I've had one of each in my Cart at Amazon, for weeks, but haven't clicked the Buy button... yet. Zniffer suggests I could use a repeater but I think just a little bit of adjustment may help. I removed a Zigbee In-Wall dimmer yesterday, reverting it to ZWave. (Dimmer's LQI was under 80, so it wasn't working as a Zigbee repeater, the entire reason I purchased it. Everything else on my Zigbee mesh have LQI in 250's)
1 Like
Hi! First time posting on this forum. I've been transitioning my home automation from Wink to Hubitat over the last several months (due to concerns about Wink viability and the dependence on the Wink servers for functionality). I have many non-Plus Z-Wave GE outlets and switches, and have noticed some range issues with the Hubitat hub. I purchased a couple Z-Wave Plus outlets to use as range extenders, based on my imperfect understanding of the complexities of the Z-Wave protocols (putting the new outlets between the hub and the more distant non-Plus switches and outlets). I think I've been getting some improvement in performance of the more distant outlets, but I still have unreliable reporting back from outlet to hub (both for manual activation and occasionally for remote activation)(most are "generic Z-Wave outlets," I tried changing to "generic Z-Wave switches" and activating the Z-Wave Poller, to no effect).
So, my first question: Was I wasting my time (and money) adding a couple Z-Wave Plus outlets, given that the system defaults to the lowest common denominator? My second question: Would the new the Aeotec range extender 7 be a better solution? I really do not want to replace all of my Z-Wave hardware if I can help it. (BTW, I have a couple advanced degrees in digital signal processing, so I was once a reasonably competent electrical engineer, but I haven't worked in the field for quite some time).
Thanks!
Not quite true.. Every bit of plus added will help.. But it is still somewhat limited as the slower devices take longer to send the same packets.. And as such consume more airtime..
With the added RF benefits of the 700 series.. I think this would make a good improvement.. As it can reach farther distances and as such can accommodate more devices on your mesh
1 Like
Many (most) older devices did not immediately report state changes. Wink compensated by heavily polling the network. That is a terrible thing to do to a low bandwidth network and HE does not do that. Unless your devices do not respond to on/off commands, I wouldn't think you are experiencing range issues.
It is more common perhaps for a Wink user to use the app for manually controlling devices and expecting to see the changed state immediately. With HE it is more common to automate the devices, where displayed state is less important. The switches and outlets should "catch up" with normal network communication but there isn't much you can do to make it instant.
The few devices I had that didn't do instant state, I moved to non critical locations and replaced them with new devices. You may be able to compensate for some non reporting devices by inserting a refresh into any Rule Machine rule but I would use that sparingly.
Okay, thanks for the advice. I use Amazon's Alexa for voice control, and the "X Light failed to respond, please check network connection and power supply," even though the device did properly respond, gets quite old.
It's off topic, but that brings up another question. I shifted to Hubitat because it will function without an internet connection, but I may have fooled myself. Third question: Is there some way for Alexa to communicate directly with the Hubitat Hub for voice control without an internet connection (I assume no, although I understand that Amazon is building some offline functionality into Alexa)? I've been using old GE 45600 remotes to manually control Z-Wave devices on the Wink system when the Wink server was offline, I lost internet, or didn't want to wake anybody. I was disappointed to discover that the 45600 apparently will not work with Hubitat. Fourth question: What's the best device to use with Hubitat to operate Z-Wave/Z-Wave Plus devices when internet connectivity goes down?
At this point, I don't think there has been any movement from Amazon regarding local control. I think Google has made some progress. If you have Fire TV devices, the voice remotes work even if the device isn't connected to a TV. I have used multiple remotes attached to a singe Fire device and have the remotes in convenient locations.
There are lots of button and scene controllers available. There are Zigbee, Zwave and Lutron Pico button devices although the Lutron Pico's require the Lutron Pro hub. I use the Hue dimmer switches, AduroSmart ERIA dimmer switches, Smartthings buttons, and some old Aeon Minimotes.
If you get started with the Lutron Picos, the cost of the pro hub goes away pretty quickly as the switches themselves can be $15 for a 5 button device. There are others and perhaps others will speak up.
1 Like
Zarthan, BCopeland,
Thanks for the responses -- I did order the Range Extender 7. We'll see if it does any good at all. So far, I have transitioned many devices to Hubitat, but all of the complicated routines are still on the Wink system. I'm sure I will have more questions as I start coding (I just transitioned the first motion sensor). Be healthy!
2 Likes
I've been fairly successful automating our house using motion sensors and modes for most of our lighting. Fans are automated based on temperature, and everything is set to automatically turn off when we leave the room. The only exception thus far being the bathrooms.
I'm using a combination of Iris v2 Motion Sensors, Inovelli red dimmers and bulbs, and a few GE basic and Fan switches (Pending Inovelli upgrades).
These all benefit from being fully local devices, so internet outages are a non-event for us. Sure, we can't ask Google to control devices, however that's a rare event anyways. We can still use the switches to control the lights/fans without messing up any automations.
All that to say depending on your goals there may be several options to achieve them, not all of which require purchasing new devices. Granted new new devices are still fun to configure!
1 Like
Just thought I'd get back with some results. I did add the Range Extender 7 to my mixed Z-Wave/Z-Wave Plus system, and it did solve the problem I'd been having with the hub successfully operating some devices, but not receiving the state change report back. I'm also pleased with the Aeotec NanoMote as a controller for some tasks.
I reached a major milestone today with the transition of my last device from Wink to Hubitat. It's been an interesting couple of decades in my HA journey. Fifteen years ago, my entire house was X10, but it became increasingly difficult to keep the signal strength up as I added more and more inductive/absorbing loads (well, my walk-in closets still use X10 motion sensors/in wall switches -- if it ain't broke don't fix it...). So I transitioned to Staples Z-Wave. Seemed like a good choice at time. We all know how that turned out. So I transitioned to Wink, and now I have a Hubitat system. I love the flexibility of the format, and I need to get started programming my own apps.
Now, back to work (from home).
4 Likes
Thanks for the follow-up.
1 Like
Any Z-wave or Zigbee ELV Dimmer switch that you guys know of?
Wishful a Series 7 Z-wave ELV would come out by May... here's to hoping!
Considering there are ZERO of those that are listed on the zwave alliance certification list at this point, I wouldn't hold out much hope. But... you never know I guess!
1 Like
So Zero ELV Dimmers (or zero Series 7)
Zero series 7 dimmers of any kind.
Series 7 dimmers will come, obviously, but who knows when.
Love this discussion! @bemiller I too started out with X10 back in oh..maybe 1999? can't even remember but boy howdy was that primitive.
I made the jump to Wink when they were on the WALK IN END CAP at home depot and had jeff goldblum doing commercials and a partnership with GE. What could possibly go wrong? 
Anyway I wanted to circle back on the zwave 700 series discussion. 2 things:
- Where did you purchase the series 7 extender? I keep seeing series 6 on amazon or maybe I'm missing something.
- Does the series 700 do anything as far as the 'mixed zwave network' issue where the network drops to the range of the 100/old school zwave if you have both types of devices? I unfortunately have way too many old zwave devices to throw them all out and start over with 500 or 700 plus products as much as the geek in me would love to do that.
Anything pre-500 will degrade your mesh performance. It just "is what it is" when you mix slow traffic with fast traffic. Having 700 repeaters won't help that, but it won't hurt it either.
Range wouldn't be affected, though, just speed. With a caveat - you will get some range benefit from the more sensitive antenna/radio combo in a 700 repeater, but it won't be as good as a 700 to 700 device chain as the 300/500 devices still have weaker transmit radios.
Will a devices reporting speed be slower only if it’s route is through a slower device? In other words if a zwave plus device is communicating directly to the hub (c7) is it unaffected by a zwave device elsewhere in the mesh?
I’m trying to understand if having zwave repeaters are helping or hurting. I assumed they made the mesh more resilient albeit not as fast if routed through. Considering many of my switches are zwave I was focusing on making specific routes zwave plus as opposed to the whole network.
From my experience they don't help rather than hurt. It depends on if your backbone is mostly plus or not. Mine was about 60/40 to plus and they were almost all repeater devices. It worked well, but since I have moved the "old crummy devices" to a separate hub everything seems more snappy. Including the z-wave devices which I didn't expect, but in its defence I changed all my back boxes to plastic for the z-wave devices, which would have helped
1 Like
Moving the old crummy devices to another hub is an interesting approach. I could easily keep all of the old ones on smartthings.
When you do that, are the devices running on another channel so there is no conflict?
To be honest I'm not quite sure how z-wave does it. ZigBee has channels but I don't think z-wave does, not in the normal sense anyway. I know you don't have conflicts and others have quite a few z-wave meshes.
I have a feeling, it's just such a quite not used range that it's not a issue.
But @bcopeland the best guy to answer that.
I have 2 HE joined one with ZigBee LL and z-wave theb the other ZigBee 3.0 routers/ a few HA (end devices) and z-wave plus.
1 Like
