Slowness in device response when executing HomeKit automation

Is there a rate limit when executing commands received via HomeKit? I came over from Vera with the Homebridge plugin where scenes executed lightning fast--even faster than when Vera was executing all of the scenes. I moved everything over to a C-7 when Hubitat announced their HomeKit integration, but response to scenes coming from HomeKit are unacceptably laggy.

Like I have a "Lights out" automation that runs at midnight, turning off about 20 devices throughout the house. All of my native HomeKit devices respond right at midnight, whereas it feels like anything that's on the C-7 responds about 15-20 seconds after midnight.

Not sure that it matters but I've verified that the C-7's clock is accurate. Firmware is up to date and I've already tried rebooting everything.

I have ~60 Z-Wave devices on my C-7--nothing else. They are mainly old GE/Jasco outlets, dimmers and wall switches. I have also had to set up the Z-Wave Poller app for them since none of them report status. I know I'd have a better experience with Z-Wave plus stuff, but I don't want to spend a bunch of money on new Z-wave devices because I think Matter/Thread is the future. I just want to ride out these older Z-wave devices until Matter is mature.

My mesh is very healthy. I had @lewis.hedrick do the antenna mod before I even set up the C-7, so most of the devices are talking directly to the hub.

If I manually trigger a device--either through the Home app or the HE interface itself it responds very quickly. It's only scenes/automations where I'm getting the slow response.

Any suggestions much appreciated.

I’m going to assume that it is related to polling that many devices. Z-wave only has so much bandwidth (less than half of what Zigbee has) and it’s probably getting overwhelmed if you are polling.

2 Likes

I suppose it's easy enough to test this--just disable the Z-Wave poller app and then see if the response becomes instantaneous?

I don't know the SoC/Memory differences between Vera Plus and the C-7 but as I stated in my post the Vera had absolutely no trouble at all polling that many devices (and actually even more, since I have less Z-Wave devices now after replacing some that failed over the years with WiFi-based HomeKit stuff).

Maybe it's just that Hubitat is not optimized for that task since it's expected most people are outfitted with all Z-Wave Plus stuff by now, whereas in the era where Vera Plus was developed there were a lot more Z-Wave 300 devices in use requiring polling.

Thing is, there is no way that I can/will:

  1. Do without polling. I need to know the status of these modules.
  2. Replace any of these modules with Z-Wave plus versions. Z-wave may not be legacy/obsolete at this point, but given the major players going all in on Matter/Thread I do not think it's a particularly good investment to buy a bunch of new Z-wave devices (for me, anyway--maybe others here disagree). My goal to have everything working in HomeKit, so if I have to buy new stuff it might as well be HomeKit native. I'm hoping there is some way to improve the experience with Hubitat without having to replace perfectly working switches.

I will try disabling all polling and report back how that affects response time. That's a good test--thanks for the suggestion.

1 Like

I would also not pair anything with Security except for doors and garage door opener stuff. If you have anything paired as s0 that will certainly slow things down a lot.

2 Likes

Thankfully that is one issue I don't have to contend with. None of my devices even offer the option of pairing with security--they are all old Jasco dimmers, in-wall switches and outlets. I did double-check and there are no devices in my Z-Wave network paired with security.

Appreciate the suggestion!

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 360 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.