I have a lot of Z Wave device on my system. I'd like to be able to set a bunch of them at once, about 12 bulbs and 5 switches. However, I've never been able to set more than 6-8 Z-Wave devices at a time reliably using groups, so what are some good options?
I've tried scenes, but they seem to behave the same way as groups. I can't get more than 6-8 to change at once reliably.
I've tried using Rules Machine to stagger setting devices in smaller groups with delays in between, but Rules machine seems to cause problems on my hub. Every time I try it, my whole system starts becoming unreliable to the point where I eventually have to pull the plug for 30 seconds and do a cold boot. I may be doing something wrong here, but I haven't found my error.
I've experienced the same problems with groups of Z-Wave devices. It seems that if there are more than 4 or 5 devices in a group, the whole network just becomes bogged down when you try to turn them on or off.
I moved from RM to Node-Red because I thought maybe the RM was causing my problems. It didn't help. But I've kept all of my logic on NR because I didn't want to move it back again.
I have a "Goodbye" routine which shuts down 36 Z-Wave switches and outlets. No way that ever worked with a group. I now have a NR routine which individually sends off commands to each device, waiting 2 seconds between each. That works most of the time, but still fails occasionally.
I found that some of my older Z-Wave devices (2017 and before) can cause problems. I'll send a command to one of those from my NR routine and it and the next few after it will fail to respond correctly. I've replaced a bunch of these devices and things are somewhat better, but still not perfect.
I've seen posts on here from Hubitat reps who say that yes, indeed, there are problems with swamping the Z-Wave network. It's a problem with the RF protocols so will probably never be properly fixed in user or developer software.
This is way beyond the norm. When I was running Z-Wave I had 25 or 30 non plus (300 series 40kb) switches and dimmers as part of my goodnight routine, along with three locks, this took 5 to 10 seconds on average to complete, and complete it did.
30 or more successive off commands aren't going to swamp a healthy mesh, 30 s0 device off commands?, sure that's not going to be pleasant...
I wish I had the same experience with this that you have @Eric.C.Miller!
I've spent many many hours and hundreds of dollars trying to get a Z-Wave network I could always depend on and not have to work around. I've added repeaters, changed configurations, replaced old hardware and the results have been only minor improvements. From my experience, working with groups of Z-Wave devices has been very undependable. I've come to the conclusion, that's just how things are and I find ways to work around that.
About a dozen times a day I long for more thorough, dependable and actionable Z-Wave network debugging systems. If for nothing else, just so we knew what we could expect. But today when you've gotten rid of all the devices that have long RTTs, low RSSI, or high numbers of errors, there's not much left to work on.
I hope it works! But until it's fully implemented and released, I'll keep working on work-arounds to make my system dependable. I try not to have expectations for unreleased technology.
