I'm trying to better understand Hub Link before purchasing additional hubs
I have a (mostly) Z-Wave network, with a boatload of hard-wired switches that act at repeaters. I'm having some pretty miserable performance though, around timing with some of my sensors. eg: walk into room, 15 seconds later rule fires to turn on lights, when it should be nearly instant.
I have other rules that fire nearly instantly as expected, also all Z-Wave backed.
The only thing I can think of, as far as issues goes is either that my Ecolink Motion Sensors (w/ Pet Immunity, you can find them everywhere), really just suck, or that they're hopping into the mesh somewhere way the heck down the line.
In an effort to save on costs, I would love to not purchases additional hubs purely for range extension (assume that's even possible / part of how Hub Link works). Can you guys think of ways I could further trouble shoot this, and hopefully figure out a solution?
The setup consists of a motion sensor in a room, and a GE Z-Wave switch (hard wired) in the same room. The Motion Sensor seems to fire as soon as it detects motion (I see the green light blink), but then there's a long delay before the rule fires.
Edit: I should add that when I toggle the switch in question from the devices page, it toggles nearly immediately, as it should.
Just a thought.... Open your Log page and monitor it when you trip the sensor (see it’s LED flash)
See if the HE is being notified immediately or if it’s delayed. Then see when your corresponding action is occurring. Is it delayed or immediate.
My experience is that z-wave motion/contact sensors are just slower to report than zigbee ones. I've swapped out all my z-wave motion sensors for zigbee sensors. Also, I find the GE Z-wave dimmers also slow to respond. So, you've got the worst of both worlds, unfortunately.
I've used a few of these motion sensors for lighting and they usually turn on the z-wave light in about 1 second which isn't bad at all for z-wave devices.
My biggest complaint about this device is that once it reports active it takes 3 minutes to change back to inactive, but putting the jumper on test mode solves that problem. Most z-wave motion sensors are a little bit slower than zigbee, but there are some models that are almost just as fast.
I would also recommend to monitor your logs to see if any of the devices are extremely chatty, for example the zooz power strips can produce almost 2 full pages of logs every 5 minutes using the default preference settings, adjusting these preferences can greatly reduce those. And if your motion sensor is trying to send a command during a chatty device log it will be delayed.
Yeah, I knew this going into things. The range is what I wanted more than anything. That said though, with the ~40 or so Z-Wave switches I have, outside of a couple devices that are finicky, I see <1/4s response, which while isn't "instant", is pretty darn close. All of the GE switches are near instant when I toggle them.
I thought it was 5 minutes when not in test mode? Regardless though, it still reports motion events when it's awake. But when it's sleeping, there's deff a brief delay before it wakes up, but it's (like my other switches) pretty quick to wake up and trigger an event.
I ran the repair as you recommended and it definitely seems to have made a difference. Appreciate the tip! I had no idea that you could command them to update their neighbor list.
Do you mean the two toggles under the device "Enable Debug Logging" and "Enable Description Text Logging"? Outside of those two things, I don't see much in the way of settings to be changed for any of my switches. The only device I have that was continually reporting data was the Eeon Multisensor, which I squelched by turning off both of those toggles. But I wouldn't think that would make any difference in what traffic is being sent around, right? Isn't that just an ignore toggle on the hub itself?
I have noticed though that the same log line is repeated multiple times when things change. Is this normal? Uploaded an example below - many identical entries in very short periods of time.
Yes that is what I was referring to as chatty devices (the second comment you made not the toggles), there "should" be only one entry per event, but some devices produce multiples and isn't much you can do about it......but some devices (like energy monitoring, temp/humidity/lux measurements, and others) you can change their reporting frequency or the % change needed to report in the preferences to reduce the amount of log traffic.
In the above example the Default setting for Power Reporting Threshold was 5watts, so every fluctuation of 5 watts sent a log entry, now it needs 200 watts. Same with Power reporting frequency and Energy reporting frequency Default was 5 minutes
So from default every 5 minutes or every change +/- 5 watts I would get rougly this for log entries Plus 1 more page
Now combine this with I have 4 of these power strips, you can start to see the log entries going nonstop when all the other devices are doing the same thing.
So adjusting the preferences can reduce any bottlenecks in your hubs processing ability
This is very good advice. Also, make sure that nothing that shouldn't be paired as secure z-wave is. One of range extenders paired securely, unlike the other 3. I learned this by seeing class 0x98 in the in-clusters. So I unpaired it, reset it, and then it paired normally.
Secure z-wave devices take more bandwidth than regular z-wave devices.
P.S. I may be using terms incorrectly, but the gist of what I'm saying is ok.
It's not a secret in this field that their are devices that are far better than others, some companies write firmware paying attention to how the device plays well with everything when installed, others just get the device to work and the rest they couldn't care less about relying on other avenues for someone else to correct their short comings. Some realize these issues after they rushed the product to market then ask you to go through the process an updating the devices firmware to correct the problems. Every market has quality and there is also quantity most the time it's not both.
My whole experience with the field to date has been with a Wink. So naturally, none of this information that's exposed via HE, nor some of the issues I'm seeing now, I ran across prior.
I know you may have some hesitation around posting publicly about your preferences for devices, but would you be willing to DM me some suggestions that are of better quality? I'm not married to Z-Wave either - I just haven't gone out and gotten any Zigbee devices. Range was the consideration when I went with Z-Wave initially, but it sounds like many of those issues have been resolved in recent years with Zigbee
There are several reasons duplicate events can happen and it often has nothing to do with the device's firmware... I'm basing this off of working with over 130 different z-wave devices and spending several hours watching the traffic with a z-wave sniffer.
When controlling a device like a switch through the hub, the driver often sends the on/off set command followed by a get command. When the hub doesn't receive a response within 50ms of sending the command it resends it and after about the 5th attempt it tries sending it through a different node.
That's common behavior with all z-wave devices and hubs, but occasionally things get out of sync and the device ends up receiving multiple get commands and sending multiple reports back to the hub. That's usually the cause of random duplicates that you see in the logs.
If you have a specific device that always logs 2 entries then it could be a couple of things. If it happens when you digitally control the device, but not when you physically control it then the device most likely sends an automatic report when it turns on/off, but the driver is also requesting the report which is why there's always 2.
If it always happens when controlled physically and digitally then the device most likely sends 2 different types of reports like Switch Binary Report, Basic Report, or Basic Set. This is the only one that's the manufacturers fault and sometimes they have configuration parameters that allow you to choose which type of report you want it to send.
Are your GE Switches Z-Wave Plus?
I've had really good luck with the Zooz wall switches/dimmers, HomeSeer wall switches/dimmers, Aeotec Nano Switch/Dimmer, and Qubino Relay modules.
