The Zwave plugs in one room of my house have always been unreliable. That room was using 2 very old Jasco Zwave plugs (Zwave 200chips?). I thought replacing the old Jaso plugs with new Ministron Zwave plugs would solve the issue – it did not!
The new Ministron plugs behave erratically – sometimes they respond immediately, sometimes they respond after 10 or 20 seconds, sometimes they don't respond. The plugs are within 10 feet of each other, and within 15 feet of the nearest working powered Zwave device.
My setup is a Hubitat C-5 with about 10 powered Zwave devices distributed throughout my 2400 sq. foot home. The network has been stable and rock solid for over 2 years (except for the one room).
I have tried doing a Z-wave repair, and also tried rebooting the C-5 hub. After the the repair and after the reboot I waited 24hrs to see if the network would work itself out - it did not.
What should I try next? Should I completely delete my Zwave network and rebuild ( yuck ) ? Would upgrading the hub from C-5 to C-7 help? Switch to Zigbee?
Update 09/20/2023: After several failed attempts (see thread) I think I found the solution - which is to add a z-wave plug/repeater to the room directly above the problem room.
The solution was not immediately apparent to me, as I already have other repeaters near the problem room, and also have other devices much further away from the hub that are stable and reliable.
The problem room is my woodworking shop. It has a cast iron sink, cast iron table saw, aluminum sheets for my track saw, hand saws, metal heating pipes, ceiling hung lights with metal reflectors. I'm assuming this all created an environment that was problematic for the 900mgz z-wave signal. I had to try several locations for the z-wave repeater to find a place where it can reliably communicate with the plugs in the problem room.
