Is there a fast z-wave motion sensor?
I know that Zigbee motion sensors are generally faster than Z-Wave, but I'm wondering if there is Z-Wave sensor that is not far behind in speed.
Just about all zigbee motion sensors are going to be about 2 to 4 times faster no matter which you pick. In general wired motion sensors are faster than battery but zigbee is still faster.
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The Zooz 4-in-1 is pretty fast in my experience (and their marketing does claim it's the fastest Z-Wave sensor), and the Dome DMMS1 isn't bad, either. I just got a Fibaro and haven't tested it yet, but it looks so much like the Dome (which doesn't seem to be available anymore) that I'm wondering.
But this is all relative to other Z-Wave sensors--as you've noted, I find nearly any Zigbee sensor to be faster. I've used lots of Z-Wave sensors that I've found unbearably slow: the Monoprice PIR (Ecolink lookalike) and 4-in-1 (Zooz v1 lookalike), the Aeon Multi 6, the Zooz ZSE18 and HomeSeer HS-MS100+ (similar/identical hardware), and probably lots of others I've tried to forget about. They've all been banished to either outdoor use (where speed problems aren't as annoying as they are indoors), supplemental sensors to keep lights on rather than turning them on in motion-based automations, or entirely non-motion use like lux or temperature reporting.
The fastest zwave I usually ever see is around 350ms while zigbee can push close to 80ms. Worst case zwave is usually around 900ms and zigbee around 200ms. My wired alarm sensors are typically around 11ms worst case and 3ms best case. At some point the rules can play a part in the perceived delay.
Yeah, that's about what I remember from the highly unscientific measurements I did once (put a bunch facing a doorway in a room I'd walk into and record the time of the sensor's "active" events with a custom app I wrote on a hub that was being used only for this purpose), though I didn't have a good way to get "time 0" besides guessing from the event time of the first sensor, which was always a Zigbee device (Iris v2 or Xiaomi, which I had some of at the time). Never got these numbers into an easily-digested format and still not sure about the validity of my experiment, but it did confirm mt real-world experience. 
People on the SmartThings forums/groups always accused me of having Z-Wave mesh problems when I said Zigbee sensors were faster... (which, to be clear, I'm not saying is the fault of the protocol, just likely design choices)
I really wish they were much closer in speed but even under ideal conditions the delay was noticeable with lighting. I tried a ton of Z-Wave motion sensors but none of them ever performed as well as ZigBee. The only way to get around this perceived delay was to use ZigBee or hardwired alarm sensors or add in contact sensors to trigger the lights as the door was opening before a motion sensor would normally trigger.
My personal favorite zigbee motion sensor are the Samsung 2018 version with at least firmware version 14 so the battery issue is resolved. Samsung SmartThings Motion Sensor (2018) SmartThings - GP-U999SJVLBAA | Samsung US
For bathrooms where you want to monitor humidity as well as motion to control vents, the Nyce ceiling motion sensors are my favorite. They come with 2 tripple a batteries and last a couple of years on them. They are a little expensive though.
Can we check the firmware version on these motion sensors while paired with Hubitat hub or do you just know they are bad because they run through batteries?
I just paired them to my old ST hub and went into the SmartThings IDE page and looked under firmware in the device list.
In HE, if you scroll to the bottom of the page on the device I think application is the version number also.
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Yea, unpair it and then join it to ST. Go into the SmartThings IDE and scroll down to the firmware section and check for firmware. It took it a while and a couple of tries to get it to pull it down but eventually got it. Takes about 20 minutes and it will use a lot of battery installing the firmware. I'd recommend doing it before your next battery replacement so you dont wipe out a fresh battery. It will use about 20% of the battery with the update.
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So unpair from Hubitat and pair back to STs to get the firmware update?
Here's the link to SmartThings IDE.
@lewis.heidrick thanks for the firmware alert. When I went to get this sensor for updating I remembered how I'd done a little hardware update on this one to get beyond the battery issue.,
lol good one. The batteries last a long time now but no reason to change it with that fix. Might as well get it on the latest firmware though before samsung breaks their ide or whatever though.
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That one looks like 15 but I don't know what the latest is.
@mike.maxwell After resetting these motion detectors, pairing them to STs hub, and updating the firmware, why does it continue to show the old firmware value once repaired to HT? Or maybe application value is not the firmware version? After seeing the discrepancy I reset one of these and paired it back to STs and it was showing the device did have the latest firmware.
STs after firmware update
Back on HT
But isn’t it in reality the fault of the protocol? Zigbee has 2.5X the transmission rate of z-wave.
That's true, but given how small the amount of data transmitted for these events is, I assume the difference is minimal. My assumption is that it has more to do with how many "zones" in the PIR sensor need to get "tripped" before the device itself considers there to be motion. It could also have something to do with the fact that most battery-powered Z-Wave devices have to wake up before they can do anything (beaming/FLiRS devices excepted), but I assume that has less to do with it given that I still had the same luck with USB-powered devices.
But the reason for this difference is all just a guess to me. The Zooz 4-in-1 is reasonably fast but still doesn't compare to most Zigbee sensors, so maybe there is indeed something else (though it could also be another of the above).
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I will do a +2 or +3 or whatever it is at this point. All my Zigbee just blow the Z-wave sensors out of the water speed-wise. I have a strong and stable Z-wave mesh, so I should be a prime candidate for optimal Z-wave sensor response times.
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