Z-wave Lr

[Enrique Fats]

Lookingat the Z-Wave info page there doesn't seem to be a connection to how far away the devices are from the hub either. Since all my switches are Z-Wave Plus and the Fan/Lights and the Aeotec are Z-Wave long range/7 series I thought the mesh was supposed to re-map itself, but that doesn't seem to have happened either. (I haven't added anything new in a few weeks now except for the Aeotec that I just added the other day).

The 9.6k link speed is not necessarily an issue as long as the devices have good signal and are responding quickly; from the details posted there isn't any obvious problems. Are you having problems with the performance of the devices or is it just seeing the "9.6kbps" in the z-wave details page that is bothering you?

Some people have had some limited success getting devices to use different (better?) routes by running single device z-wave repair, but it is generally only recommended if there is something that indicates a problem or there are issues with the operation or responsiveness of the device.

Can you provide more details about the problems you are having? I can't quite tell from this description if you are having problems with all z wave devices or only with a handful of them.. (are there some devices that are "attached to a load" that are working on the network as expected?)

One common issue that has been seen with some of the devices you have is frequent reporting of energy and power use, resulting in network congestion. one common piece of advice is to disable or reduce energy and power reporting schedules and thresholds for devices that have this feature to reduce the network traffic.

Looking at your z-wave table you have s2 authentication on everything (well not everything but a lot) Personally except for locks, I would pair everything with no security. That would probably speed up things a whole helluva lot. JMO

To give you more details it seems anything that is directly controlling a load or was done by an association between 2 Inovelli Red Dimmers ("RD") continued to work, but anything that relied on Hubitat, such as a double or triple click up or down or pushing their config button or trying to control any switch with Alexa, Google Home or a Hubitat Dashboard didn't work. I say that as that happened yesterday when I went around checking more devices. I rebooted the hub yesterday, went out for a few hours, so everything had a chance to settle in, and when I came back it was working last night. BUT, this morning I got the same thing happening: i.e. anything that had to go through Hubitat has stopped working.

I am in the midst of converting all of my Rule Machine rules into Button Controller rules. I am also putting all rules for a switch into one rule instead of having separate rules for each push. I will then reboot the hub and see what happens. I will try to figure out how to turn off energy reporting. I haven't touched any of those, so they are all at their defaults.

04/05/2021 Update. So good news, bad news. The good news is that rebooting the hub and setting most of my devices seems to really have helped the speed issue. The bad news is that this is about the 4th reboot I've had to do in the last few days. I had to shut the hub down as the last of my switches were being installed, so hopefully things will settle down.

@Stu_The_K Like I said above as we,, all those devices set at s2 you should set for none for security (except for locks) this will lower the chatter and help strengthen your mesh. S0 is the worst though for chatter.

I'm in the process of doing excludes/includes to remove the security. However, for most of the last 2 days I couldn't do an exclude on many items until I would do a reboot of the hub. Then I could get a few done until I'd have to reboot again.

BTW, if I was able to do an exclude/include I waited a few hours before reinstating the rules that pertained to that device. I am also down to only 3 Rule Machine rules and have moved the rest to Button Controllers.

Cool. Another helpful thing instead if just rebooting is shutting down (via the settings menu) then unplug the hub at the wall (not the hub) for 5 mins then power back up. This clears the z-wave radio which a simple reboot will not.

Forgive me for not being precise. By rebooting I meant I did do a power down from the Hubitat menu and I then pulled the power cord. I had been waiting 30 seconds before plugging it back in and have increased it to a minute in the last day or so.

BTW, my daughter just came and told me that an Inovelli Red Dimmer with a line and neutral only on it that is to turn on the light to an Inovelli Fan/Light via a Button Controller rule wasn't working only to say it had just come on.

I did the last shut down/re-start last night about 1 am. I guess it is already starting to slow down significantly. I have an appointment to go to so I'll see this afternoon if the hub is still responding and if I can continue to exclude/re-include the 8 or so devices I still have with security on.

First I would try a soft restore to rule out any database problems. Then make sure you are running on the latest build. Then check zwave details and see if you have any ghosts. If you are feeling adventurous I have another tweak that would make a huge improvement.

The main problem I see is a weak mesh as shown by the sheer number of route changes on your devices. A stable mesh should only have one or two max over several months. From the sound of things though you are rebooting much more frequently.

But, that aside, you say that the sheer number of route changes suggests I'm rebooting the hub much more frequently. In fact, that is not the case. I've only rebooted it maybe 5-6 times in nearly 2 years, and only when it slowness got overwhelming. I also have it plugged into a pretty big UPS with a very light load, so it isn't like the power going off is causing it to reboot.

I don't know what to do to make it stronger. I have the hub in a central location. I have 2 Aeotec 7 repeaters about 1/2 way between the farthest points of my 2 primary paths. I live in a 1 floor condo that is about 2,500 sq. ft. All of my devices are Z-Wave. I have 20+ Inovelli red dimmers and 5 of their fan+lights. I also have 2 Aeotec 7 plugs and 2 Philips bulbs that go through the Philips hub. I also have 1 Aeotec 7 4 button controller. I've turned off the Zigbee radio.

For giggles try moving the repeaters more to halfway between the end of the house devices and the hub. Then shutdown and unplug the hub (from the wall not the hub itself) for 20 mins and bring back up. Let it settle and see how things are.

I wanted to get everyone's opinion on Z-Wave or Lutron Caseta. To give a little bit of background we just gutted our house. I am really starting my smart home from scratch again. I used HE for about 2 years retro fitting and playing round with smart home stuff. I am really trying to plan things out before I buy/install everything. I have landed on Z-Wave over Zigbee, that being said the first area that I have started to think about updating is smart lighting. All of my electrical has a neutral wire so I am set there. However, I am stuck on going with Z-Wave switches or Lutron Caseta for lighting control. I wanted to get everyone's opinion on what they are using or had experience from.

Some of the items listed above might affect how people respond. When I first started with HE I just jumped in not really thinking about Z-Wave, Zigbee, WiFi, ect and just bought what was a good deal which lead to some headaches. I am not trying to look at the whole picture to best build a system that will have a good mesh and work really well.

@hydro311 A big aspect for me is that Z-Wave is the standard protocol, more constancy and manage by one central source. The way I equate it to is Windows vs Apple. Apple has a closed system that works really well, however, can be a pain sometimes working with it. Where as windows is an open system amazing customization options, but not secure is the right term but seems a little bit disorganized. I could be totally wrong on this but if other people have thoughts on this let me know. Zigbee is not enterally off the table but really leaning to Z-Wave. Plus I want a STRONG mesh network so sticking with one will help that. I had issues in my house with a mix and really done want to place repeaters all over the place for a specific one because it struggling.

To get back on track, z-wave chips (the hardware) are certainly managed by one central source. But there are protocol specs for both ZHA 1.2 and zigbee 3.0 that, if adhered to, permit inter-operability. Admittedly - the weak link there is "if adhered to".

@aaiyar yeah you are correct I was more referring to the hardware side. I am really looking for a reliable system and Z-Wave seemed to be better. I really don't want to mix and I just struggled to get a good mesh in my house when I mixed them.

@hydro311 yeah have made sure to bookmark the correct bridge, found that out the hard way last year bought one that was on sale. It was not the pro version so I decided to wait until our house was done with renovations.

A lot of us use a combination of clear connect (lutron) z-wave, and zigbee with a smattering of WI-FI (You can't beat Lifx bulbs) and meshes are strong. (Note:Clear connect is spoke and hub, not mesh)

I do have to air gap one or two of my Inovelli dimmers every now and then, and others on rare occasions, and every once in a while it suddenly takes like 20-30 seconds for a switch to respond but over time the mesh has become much more stable and I think I may have gotten a rare bad batch as I had to return 2 of the switches from two 10 packs for being DOA. That was in Feb 2021.

For lighting, Lutron Caseta, hands down. I've used Insteon on another platform, and Z-wave (still have several) n my current HE hibs, and Lutron. Nothing is even close to Lutron. Just be sure to get the Pro, not the "regular" hub, which shouldn't even be sold, but is.

The most solid, dependable home automation devices I have are my Lutron Caseta dimmers, switches and Picos. As mentioned earlier you need the Caseta PRO2 Bridge to integrate with Hubitat. The non-Pro Bridge does NOT work with Hubitat.

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