Hi Guys,
My z-wave mesh sucks. Its laggy, causing some devices to become fully unresponsive now and again or take minutes to reflect notifications or trigger scenes (Innovelli Red Dimmers). Ive added a couple of zwave outlets as repeaters close to where the worst affected dimmers are but that didnt really help. I have 29 active zwave/zwave plus devices repèating around the house. They're mostly around 5-6 meters apart so I dont see any reason for issue. One thing that I only read after including all my devices again when switching over from ST is that its recommended that the devices are paired in order of closest to the hub first. When I paired them, I brought each one to the room where the hub is located, as this was what I had read as the way to do it when I initially set them up with ST.
I dont want to remove and add everything again as I've already put in a lot of work getting all my scenes and pistons setup with the devices on their current IDs. I thought the zwave repair option was supposed to cause each devices to ping its neighbours and figure out the best route, but it doesnt seem to make any improvement whatsover. Is there a way to manually update the routes in the mesh without excluding/including everything and having to rebuild all my scenes/pistons again?
Here is an example of one of the devices baffling me (0x23).
There are two other devices closer to 0x23 which are both running at 100kbps with clear line of sight, one is around 2 meters away, the other 4 meters. 0x07 is on the other side of a block wall dividing these two spaces.
You have several devices with issues. Look at nodes 15 and 1C, for example. They don’t see any devices, and no devices see them. Are they battery powered?
I got another 2 Inovelli dimmers delivered yesterday and installing them has made some improvement. I also did some housekeeping and deleted a couple of old devices that arent installed at the moment. Things have improved slightly. As part of the sytem housekeeping, Im trying to remove three entries that show up in the z-wave devices list with no name, but I can only get 2/3 to go. The last one is just stuck there. I read that reboots and persistence can help with these sticklers, but this one just wont go after 6 remove and reboot attempts. How can I get this out of the list?
So revisiting this. I bit the bullet and deleted all my devices and rebuilt the mesh going nearest out and added in 4 x Jasco/GE ZWave+ Outlets into the mix, but I still have some issues which a repair cant fix. All ghost and non-active devices have been removed
So for example, I have the Jasco outlet (3D) directly below and 2 feet away from an Inovelli N31 Dimmer (08) and the dimmer is connecting at 100kbps and the outlet 9.6kbps
And again with another Inovelli N31 (0F) connecting at 100kbps with the an Inovelli LZ31 (39) in clear line of site about 6 feet away (facing) which is only connecting at 9600kbps.
Has anyone seen anything like this before? I didnt used to have any problems with the mesh under ST and that was with a lot less devices.
Maybe post a screenshot of your whole Zwave details page so we can see devices vs your table. A couple of these like 3F and 2E don't appear to be doing anything at all. From my observation of this table, you should have at least one blue square.
If you have a really strong mesh, nearly half of the boxes in your topology table should be blue. Your Hubitat hub (01 in the table) is only connected directly to three devices: 08, 21, and 28. That is telling me that you do not have your hub located in the best spot. Sometimes moving the hub just a couple of feet can make a difference. If that is not possible, sometimes installing a good repeater about 10 feet away from your hub might help.
In my home, my hub is centrally located and connects 19 of 23 Z-wave devices. Thus, many of my my devices connect at 100 mbps directly with the hub. I also have six Aeotec Z-wave Gen 7 range extenders that connect to multiple devices as well. Thus, there is some redundancy in signal paths, which is what you want.
Although in-wall Z-wave dimmers and switches usually act as repeaters, if they are installed in metal electrical boxes, the boxes affect the radiation pattern. When you plug a smart outlet into a wall socket, you get something similar, but not quite as bad. A couple of my most effective repeaters are Aeotec range extenders that I plugged into extension cords and mounted in the open. Remember that metal can reflect or block signals. Figure out where your HVAC ductwork, electrical wires and water piping are installed. Bathrooms are particularly difficult due to the mirrors and water piping. Metal support beams might also be an issue.
Remember that radio signals travel in a straight line, but they can be reflected. Try to envision the path that a signal must take from your hub to each of your devices. If devices like flat screen TVs, HVAC ducts, metal beams, mirrors, etc. are in that path, then you can add a repeater that will allow the signal to route around those objects.
So my hub is in a central position in my house, I have it away from the APs that are dotted throughout and it sits atop my media cabinet where the network core is. Thinking about moving it either way wouldnt give it line of sight to more devices as the house is about 40 years old so not very open plan whatsover, plus its made of concrete block contruction with steel reinforced columns and slabs (I live in an earthquake prone region).
I cant help thinking that the implementation of z-wave or the radio in the hub doest match that of ST, as I used to have blistering fast response from my devices and pistons even considering the latency from being cloud based, it was still faster than my HE with local execution, that was back when I had 6-8 less Zwave repeating devices in the mesh with metal gang boxes and steel reinforced concrete in the surrounding construction.
Are the interior walls concrete blocks as well. Some older homes are built with plaster on metal lathe. That is bad for signal transmission. Drywall is much more signal friendly. Concrete slab floors are a problem as well.
You might need to add some repeaters to help guide the signals around obstacles.
Is there a guide on how to read the chart that gets generated? And is my environment extra large with about 125 devices? I had to zoom out my browser to get something a little more scalable to see.
I thought devices 6F and 70, both battery contact sensors, were in a dead area, but it doesn't appear to be the case? I also have Amazon delivering a dual pack of Aeotec Range Extender 7's today, but I honestly don't know if I need them. Or if they will have add any value.
Looks like there is a lot of red in 1E-1F area, and in 32-34 area. I didn't look at exact columns, it was not easy following those lines on the screen, so take those numbers with a grain of salt.
Anyway, are these devices in proximity to each other somehow? If they are in say the same corner of the house, that might tell you that you have signal issues there. If it is just random, maybe it is placement of devices, or they are shielded by a mirror or behind a beam or something.
The majority of them are along the back of the house. I mapped out those ranges you mentioned, plus one or two more that look like a long line of red to me. All but one are battery powered. That one powered device is taking 4 hops even though it is in the same room as the hub. I've had trouble with this device on my Vera where it randomly disconnected, but I chalked that up to a dead spot. I also moved it into my office and of course it's on the HE now. No issues since, knock on wood.
I mocked up a very crude and very not to scale house footprint and placed the devices roughly where they are. The walls shown in grey are just upstairs. Based on 3 of the devices being downstairs in the kitchen, a repeater might be good there. I do have plans to get an Aeotec Gen 7 switch in that room by the end of the year.
I also have not run a z-wave repair since bringing ALL of the last few Vera devices over. I was thinking about waiting until the Range Extenders are in before doing that.
Generally speaking, a full Zwave repair isn't needed or recommended for this 700 series hub. You can only repair powered devices anyway. Supposedly, the mesh is supposed to find new routes automatically.
This seems to be fairly normal for battery devices. Or at least not out of the ordinary anyway. But a repeater might help if you are having problems.
You might want to do a search, I thought I saw the Aeotec Gen7 recently being mentioned on here as having some issues or having some bug? The Ring Range Extender V2 is inexpensive, and does work well so you might want to consider that instead. And it has it's own battery backup so you can use it for things like power outage notification (provided you have other backup power for the hub etc).
