I don't think I would characterize it as a flaw... I would say instead in some circumstances with some installations a higher gain external antenna is effective at resolving issues.
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That's a great question. If the problem was with the hub, the other devices wouldn't work either. I would reach out to the manufacturer of those two devices, or just replace them if you don't want to go through the hassle of chasing their support.
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I'm sending off my extra hub to get the antenna mod for giggles. I have a big house but don't have any mesh issues, just want to do it for the lolz...lol
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Yeah I got one of them working by pairing directly. Then the mesh healed itself overnight, so 1 down. One jasco/ge switch is still not working. I got it to pair by bringing the hub over next to it yesterday but even that isn't working now.
This whole failure seems to have been triggered by, what my energy monitor seems to think was a voltage dip a couple of nights ago. Whatever it was was bad enough to hang my linux media pc at the same time these devices went offline. My operating theory now is whatever happened fried the brains of this one switch. Ordered a replacement and we'll see. Weird that it worked enough to pair once next to the hub yesterday though....
I've been there more than once. Z-Wave is less forgiving than other protocols, when not all nodes in the mesh are working properly. One is enough to cause latency. Two or more can bring down the radio to its knees.
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zigbee is not the answer, they both, for me, randomly crash, zero changes to rules or devices.
All this radio "magic" who knows what affects it...the sun, the moon, the neighbor's wifi, the earth, someone standing in a certain position, the garage remote, aluminum siding
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Hi lewis- I appreciate the offer but I can't really be without it for the downtime. I may grab the necessary parts and do it myself at some point.
Generally my setup has been working well for 6-8mo since I managed to get rid of the one ghost zwave device I had, which is why this sudden flareup was so consternating.
My solution to far-flug zwave devices has been to just pair them to my old c4 hub in the garage and share them via mesh. That's worked well so far.
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Lutron Caseta... 
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Yes, I remember my C-5 suffering terribly when I created a bunch of stranded devices. But since then, I have had no z-wave complaints. And my mesh is antiquated by most standards. Out of 60 devices, less than half (28) are z-wave+. I even have a 100-series z-wave device on there. Maybe I'm just lucky!
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I am surprised that works.... What is it?
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Really old Leviton appliance module.
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HEM v1 power monitor in my case, which AFAIK is 100 series...still chugging along.
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Same here. Like @aaiyar my HEM is the last 100 series device in my mesh that's still kicking. But devices can go bad and will. I had plenty of GE older and new that have gone bad and when that happens I just pop them out and replace them immediately.
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Since moving into my current home 4 years ago, I've had to replace almost every GE/Jasco 14xxx series dimmer/switch I had installed.
Got zapped from electrical storms, etc. Not sure why, had the grounding checked by an electrician - no issues. Whatever.
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These are complained about all over the internet about power surges, and even just old age, causing failures. Jasco has extended the warranty on many of these devices because of this failure pattern.
Having a couple switches die could be enough to cause this mesh failure you are seeing.
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I'm not married to the ge/jasco solution. I do need them to be old toggle style and not paddle style, just because it matches the age/style of my house better. I'm going to give this Minoston one a try. Bonus that it's 1/2 price of the ge/jasco:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07T3B24GV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Sorry for the second reply. But this is the beast in question. Made by Leviton for Monster Cable. They were sold under the Monster IlluminEssence brand name.
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If you can wait another month
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I'll be pleasantly surprised if they actually ship in a month. I am a fan of Inovelli team and their products, but their release dates are almost always overly optimistic, and often off by very large margins. I did preorder a couple for testing when they do ship though. I'm expecting September.
Ironically,, I have the same view of ZigBee. yeah I have a little bit of it, but Zwave has been far more reliable for me. But everyone has their own experiences to draw from .
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