Zwave and zwave plus

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21

Thanks!

22

I do have a mixture of Plus and non but I can't see a real reason to dump the non plus devices. My mesh is really quick and reliable so until something breaks or someone has a giveaway sale they will be with me for a while.

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23

Ah the vagaries of IoT.. :laughing:

I had a mixture at one point too, but it was definitely slow going (even after following @bobbyD's excellent article on building a strong mesh). Moving everything to Z-Wave Plus (over 50 devices) was worth it, even if the WAF dropped significantly during the actual changeover. :slight_smile:

But, your point is super valid - if it's not broken, don't fix it.

My mesh is much more reliable now and quicker, but, with @bobbyD's help, we think that my Z-Wave Plus locks may be the cause of some random slowness I've been seeing occasionally. We'll see how switching them to Zigbee helps (or doesn't).

24

So my one z wave device (watercop valve) is making all my z wave plus mains powered devices and z wave plus battery devices use Z wave protocols for range and speed? I have like 38 z wave plus things and 2 zwave valves.

25

For someone starting out like the OP, where you can choose, Plus is an absolute advantage, especially when you have fewer devices. Range for someone starting out is a "Plus". :wink:
So how are you going to handle thing when the Gen7 devices start showing up?

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If you are experiencing issues, it would be worth replacing them. If not . . .

27

Welll, only some of the info above is true on mixed zwave networks.

  1. TRUE: It will fall back to standard zwave speed of 40k. But, some Zwave plus devices also operate operate at the lower speed and if there is any device that only supports 40k, the whole network only supports 40k. This is rarely of any concern to the end user though.

  2. FALSE: Range is not reduced. Having a mixed network doesn't reduce range, per se. Now, if it uses a routing standard zwave device as its route, the hop between the standard zwave repeater and the next device is limited to the distance that node can do (which is shorter than zwave plus). But it doesn't magically reduce the range of all devices on the network.

  3. UNMENTIONED: Beaming. This gets tricky. Old devices CAN support beaming, but obviously only zwave plus end nodes support FLiRS (the main purpose of beaming). Need to verify what is supported on a device by device basis if you need beaming (like for a z-wave door lock...).

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28

I'm going to be super nice to my partner and ask nicely if we can upgrade... then, I'll be sleeping in the dog house for a week.. :laughing:

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29

Thanks for filling in. I didn't want to get into the messy details and it can get tricky. My real point was for the OP. Start out with all Plus if you can. There are benefits.

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30

Yeah, your answer was fine. I should have left it alone. Sometimes engineers can't help ourselves and have to correct things that don't really need correcting.... Lol. It is a serious character flaw.

And I agree 100% with the stay all plus if it's an option.

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31

Until Gen 7 of course.

32

700 is looking good so far. The gecko dev boards have been surprisingly stable.

Real proof will be when hubs and commercial devices come out later this year.

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33

If the codes exist in the lock after switching modules and joing the device they will be collected in the driver and accessable to LCM, if you don't see any codes in the driver then the codes are stored in the radio module.

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34

Silly question, but does Zigbee do something similar to what happens when pairing and operating with Zwave barrier devices?

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No, all devices pair secure, meaning the data is encrypted, without the additional overhead of zwave S0 security.

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36

Thanks Mike! Very good to know.

37

Im still waiting to see 2hat happens neither of the big players entered the market (google/Amazon/apple/...) I believe this is because the Mft haven't yet started mass producing Thread devices.
Thread operates on same bands as zigbee, it only requires the same 2.4 radio as such doesn't need a new radio, just a new chip 802.15.4.
Curious if HE will introduce support for this.
P.s most of the mesh system (like Google Wifi) out there will support Thread already so range will not be an issue.

Really curious about thread.

38

You mean Zigbee

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39

You are right, thanks for correcting my typo :slight_smile:
I was thinking that it might replace Z-Wave and not ZigBee and that got through when I typed :slight_smile:

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40

But Amazon Echo Plus has Zigbee support. That certainly won't help Z-Wave's momentum. Z-Wave has done a great job with backwards compatibility and interoperability; its range due to the lower frequencies used is also an advantage. But many other aspects of Z-Wave seem half baked (the 232 max device limitation, routing hop limitations, data rate that is less than half of Zigbee even with the Gen 7 series improvements, frequencies differ by country, optional encryption). I'm always amazed at the number of comparisons that I've read that manage to declare Z-Wave as the winning solution for the home automation marketplace.