I'm pretty techie - but have to admit I'm a bit lost when it comes to Z-Wave.
When I built our home - I had a bunch of Z-Wave Switches installed. Most were the GE Enbrighten Z-Wave Smart Dimmer with a couple of non-dimmable switches for landscape lights, etc.
I have a total of 28 switches.
I originally had a C7 and upgraded to a C8 - ideally for some better Z-Wave range. Things have been working quite well.
when using the Hubitat Z-Wave Mesh Details app - originally about half of my switches were showing direct, and about half were connected through other switches.
currently - about 6 are showing meshed - and the remainder are direct. I think this happened when Hubitat included LR support in a recent update.
I'm about to buy a few Z-Wave battery powered temperature sensors - which support LR. The instructions seem to indicate that I can either add them as a normal / meshed device, or as an LR device.
I'm going to be putting these sensors pretty far from the hub - however they would be close-ish to other plus switches in the environment.
any rules / thoughts / logic to how I should add new devices into my network?
try them as LR and see what happens? add them as normal / meshed?
For zwave battery operated sensors, always get Z-Wave 800 based devices and pair LR - lower latency and easier for the device to tune transmit power (which can lead to longer battery life). LR devices also function on their own dedicated radio channel, thus freeing up some radio/serial communication slots for your mesh devices (less contention).
The only reason to pair an LR capable device as mesh is if for some reason it simply CAN NOT communicate in LR mode to the hub (rare - but could happen in situations like sensors inside of freezers or other metal containers, for example).
huge thanks for the quick reply and insights @JasonJoel .
I was looking at purchasing a couple of the ZOOZ 800 SERIES Z-WAVE LONG RANGE XS TEMPERATURE | HUMIDITY SENSOR ZSE44
per your advice - I'll put them where they are going permanently - and attempt to add them as LR devices - and only add them as mesh if they cannot connect via LR.
The 800 version of the ZSE44 is much, much better than the 700 version in terms of battery life. I tested both of them on a power profiler - info/results in another thread on this forum.
I'll just caution that if you really crank up the transmit settings/lower the reporting thresh holds you may not like the battery life you get. So think through how you are going to set them up / expectations on when it should report new values.
You can, just not with Hubitat because their app does not work for S2 paired devices.
There is a way to do it with the old driver version if the code is fixed.
I told you this already so stop posting about it in every LR topic.
Just to clarify, no Z-Wave LR device can move from a mesh connection to a ZW-LR connection on its own. If the switches you have are LR (and not sure that they are - do you know if they are 800 series?) since they were originally joined as mesh devices (LR not supported then) they would have to be removed from the hub and re-paired to the hub as LR devices make a true LR connection to the hub. LR switches cannot move between mesh and LR connections at will.
The increased number of direct connects of your Z-Wave devices is related to the devices moving to a direct connect to the hub over time. They are still mesh devices, and any Z-Wave mesh device can always make a direct connection to a hub if the conditions support it. Those direct connections just can't match the distance that LR devices offer.
I knew that the existing devices didn't change / convert from mesh to LR - but I wasn't sure if maybe when the hub started supporting LR it maybe increased radio power, or maybe enabled other frequencies - and that some of the devices that couldn't connect directly were then able to do so.
Correct, its a weakness for Hubitat, not for LR in general. The original post is not clear, people could read that and think (although silly) that you cannot update LR device at all (ever).
Thanks for clarifying... The addition of LR support wouldn't directly affect existing non-LR devices (at least not as far as I've heard/understand). Standard Z-Wave and Z-Wave LR devices use different frequencies. The changes in your number of direct connects for your non-LR devices over time is not uncommon, I've experienced it as well.
How often are you doing firmware updates? For most devices, never. If you are lucky, you may get one update in the device's lifetime.
Maybe I am missing something, but why can't you update the firmware before pairing as LR (or pairing to Hubitat at all) using a Z-stick of your choosing? Using a generic Z-wave stick is the quickest and easiest way to update firmware, in my opinion.
Even if you have to unpair the device from LR and pair again as a mesh device, you aren't doing updates all that often where it is a huge deal. I would also assume that the firmware updating will get fixed in Hubitat at some point as well, so this is a workaround if you absolutely must do an update.
It should've read that an LR device paired S2 cannot have its firmware updated by Hubitat?
I feel that's pretty bad.
I think the powers that be need to be reminded of this.
Have they spoken about this subject? If so, I don't recall.
Or, are there other Matters more pressing?
If you people don't think it's a problem, and being at risk from having my posts moved or deleted again, I will not comment on this anymore.
Nope, there was a fix made so that LR devices would show in the list for the updater app but then since they are always paired as S2 it did not actually work (longstanding bug with the app). I did not see any feedback after it got to that point.
True...out of somewhere around 200+ devices I'm on the other end of the spectrum. I have five iBlinds that each have been updated two to three times, and I think I updated one or two other devices one time each, but don't really remember. So clearly I'm in the "almost never" group. But I'd still prefer that it work from the hub.
I don't do it too often. To me that is somewhat irrelevant, though. The system need to be able to update firmware - including for S2 and LR devices.
If I have to unpair my device from Hubitat and add it to something else to flash it, then I'll just leave it on the something else and be done with it.
Yep, this. Period dot. If Hubitat won't support S2/LR firmware updates as a platform (i.e. not depending on a community solution), that's just inexcusable in this day and age.
This trend lately of not following through on delivering and maintaining a complete solution when they roll out a new feature (LR in this case) is not good...
The native Google Home and Bond integrations are 2 other examples of things that have completely stalled since the initial rollout -- both could use some love to bring them up to speed. I realize Matter is a long work in progress, but given this track record, I'm frankly pessimistic about any robust official future support there.
The ever-increasing reliance on community solutions here is something the staff needs to get in front of one way or another -- either embrace it and somehow help formalize it better for easier "new guy/gal" onboarding, or get (and maintain!) their own native solutions up to par.
Otherwise, the question of "Why not just bite the bullet and go to Home Assistant?" is just going to get harder for folks to answer.
I am just starting a LR project.
I'm using the 800 series devices in LR mode.
I know that the spec is for a phonemenal distance - but thats for clear, line of sight.
We shall see what the distance figure is for a multi story building, with concrete floor and walls.
I hope that I don't need any firmware updates for the Zooz devices.
I'm sure you're already thinking of this, I'd check and update everything that has an update available on Z-Wave mesh connections first before joining them LR. That should hold you for a while. I'm sure the S2 FW update issue will be resolved at some point. If HE doesn't get to it relatively soon, I think Jeff has some updated code to make it work that he might share...
I'm going to move to all LR in the future as I need to replace or add Z-Wave devices. My Z-Wave mesh is robust, but just prefer to move towards a system where one bad apple can't ruin the bunch.
