Z-Wave Repeaters - Max Limit?

I'm thinking about buying more Z-Wave repeaters in the hopes that it will improve response time for some devices. However, I remember hearing somewhere that there could only be a certain number of repeaters between the devices that need them and the Hubitat... I think maybe four? Does anyone know for sure?

The number you'll usually hear is "four hops." This really just means four intermediary devices, so by most people's counts, you might actually consider that five. It's supposed to be smart enough to choose good routes that accommodate possible distance (it doesn't really know, but it does know signal strength and devoces should know all neighbors, not just their currently preferred routes), but the Z-Wave SDK Hubitat is using (and most, but not all, implementations I've seen) don't give you manual control over routes. The best bet is probably just to have a strong mesh, including both repeaters near the hub and near other devices you care about.

I'm not sure I've seen anyone on here mention problems in this regard, but besides just splitting up the networks (multiple hubs plus some way to share devices, like Hub Mesh), I'm not sure what you could do besides perhaps selectively remove repeaters, perform repairs, and hope it doesn't re-select a bad route on its own (Plus devices with Explorer Frames mean you don't need a repair to find new routes). But hopefully you won't need to worry about it at all. :slight_smile: And if you're lucky enough that any of these devices will support Z-Wave Long Range in the future, then you really won't habe to...but we'll see what that landscape ends up looking like when it hits the real world, I suppose!

1 Like