I picked one of these fobs up today, have a question about presence and button presses.
I took the fob for a car ride to test the presence portion of it. Timeout is set to 5 minutes. The departure worked about as expected. When I got home, I pulled in the driveway and sat in the car (15 feet or so from a Zigbee repeater) and pulled up the device page on my phone. Presence was showing "not present". Started pushing buttons, nothing happened. Sat there for 2-3 minutes pushing buttons with no effect. Finally the presence registered, and as soon as it did, the button presses started registering as well.
So the question is...if I'm in range, why don't the button presses register until after the presence sensor checks in? I was hoping to use these for guests to be able to open the garage and set themselves present (if the presence sensor hadn't done this automatically already). If the button presses have to wait until the presence sensor catches up, this won't work...
Both the button presses and presence require the device being able to communicate with the hub, you might try placing a zigbee repeater close to the location where you would like this to happen.
Is this 15 feet through a metal garage door?
Not that it should matter because I have my repeater in my garage but it picks me up as soon as I arrive home (Samsung arrival sensor).
Also not sure if this matters, but I paired my sensor while I was in the garage just to make sure it routed initially through my garage door repeater.
I have one 15 feet away, which is about as close as I can get due to outlet locations in my house. Once the presence updated, I had no issues with the button presses registering while still sitting in my car. It's like the button presses are dependent on presence updating first, i.e. button presses cannot cause presence to be updated even if the fob is within range of a repeater or hub.
No, it's on the other side of a stucco exterior wall though. I tested the button presses out to the middle of my street, which is probably another 15 feet further than where I was sitting in the driveway. Although when I did that test, I was not sitting inside the car...
My experience has been the Sam. The Iris fibs suck as presence devices. Usually the presence was so delayed I'd be in my room taking off my dirty scrubs before it triggered.
My St presence sensors trigger usually as I pull up.
If you have a good mesh, the 5 minutes timeout is long, on ST was needed because presence was cloud based driver, if internet failed ST hub reported presence as not present, then when the internet returned you will have a party in your house... Not the case of HE, I have 4 of those fobs, they work well, yes, its about one minute slower than the ST sensor when arrived but they do the job, and the battery last very long compared to the ST, I have 4 ST too and I'm tired replacing batteries, probably I will do the 2 AA mod.
My trick is I installed a zigbee repeater in the front window, the signal is strong enough to get the sensors connected from the street.
Definitely recommend it...especially if you keep the sensor in the car. I use it maintain the presence of my car only and it's safely tucked away in the console. My phone dictates my presence.
Different experience arriving this morning, looks like the button presses registered before the presence arrival. This is what I'm looking for. Yesterday I had just added the Zigbee repeaters, so maybe there was some delay associated to that. Either way, if it continues to work this way I'll be happy
I'm testing these to use as presence sensors for guests. Just trying to avoid a scenario where a guest has to stand in the driveway pushing buttons for a couple minutes before they can finally come in.
I use these devices as well. I've found that there is some sort of time cycle associated with zigbee devices. That is, it doesn't advertise presence immediately, but rather every X minutes. I'm just not sure what X is, and how to modify it.
Can the Iris V2 four button fob be used to arm/disarm HSM? I added the fob to the button control app and do not see an option to use it for controlling HSM. I want to keep it simple: push this button to arm, push this button to disarm. In the HSM app the fob shows up and I have it set to arm with button 1 and disarm with button 2, but nothing happens...
Thanks for the reply. Yes, that’s what I thought as well. I’m thinking I must not have the buttons programmed/assigned correctly? I selected button 1 to arm button 2 to disarm, but the buttons are not labeled with numbers.
Lol. I had it backwards, I would have thought the slot for the key ring attachment would be facing up. I’ll give it another try as soon I get time. Thanks!
Can someone recommend a solid "repeater" for zigbee (I'm on CH 25) and z wave? I am using a lot of outlets on both platforms and nothing really seems to work well. I am getting a lot of dropped devices and I have the hub in the center of the house. All Batts new! I even purchased the smartthings connect system and have those on all 3 levels -- I started on ST and have since migrated to HB but thought those would help... I only had the single Iris Hub before all this and never had any issue like I am experiencing with devices dropping -- not impressed with the range of this or the ST hubs -- unless there is something I am missing. My Iris FOB would change my presence to HOME when I pulled in the drive. By the time I arrived at the door the locks would open, disarm the security and turn on lights. My Iris FOB takes 3 to 4 minutes before it is even seen and by that time im already in. I might place a "repeater" as opposed to another plug in the garage, too and see if that makes a difference but would like to know if there is something stronger than a outlet?
When I migrated from SmartThings, Hubitat "chose" channel 25 for Zigbee. SmartThings was on channel 14 (as I recall). I had several flaky problems with Zigbee devices that I attempted to set up. I switched (based on some advice from the community at the time) Hubitat's Zigbee to channel 20 and it has been solid ever since.
I use SmartThings plugs as my Zigbee repeaters . . . mostly because I had them (no particular analysis done).
Ironically I use the Iris smartplugs. They repeat both zigbee and zwave and have worked very well for other. Some have had issues with the zwave repeater side of things but I believe the consensus is that these smartplugs make excellent zigbee repeaters.
Did you or are you able to disable the zigbee/zwave radios on the smartthings connect hub. It could be providing interference. Like @Eric.C.Miller mentioned above, it might be better to switch to a different channel. There are quite a few devices that have difficulty with the higher channels.
I changed to 25 because I was told it had the least interference with WiFi and since the ST connect hubs are WiFi extenders, thought that might be the best approach. I do not recall where I saw that on the forum but it has been mentioned... but I have also seen to stay away from ch 21 to 26.. lol.
If I use the Iris V1 plugs, do they have to be paired to the Iris hub to work? I only have those -- or would I need V2 plugs and pair them to HB; or can they stand alone and still work?
This is a good reference that illustrates the potential interference issue:
I have three access points and they are on WiFi channels 1, 6, and 11 (which is the conventional wisdom to prevent interference from the overlapping frequencies). My neighbors are as well. So for us, Zigbee 15 and 20 are the best for lower interference.
Aside from interference, some people have experience inconsistent behaviour when using Zigbee channels higher than 20.
