I have a detached garage about 30ft away and my house has aluminum siding. I frequently have zwave devices that don't respond out there and am not sure what to do. The closest device to the garage is a Zooz Zen21, and in the garage is a Zen23 and Zen73 plus a couple battery zwave devices. C7 hub. Thanks for any advice
That's a tricky one. Do you have network connectivity out there? You could always put a second hub in the garage.
I have a unifi ap connected via mesh out there as well
Let's see what others think but I bet another c7 with a wifi dongle would work really well. You could use hub mesh to share its devices with your primary hub and keep all your rules in one convenient place, or you could split them up so garage rules run on the garage HE.
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Yeah thats what I was thinking, just didn't want to spend $150 on it if i can help it lol. Thanks
Does your garage have a window facing the house?
If so, you might be able to use a repeater such as the Aeotec Range Extender. Plug the repeater into an extension cord and then plug it into an outlet in the garage and mount the repeater in the window so it has line of sight with the house. You might need a repeater at the house as well.
I like the Aeotec Range Extenders because that is all they do. That means I can locate them where they will do the most good. If you have a device whose primary function is to be a switch, dimmer, or outlet, the location is probably based upon that function rather than the ideal repeater location.
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I have an outbuilding and I have a Hubitat out there to extend my network into the main shed and adjacent utility shed. That way I get zwave and zigbee coverage for that part of the backyard. I have underground fiber feeding the main shed with a switch but you could do the same thing with a Ubiquiti mesh connection. All devices use hubmesh and show up on the main hub. It works flawlessly.
Having recently dealt with timing issues in a driver - (it's a learning curve!) - has anyone done real world timing tests on latency/ distance?
For example - I use Engenius Point to Point AP between buildings to extend my house Lan to the barn where I have cameras - about 1/3 of a mile (600 yards) - if I put a c7 with Wifi there, so I can setup contact sensors on stall doors, smoke alarm etc... will it be stable and trustworthy?
Ptz cam has been really solid -
It should be as stable and trustworthy as your P2P connection. Though for life safety things like a smoke alarm a secondary connection might be a good idea.
2 Ways I think you should go. Either get some 1/2" pvc and run a cat 5 cable to the garage and use another hubitat with Hubmesh enabled (preferred) or get lets say 2 Unifi AP AC-Pro's, one on the house side, one on the garage side and enable mesh on the AP's and use another hubitat in the garage using hub mesh. JMO
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If you cant get a copper or fiber connection to the building, One thing to consider is a Ubiquiti Powerbeam (Powerbeam ac Gen2 AirMax Ac Bridge) or Nano station. They give great throughput (450+ Mbps) and can go up to 16 km. They aren't as expensive as you might think. Each end is about $150 but you will have a solid link. Then get a switch in the remote location and put a HE hub and use Hub mesh. Also don't forget to get a UPS on the remote end to keep everything up in a power failure.
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I use two TP-Link wireless bridges to connect my house to an outbuilding that is about 500' away. I have a fairly new router in the house but a "leftover" in the outbuilding. The latter is connected to a C7, which is then linked to the C7 hub in my house. Works fine!
There are various versions of the bridges but you should be able to get a pair that will suffice for less than $100.
Mike M
Sounds like you're a perfect candidate for this mod.
Antennas are important. However, the main thing is that the antenna has to be tuned for the specific frequency on which it is designed to operate. An antenna that is of suboptimal length often can receive a signal, but the antenna needs to be of a suitable length for transmission.
Once very common antenna is the 1/4-wave antenna. Other suitable lengths are 1/2-wave and 5/8-wave. You might thing that a full wave antenna is ideal, but that is not the case as the voltage and amperage are out of phase, so there is no radiated output.
