sensors should be paired S2 or unsecured. S0 should be avoided. I've seen low battery condition significantly affect my C7 mesh.
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