Issues with Iris Smart Plugs as Z-Wave Repeaters

Only if you also included it as a z-wave device, and later removed it incompletely - leaving a stranded z-wave device.

There is no issue if it was never included as a z-wave device, or if a secondary controller was used to remove the stranded z-wave device.

P.S. @bobbyD is correct - stranded z-wave devices can really mess up a z-wave mesh. I know - I did it accidentally.

1 Like

Not to go against BobbyD, he has a different perspective, and sample size than I do. But I have not seen any issues on my network with these. Maybe some give problems and others don't depending upon the Iris firmware or hardware revision or whatever?

1 Like

I also have 10 of these in my home repeating zigbee and z wave without issues.

I use this driver for the Z wave side to make sure they are communicating.

3 Likes

I'll have to give this a try instead of the watchdog app I'm using.

...or if you successfully included it as a z-wave device?

All mine are functional and AFAIK, not causing any issues. I get that a stranded device could cause issues. Thanks for the clarificaiton.

I have 10 of these Iris devices in use and far as I know all the Iris devices are Zigbee and not Z wave, two different protocalls and radios. Z wave runs on 908.4 MHz and Zigbee is on 915 MHz (US) and are unable to be used as a z wave repeater

I have a few of the Iris 3210-L. If you look at the owner's manual it says that they do have both Zigbee and Z-wave radios. I use mine as Z-wave repeaters.

Here is a link to the owner's manual:

All the way down at the bottom of the manual is where you can see that it has both radios.

1 Like

The problem is some Iris repeaters are really bad at repeating Z-Wave. Since you can no longer update the firmware it's kind of hit or miss as to which ones will work.

@ogiewon mentions some devices might have the latest firmware if they have an extra barcode label..

2 Likes

Are they bad at repeating at all, even if you can get them to pair to Hubitat? Or are they bad because of the hit and miss nature of being able to pair?

For older firmware devices the Z-Wave part is bad at repeating, may join but does not repeat (or do so poorly with errors - mine just never repeated). It always seems a challenge to get the Z-wave side to pair or exclude no matter what the firmware.

The zigbee side is great.

All 5 of my paired after some kicking a screaming and after we had a talk and I asked nicely, but seriously, is there any way to verify the firmware on it? I heard that you can check the firmware for some Iris devices using a ST hub, which I don't have, but is that possible with the plugs, and if so is that the only way to your knowledge?

Alternatively is there any way to verify that they are in fact repeating? I am using the driver listed below and all are responding correctly.

Driver Current States

image

You can tell if it is repeating via zniffing see @csteele's earlier post..

Firmware directly - dunno... I thought the repeater driver had some sort of way to tell but I gave up trying to get the Iris to repeat Z-Wave. Just too finicky.

E.

Mine aren't repeating. Verified with PC controller and z-stick and IMA map. They just sit at the edge of the mesh.

I used basic Z-wave Tool to query the version, mine reports Protocol Version 4.5, Application version 1.2.

Not sure how that relates to the other version numbering ive seen around which is more like x20085010.

Also under the z-wave repeater device details, mine shows:

deviceMSR : 0246-0001-0001

and under the zigbee switch it shows

endpointId: 01
application:
model: 3210-L
manufacturer: CentraLite

so no help there.

I think mine aren't repeating either. zigbee or Zwave. They are connected to my Hubitat using the drivers though.

I've moved a couple with latest 0x20085010 firmware from my ST hub and paired them to my C-7; I was able to get both of them to turn up as a repeating node in routes for a couple of devices on the Z-Wave details page; so they do indeed work as repeaters.

Was not too impressed though that one which was only 25 feet from the hub (just down the hall, in open air) only ran at 9.6kbps according to the details page. The Z-Wave side of this plug is certified Z-Wave Plus; the conformance statement shows it using a mainstream ZM5202 SOC and 500 series Z-Wave version (6.51.06). Played around with it a bit (as it was repeating for an old non-Plus Aeon water sensor) and even when the Aeon was taken out of the picture it stuck at 9.6kbps. Even the old Aeon sensor managed 40kbps on its own.

The other Iris plug 12 feet from the hub was showing the 100kbps rate on its Z-Wave repeater. I'll have to swap locations of the plugs and see if anything changes; maybe the range issue isn't common to both.

how do you see the speed? Is there a way to update the firmware on these still? Seem don't work well at 10-20 feet.

Not that anyone has posted.

Thanks for sharing the info on the rectangular bar code on the back of the plugs...mine all have that, so at some point I'm going to look into adding the Z-Wave functionality.

Off-topic: Thanks to you and your driver my laundry notifications are so perfect my family won't believe I did it myself. (Which I didn't, but I wish they would at least consider it remotely possible.) :wink: Thanks again!

1 Like

@danabw
I'm not clear on who you are thanking for the laundry notifications. Could you share a link, as I have a need for that? Thanks!

I was talking to @ogiewon. The laundry notifications are very specific to a particular driver that @ogiewon ported to HE, used with a particular energy monitor. Likely would not help you much, unfortunately. Have you looked at the Laundry Manager app?

Here's my final version of rule he gave me, which could help if you're trying to use Rule Manager.

Here's the driver thread, in case you're interested.