Curious: Is there a way to speed up actions?

I was just curious if it was possible to speed switching all the light switches, outlets, etc, in my house? Mostly z-wave but some zigbee outlets. When I push a button on my Zen34 it take maybe 7 seconds to turn all the devices in my house, 50+, on or off.

It kind of pauses in the middle of switching things, and then starts up again. All devices, so far, get switched.

For Zigbee, yes: you can use Groups and Scenes (a group, specifically) or Room Lighting to group the devices together, enable/don't disable Zigbee group messaging, and then use the group or Room Lighting activator device to command the set of Zigbee outlets. This sends a single command instead of a single command to each device.

For Z-Wave, not exactly--it theoretically supports multicast, which could do something similar, but last I read, Hubitat did not see a way to do that with the official Z-Wave SDK they are using. So, we're left with individual commands to each device. Doing a lot at the same time (or really in sequence) may be slower, then. The best things you can do to help are have a well built Z-Wave network, including a centrally located hub (to minimize hops through repeaters, which halve the speed each time--and Z-Wave is also a bit slower than Zigbee at max, though with the amount of data that gets sent for something like this, I suspect that's not where the difference comes from). Some people actually intentionally insert delays in this kind of situation to improve reliability, as the networks tend to not like getting flooded with commands. Making sure your hub Z-Wave radio is up to date can help too--a fix a while back addressed an issue where the controller (hub radio firmware) might lock up in certain busy situations.

With 50+ devices, I'd personally be OK with 7 seconds if it's always as reliable as you say. :smiley: But that's just me, and I certainly understand you might want things a bit faster.

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I was just curious. I know this is related to another question I asked earlier, but whether it's logical or not, it seems I get better reliability with optimization on (in SA) than off. I haven't had a failure yet, and I've been fooling around with it a fair amount-just because it's cool hearing all those clicks.

If your devices report state accurately, then optimization would also reduce the number of commands sent, since devices already (reporting as being) in the desired state will be skipped -- saving not just traffic but also time.

I'm experimenting with Rooms with inconclusive results so far.

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