poor Z-Wave Network range?

[Alex Karls]

How many meters from one active (main powered) node to another (plain sight) are a good delta? the problem i´m seeing is, that the range of the network in general seems very poor, compared to WiFi, generic CUL Sticks or even Bluetooth. 

[joe bob]

About 100 feet per hop in open air (max 4 hops). ZwavePlus is higher distance but I haven't seen the numbers.

[Chris Jackson]

Within the house, I get around 15m reasonably reliably. This is a brick house - with concrete/brick walls inside as well. I do occasionally miss frames, but it works pretty well. I have seen some issues with my garage nodes though - the garage is connected to the house (=more bricks), so I gather from this that this is about on the limit.

However, I suspect there are a lot of secondary factors that make this quite variable. For best propogation, antennas should be aligned (ie all oriented the same way) and this will not be the case, so this will have an impact. Other devices also use these frequencies, and even things like microwave ovens will potentially interfere...

Chris

[Alex Karls]

ok, 15 meters sounds like what i´m seeing. the interferences with other devices are also a pain in the a.., for example my heaters thermostats are blocked from radio signals when i switch the wallplug that is directly over the heating device. don´t know if i´m staying with zwave, from all tech that i´m using, zwave is the buggiest one

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "openhab" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/openhab/liVMqYNgPKI/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to openhab+u...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to ope...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openhab.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Alexander Karls

[Alex Karls]

could be true for zwave: http://31.media.tumblr.com/1c2a791a1fed81148990f758e9cf1c6a/tumblr_n255swTeIZ1qdg88lo1_1280.jpg

;)

[Chris Jackson]

ok, 15 meters sounds like what i´m seeing. the interferences with other devices are also a pain in the a.., for example my heaters thermostats are blocked from radio signals when i switch the wallplug that is directly over the heating device. don´t know if i´m staying with zwave, from all tech that i´m using, zwave is the buggiest one

I don't know that it's 'buggy' - but it's certainly not simple and easy to configure - especially with battery devices. However "difficult to configure", doesn't mean it's bad... Before I got to zwave, I used some other systems - also RF based - and these were 'worse'. Yes, they were easy to set up and get going, but I found that since the ones I used only used one way communications, they were unreliable. Also, there was no feedback, so if you manually turned on the lights the GUI doesn't update. You could say that zwave has a reliability issue, but at least you know there's an issue and it offers options to solve this (in theory!). With some other systems you simply won't know - other than the lights won't always turn on when you want (really bad Wife Acceptance Factor!).

So, I guess I'm just warning that while zwave isn't perfect, you shouldn't expect that another system will magically solve radio propagation issues. Most devices like zwave, and other HA RF systems, work in a band that's not regulated, and has limits on the RF power (and therefore distance) that they can use. So, other systems will have basically the same problem in the same location.

In my mind, you've got a couple of options -:

Add a switch or two and hope that the zwave routing sorts out the radio gaps (I have doubts about the zwave routing ability, but in theory this should work)

Change to a wired system

Change to an RF system that uses a different RF band or a different mesh network. (zwave normally uses a frequency around 900MHz depending on location). Other ISM bands exist at 433MHz (not all countries) and 2.4GHz (of course this has Wifi and microwave ovens to contend with)

Others have other RF solutions that somehow work better than zwave, but from what I've seen, zwave is still one of the best RF solutions available...

Cheers

Chris

[Alex Karls]

See, i agree with most of what you said. The biggest problem (for me or better: my customers) is this:

"You could say that zwave has a reliability issue, but at least you know there's an issue and it offers options to solve this (in theory!)."

It´s hard to implement a system like this in a customers location. one thing that makes zwave interesting is the price, compared to solutions like KNX, but when the WAF comes to the count, then it hard to find arguments. Mostly i used a combination of ZigBee (Lights, HUE), eq3 Systems (Heating and Contacts, MAX!) and some cheap switchable wallplugs with a CUL device. ZWave "could" be the solution to aggregate this "zoo" of standards, but i´m still not sure if i should stay on this path. A my home place, the (sometimes) unreliable standard is ok, i can fix things on my own, but in third party locations that isn´t so easy. I don´t like to be called late at night just because some devices are not doing what they should. That happens especially when the proud house owner want to show there "super cool smarthome solution" to the neigbors ;) 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "openhab" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/openhab/liVMqYNgPKI/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to openhab+u...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to ope...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openhab.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Alex Karls]

BTW: i tried the Fibaro Home Center this week.. When you thought the ZWave with HabMIN is stressful to configure, then i suggest a second thought and a try out the Home Center. For a device the costs around 190 Euro (the light version) you get a lot of of trouble when you try to setup some devices such as wallplugs, Motion Sensors and the Smoke Detector. It took me more then 3 hours to figure out how this stuff works and still don´t get the same luxury integration as in openHAB..

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to openhab+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to ope...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openhab.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Chris Jackson]

It´s hard to implement a system like this in a customers location. one thing that makes zwave interesting is the price, compared to solutions like KNX, but when the WAF comes to the count, then it hard to find arguments.

I completely agree - reliability is key. I think that z-wave is one of the better (or possibly the best) RF based system out there. It is reliable, if you can get the network configured "correctly". The annoying thing is that Sigma don't make information associated with routing available - you can get a list of neighbors, but that's not the same as the actual routes being used. However, with the 2 way comms, it has "reliable" communications in that if a packet doesn't get through, then the protocol will retransmit - not all systems have this. Most of the time, this means that the system works, but as with any RF system, there needs to be a nice margin to allow for variations through the day... It would just be nice to have information on this...

Regarding the Home Centre - I'm surprised. I always thought that Fibaro made nice gear, and assumed that at least if you used their devices with the HC that it would work together very well... Interesting to know :)

Cheers

Chris