I am a new to Hubitat from Smartthings, I have mostly GE/Jasco swiches/fan controllers - z-wave devices, a few Iris Zigbee switches/z-wave repeaters and a couple smoke/CO detectors.
My initial switchover from smartthings went pretty smooth and I was extremely happy with my new Hubitat hub. About 10 days into the new install my devices would stop reporting their status to Hubitat. The bedroom fan would be physically on but Hubitat would show it as off. Turn the fan off and Hubitat would show it at 25% constantly. I had issues with other devices not responding. Rebooted the hub, repaired the mesh, nothing seemed to really help.
I decided to work through the list and remove my devices, do a soft reset on the hub, reset all of the z-wave devices, and re-add them back. Life has gotten worse. The distance now seems to be extremely limited to any device within a 10 foot range of the hub. I worked through the immediate devices near the hub and left it sit overnight thinking the mesh will work itself out. I am not able to add in any devices that are >10 feet away, they will not exclude.
In the meant time if I fire up my smartthings hub it has no problem excluding my devices and it's in an even more remote position in my house. Am I dealing with some type of hub failure or malfunction? Short of flipping the main breaker for the house to 'reboot' the whole house I'm a little lost at this point.
Are these Zwave or ZWave+ devices? (On the Device page look at the In Clusters, for ZWave+ the first one is usually 0x5E.) If not a plus device you'll need to use the Zwave Poller (or a rule) to keep the statuses sync'ed. Unlike many older hubs, HE assumes that you'll be adding ZWave+ devices that don't need the poller, and doesn't run it automatically to reduce overhead.
Sharing this link only because I recently found it myself and it could help others. Full of great info and tips, some of which were sourced from our world class community.
Don't see anything that looks like a ghost, so good news there. Doesn't appear that anything is routing through repeater 0x07, and only one device is using 0x08. While 40kbps should work, I like to see mostly 100kbps. One thing that has been discussed in the past, is that the antenna in HE isn't as strong as what ST used, so that may be some of your issue. First pass, I'd say that you may want to consider relocating the repeaters such that they are about 2/3 of the way from the problem devices to the hub (i.e. closer to the hub than the device), but adding a few more repeaters to build a stronger mesh is probably in order also.
The other thing to check is the logs. In the past history tab are there any messages or errors that indicate a device(s) may be reporting too frequently or experiencing errors? The other place to look is the Device Stats tab of the log - add the % of Total column if it isn't there already and sort on it. Are there any devices that seem to be using excessive time? Can also at the App Stats tab for the same issue.
The repeaters are integrated with an Iris Zigbee plug-in outlet. I may just exclude the repeater and pick up a couple new repeaters. Seems like aeotec range extender 7 is the latest and greatest?
I would agree that the range is not that great. I think I just have a major hurdle of getting the mesh extended. since the current repeaters are tied to an outlet that I'm using for a light I don't want to really relocate them.
Oh, didn't realize those where the repeaters you where using. There have been documented issues with turning on the zwave side of those. I'd recommend excluding the zwave side of the device. The Aeotec 7 seems to be a good one, the Ring Gen 2 work well (slightly shorter range) also if you can 't find the Aeotec.
can I reiterate a few things that @thebearmay said:
There are plug firmware dependent issues with the Iris V2 zigbee outlets that also work as z-wave repeaters.
Placing repeaters about 1/3rd of the way between the hub and devices works well (i.e. closer to the hub than the device).
The Aeotec 7 (and the Aeotec 6) range extenders work well. And there is no need to pair either securely (even if the end device, like a lock, uses secure Z-Wave).
Thank you both, sounds like first step now is to retire the Iris plugs replacing with Z-wave plugs which should do a pretty good job at extending the mesh.
I would could keep the Iris plugs for the Zigbee side of your home...they are great Zigbee repeaters. I have a number of them and never have any Zigbee issues.
You can reset the Iris plugs and remove them from your Z-Wave devices, and then rejoin them only on the Zigbee side for their repeating, and then add Z-Wave repeaters or plugs you need.
Wanted to provide and update since that doesn't always happen on forums. Received my Aeotec switches today. Got them in placed, Was a little trick to include but I've got all my z-wave devices back online. Appreciate all the help and happy that my Hubitat will continue to be a good replacement for smartthings.
