When to Z-wave repair?

I have a Aeon Labs DSC06106 power outlet dongle with power reporting. It pairs fine and does what it is supposed to do in the house. If I take it out to my detached shop it will not respond to on/off commands. There are several other z-wave devices in the shop which are working fine. I suppose I should just do a z-wave repair and see if it helps, but I thought perhaps one of the experts here could tell me if my problem might be fixed by a z-wave repair.

Yes. Standard rule of thumb is to run a repair whenever a zwave device is added or removed. Move it to your shop and begin a repair.
[EDIT]
I always attempt to pair a device in the general area of where it will be located. If I have troubles, I'll move closer to the hub. But run a repair anyway even if you do exclude it and re-pair it.

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You need to do a Z-Wave Repair when there is a change in the network topology. That happens when you move the device. It now does not know which repeater is closest to it, so the neighbor tables need to be rebuilt.

You should pair in place, except for locks that almost always need to be paired very near the hub. If it won’t join, then you need a Z-Wave repeater. If you don’t need it for some devices, it doesn’t mean that you won’t need it for all devices in the same location. Ideally repeaters should be in between the hub and device, but that’s not always feasible.

Are the other Z-Wave device that work battery powered or AC powered? If they are AC powered, on the HE hub and they work out there, they can probably repeat for the Aeon outlet. Try a Z-Wave repair (or a couple) and then give the tables time to repair. Don’t make any changes to the mesh or you’ll have to repair and wait again. It may start working fine tomorrow after a few repairs tonight.

https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=How_to_Build_a_Solid_Z-Wave_Mesh

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Thanks for the tips. I know it isn't the best way to do it, but I pair all my devices that go to the shop in the house next to the Hubitat. Then I move them to the shop which is about 120 feet away and a steel clad building. I use zwave devices exclusively in the shop - never got Zigbee working there yet. I have a couple zwave devices on my rear deck, and I have a zwave device for my rear post lights about one half way between the rear deck and the shop. Then I have a plug in appliance module in the window of the shop just to "catch" the zwave signal and relay it to the devices in the shop. Works 100% of the time. This Aeon dongle is the first thing that didn't start working when I moved it out to the shop. I did do a zwave repair - took over 90 minutes - and now the dongle is working fine.

Another questions, similar in nature. I have 3 Aeotec repeater/extenders. I joined them all within 10 feet of the hub. Now, I have moved one upstairs about 40 feet away. Did a zwave repair after the move and it seems to be happy where it's located. If any of you use the repeater/extenders where do you have them placed in relation to the hub?

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I’m sure you’ll get much better answers. I’m not a big Z-Wave user and only one of my devices is a repeater. Just by dumb luck, it is also the HomeSeer status light monitor on my washing machine, and that just happens to be halfway between my hub and my two Aeon HEMs.

I have 4 of the Aeotec extenders. I have one by the hub (which is in the back corner of the house), one by my front door lock, and two in between.

It's not strictly necessary to run a manual Z-Wave network repair if all your repeaters and the device being moved are Z-Wave Plus and support Explorer Frames because they will eventually get new routes to the hub, if/as needed. In this use case, the Z-Wave network repair mostly just speeds up the process of setting up the new routes. The consideration about pairing locks close to the hub is totally separate and unrelated---even if locks support NWI, they are typically paired securely, which is much more intensive and can fail more easily due to packet loss if repeaters are needed for the pairing process. That's why locks are recommended to pair right near the hub (or to move the hub right near the locks to pair them).

It's also not always better (or even possible) to pair at final location---some devices just don't support Network-Wide Inclusion ("NWI"), which is required for pairing at final location, while other devices (such as my Z-Wave Plus Leviton DZPD3-2BW Decora Smart Plug-in Dimmers) do support NWI but only if it is specifically invoked during the inclusion process. Some devices (again, such as the Leviton dimmer plug mentioned above) will default to non-NWI pairing, which will never work to pair at final location if a repeater is needed to facilitate the pairing process.

By way of another example: I have probably 10 Aeotec Smart Switch 6 devices. For whatever reason, I can never get them to pair at final location---invariably, the pairing fails. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. If I pair these switches close to the hub, however, they pair just fine; I then move them to the final location and hit "refresh" a few times on the hub until I can see in the logs that the devices have found their new routes (using Explorer Frames). I don't need to run a Z-Wave network repair right away to have these devices find their new routes to the hub, though I do eventually run a network repair so that other devices can have the benefit of knowing that these switches have been added to the mesh network (which may give other devices more route options to reach the hub).

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