Do any of you Hubitateers have a successful drawing that you personally have made of your Z-Wave Mesh? I'm more visual and think that my learning curve would go thru the roof at E=mc2 speed. The jargon slows me down and frustrates my intellect.
What I'm thinking of is a Visio or whatever named project that shows blocks, bullets, arrows, etc. of the components that make up a masterpiece Z-Wave roadmap.
My background is medical radiography so I'm not immune to "shadows".
Thanks, in advance.
While such tools are available (for eg. ZWave Toolbox), the output is less informative that the numerical data found under Settings -> Z-Wave Settings.
@tony.fleisher has written a nice tool that sorts this data into discrete groups that permits rapid evaluation of mesh health, as well as trouble-shooting.
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I agree, I think a visual map is going to be not very useful. Z-wave has no concept of distance and precise location. If one device is trying to find a route to the hub and a device clear across the house is responding the best it will assume it must be near by and in the path to the hub, and route through it. If you dig too deep it is just frustrating. Just have to learn to let it do its thing as long as the devices all keep working. Trust me I have tried and tried to get things to route logically and it just does whatever it wants in the end, but the devices work.
The Z-Wave tool mentioned above is great for if you suspect issues, you can dig in and get as much info as possible to help figure it out. [BETA] A Z-Wave Mesh Tool [C7 and 2.2.4+ Only]
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I agree with everything that has been said here. Visual will just frustrate you because you'll spend hours and hours trying to get your devices to repeat the way you want based on your map and you'll literally never get it there.
The main thing is, where possible, get your repeating (i.e. non-battery) devices all placed prior to adding battery devices. It's best to add the non-battery devices in expanding layers with your hub the center of the circle, but this is not super-critical as the devices will pretty frequently look for new routes on their own.
Lastly, I will say that I've been in this world for 3 years and BY FAR the biggest improvement to my Z-Wave mesh was doing the external antenna upgrade that you can find a tutorial on in the forums here. Costs a few bucks and you have to do some very precise soldering, but the improvements were shockingly good. I would have saved lots of money in repeaters (I think I have 7) and hours of frustration if I had done it earlier.
Many of us are hoping that whenever the next generation of the Hub comes out (C-8?) it will have the ability to add an external antenna built-in.
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When you say "hub the center of the circle", is that physically? I am still trying to find the sweet spot location but due to the structure of my home, there isn't one central area that's ideal.
I have just 3 non-repeaters (Motion detectors) and 20 non-battery repeaters (smart, bulbs, plugs, etc.) so the network is ok to an extent.
Is there a good RF Megahertz field detector that could determine the z-wave frequency for the C7 hub placement to be optimal? Too bad there isn't a battery operated hub that one could carry throughout the house, or does that not sound plausible?
I agree, an external antenna would be great on the next HE hub development.
Thanks.
This is the sort of thing that people used ZWave Toolbox for.
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