Anyone else not dazzled with 800LR zwave performance ? I have devices that will not even reach from my porch to hub, today I lost connection to two additional outlets. I was hoping for big things the specs are literally fantasy land... Miles ?? I would be happy with 100 feet between floors.
Using C8 with Zooz ZEN04, ZEN14, ZEN05. Community drivers
The problem with RF in general is theoretical numbers are given that are generally unobtainable in real use. Once you atart talking about obstructions and building materials all bets are off on range.
I only have a couple of LR devices and they have worked relatively well, but i am sure i am not pushing the limits.
Totally agree RF wise, attenuation of walls floors etc....but I am not trying to penetrate a room with lead lined walls. It should be able to reach from one side to another between floors. Tile is ceramic not lead and there is not any mesh under it 
800LR is HUB/Spoke so no mesh
I bought a few LR devices for my unattached garage so I could hopefully get rid of the hub there. I ended up installing them regularly.
There is no question that series 800 devices just aren't as "long range" as they should be. I compared the 800 series water leak sensor from Zooz with the corresponding LoRa device from YoLink. No contest.
I'm not sure why the Zwave LR devices are so poor in terms of distance, but it's indisputable that they are.
I have quite a few Zooz 800LR devices now.
The problem ones have been:
-The tilt sensor in the garage (weak battery for cold weather performance, tilt component not working right? Seem to be reporting every 12 hours, so perhaps it is indeed the tilt component.)
-The temp/hum sensor in the freezer (off label-not made for it-lasted a month...seems to be lasting longer in the fridge, so far. Comms are great though.)
Everything else, switches, buttons, plugs, motions, leaks, temp/hum, smoke (after a firmware update), have been working fine. More snappy (then again a GE/Jasco in-wall motion switch was involved, lol), fewer transitory lock ups/delays.
I like the fact that all the Zooz devices can have their start-after-power-restoration behavior modified. I had some (Jasco) switches mysteriously turn themselves on after an outage, and so created a rule to attempt to deal with it. Will do away with that rule now.
I might throw the house main breaker today and see how things react upon restoration, after an hour or so of no power.
I am using some Zen37 800LR buttons. Those can be removed from their wall mounted magnetic holders and moved around. I use them as remote controls for fans, bulbs, and light switches. They work all over the house. No reason to try them down the road. I chose the LR mode so they wouldn't participate in the mesh as I read the battery could last longer and I don't know about devices roaming on a z-wave mesh. With RF, the higher in frequency we go the worse things get for building and foliage penetration. The LR claim applies to powered devices with unobstructed line of sight paths. Something not practical in the world of home automation.
I'm using a ZEN34 800LR button switch in my car for the gate and garage door. Good range.
Tilt sensors UGH i had the go control garage control / tilt combo that worked great. I have tried a zooz, and a ST sensor on my doors now. Neither worked great but so far the third reality one has real promise..it has been 100%
I have a ton of zooz, i did find that in some cases doing the firmware upgrades does help things. Note you cant do a upgrade when its in 800LR mode
I tried 800LR for my sheds, epic fail. I put 800LR zooz repeaters outside also..epic fail. They "worked" just unreliable which isnt what i was going for, my simple fix was to buy 2 C7s and put on in each shed...hub mesh off to the races and its rock solid. i have ethernet run to the sheds
Same here all my outdoor outlets i flipped back
The built-in / native "Device Firmware Updater" tool now works fine with both LR and S2-mesh devices. If updating more than one device, just be sure reboot your hub in between updates.
Lorawan might be the next thing i mess with, just got some matter bulbs that appear to be working nicely. Too soon to say, but they were 8:1 the cost of the HUE
LoraWAN has been a hobby of mine for years. It's range is no joke, neither is the effort required, but I will say that I can get almost as much range on (custom made) ZWave LR devices too. All depends on the antenna used.
So while LoraWan is better from a protocol standpoint, the difference is usually more device design. For instance I have LoraWan devices with shitty pcb antenna that can't make it 100ft - just like Zwave LR with shitty pcb antenna.
On the other hand, put a dumb thumb external antenna on that same lorawan device and I get a mile (line of sight). :shrug:
YoLink is a great option if you can live in their cloud based walled garden (I refuse to do so). If they ever added true local control/device access I would likely abandon my custom made LoraWan devices and use YoLink. Their devices are quite good.
Not true!
I upgraded the firmware on the Smoke/Co dc sensor and it took 5 minutes! And it's a good thing because it's in a ceiling box.
@hydro311 seems to feel that the hub may have to be rebooted between upgrades, but I couldn't substantiate, since, thank Goodness, I only had one sensor to upgrade.
edit: Wrote reply before reading @hydro311 's post.
I am putting it on my list of things to spend hours on researching !
I upgraded mine too...i had a stubborn switch in 800LR mode and it wouldn't upgrade i read it needed to be in normal mode.... I will say if your doing LR you need the smart start manager @jtp10181 (https://community.hubitat.com/u/jtp10181). Great application
The Ecolink tilt and contacts have a wire antenna that you can accidentally snag and rip off (like I did, lol). Great range though and 700 non-lr.
Agreed...great app. I just did the firmware upgrade a couple days ago.
If I were having LR range issues, I would try putting a larger/higher gain antenna on my hub before I would start replacing devices or making custom devices. A lot easier thing to try.
Download the Hubitat app
