very bad z-wave range

djesko

sossienl said:

My situation:

I have Homey placed in the living room. It connects to all Z-Wave devices that are in a 5-6m range. Even through a thick wall. Now some of the Z-Wave I have (Fibaro motion sensor and several Door/window sensors) are not connecting or giving any updates to Homey because they are outside of this 5/6 range.

Even while I don't have these issues at all with my MiOS Vera 3 box, I have bought a Aeotec Range extender (Repeater). This is plugged into the wall socket about 5 meters away from Homey without any walls in between. It paired fine and as far as I can see, it's in my Zwave network. (see picture).

The distance between the range extender and my Fibaro motion sensor is about 7 meters without any walls. 
Still homey doesn't receive any updates from the sensor, as shown in the picture below (temperature).  There is one spot (dark purple), which is when I paired the sensor.

Any advice? Z-wave is now not really useful.
Homey is doing a very poor job on Z-wave in general, compared to the Vera 3 box, which is quite old btw

I did have the same problem and then I moved homey 30 cm away from the soundbar and now it works all over the house,  need some main powered devices but that how it works 

Did have the same problem with my hc2 before I got some devices to mesh with. 

My house is 2 floors and 168 square meters ( homey in Livingroom center off the house main floor ) 

pdreissen

Fwiw, i don't experience bad z-wave range. For testing i put one fibaro wall plug on the second floor, where only battery powered z-wave devices are available in my homey environment. So basicly the wall plug needs a direct connection. Switching works just fine without any failure. Also the battery powered one's work just fine and are geologic spread over 3 floors.

YvesGeffens

Well, I have an EnOcean gateway connected to my automation controller. It covers the whole house from the first floor. EnOcean (868.3 MHz) uses a frequency that is very close to the Z-Wave (868.42 MHz) frequency.
My homey (as I said before) barely reaches 5 meters.

MHubert

YvesGeffens said:

Well, I have an EnOcean gateway connected to my automation controller. It covers the whole house from the first floor. EnOcean (868.3 MHz) uses a frequency that is very close to the Z-Wave (868.42 MHz) frequency.
My homey (as I said before) barely reaches 5 meters.

So it's Homeys problem? What devices do you use? Is your mesh well thought true? Are the devices evenly spread? 

YvesGeffens

@MHubert
Well, at this moment, I have
Homey
-> (3 meters, no wall, line of sight) Fibaro Smoke Detector = working
-> (5 meters, no wall, line of sight) Aeotec Repeater -> (2 meter) Fibaro Smoke Detector = not working

That's all. I would think the second Smoke Detector should work... at such a short distance.

Gerjan

Some people experience problems, some don 't it looks


the people who have problems, is it ever been good with your Homey?

If not, could it been that thare are some bad chips in homey? (Hardware issue)

YvesGeffens

It's never been good with Homey, whatever wireless 'thing' I want to use, the range is extremely short.
But, I still love my Homey, just for the interconnectivity between all other device.

WathLamers

question;      i am not familiar whit zwave because i doint have it yet.   (still one 433)
But,  as i understand, zwave is a mesh network (only wired devices).
If the range is so bad,  could it be possible to put a    " b.v. tussenstekker"  near homey, and use this to reach other devices ??
And, if so,  is it possible to have a battery sensor (wich is out of range of homey, but in range "tussenstekker" giving its commands (schakelen)  trough  "tussenstekker"  to homey ?

Can anyone confirm this or am i thinking completely wrong ? 

Rocodamelshe

Well, zwave is not a mesh network. It's a wireless technology which CAN create a mesh network with non-batterypowered devices.
The more non-batterypowered devices u use, the better/bigger ur mesh network is gonna be.

Robbertos

I use a z-wave repeater. It works fine now. The range is upgraded to the second floor. 

Rocodamelshe

The non-batterypowered devices also act as a repeater. And yes, batterypowered devices CAN connect with the mesh network.

WathLamers

Rocodamelshe said:

The non-batterypowered devices also act as a repeater. And yes, batterypowered devices CAN connect with the mesh network.

Ah,  thankx,  thats what i wanted to know.
I want a sensor on my gate, but its out of range of homey     So i gone put a batterypowerd  device in between as a sort of reapater,  and can even use it to use a device.

Rocodamelshe

WathLamers said:

Ah,  thankx,  thats what i wanted to know.
I want a sensor on my gate, but its out of range of homey     So i gone put a batterypowerd  device in between as a sort of reapater,  and can even use it to use a device.

Non-batterypowered u mean. Non-batterypowered devices create the mesh network, batterypowered CAN connect with the mesh network to reach Homey. Batterypowered devices cannot repeat the signal from ur gate sensor.

WathLamers

stupid me...
i had to read it over 2 times to see my mistake.
ofcouse the non battery powerd in between, and the battery powerd at the end

  

Rocodamelshe

Hehe

YvesGeffens

WathLamers said:

question;      i am not familiar whit zwave because i doint have it yet.   (still one 433)
But,  as i understand, zwave is a mesh network (only wired devices).
If the range is so bad,  could it be possible to put a    " b.v. tussenstekker"  near homey, and use this to reach other devices ??

Good idea, I just put my range extender within one meter of Homey.
I'll keep you all posted if that is a solution.

WathLamers

YvesGeffens said:

WathLamers said:

question;      i am not familiar whit zwave because i doint have it yet.   (still one 433)
But,  as i understand, zwave is a mesh network (only wired devices).
If the range is so bad,  could it be possible to put a    " b.v. tussenstekker"  near homey, and use this to reach other devices ??

Good idea, I just put my range extender within one meter of Homey.
I'll keep you all posted if that is a solution.

great, i am curius how this works

Gerjan

YvesGeffens said:

WathLamers said:

question;      i am not familiar whit zwave because i doint have it yet.   (still one 433)
But,  as i understand, zwave is a mesh network (only wired devices).
If the range is so bad,  could it be possible to put a    " b.v. tussenstekker"  near homey, and use this to reach other devices ??

Good idea, I just put my range extender within one meter of Homey.
I'll keep you all posted if that is a solution.

and? dit it work?

frankvanes

For what it's worth: I had range problems as well and I had a Fibaro wall socket and kept having range issues. No more than 3 meters or so. 

I recently installed a double switch by Fibaro (with a small wire antenna) and now I have signal in every corner of the house. Even in the attic. 

YvesGeffens

The range extender isn't doing miracles, it's just a little better (a few meters extra).
Maybe I should buy a Fibaro wall plug? Maybe it's performance is better ?
I'll thing about it..

Rocodamelshe

frankvanes said:

I recently installed a double switch by Fibaro (with a small wire antenna) and now I have signal in every corner of the house. Even in the attic. 

The more wired devices the better!

robertbusscher

I have a Aeotec repeator now, but led is still on. Someone any idea?

ZperX

frankvanes said:

For what it's worth: I had range problems as well and I had a Fibaro wall socket and kept having range issues. No more than 3 meters or so. 

I recently installed a double switch by Fibaro (with a small wire antenna) and now I have signal in every corner of the house. Even in the attic. 

@frankvanes
Good to have the visual Z-wave map but again it has proved one thing Homey`s Z-wave range is very poor. There is no sign that Athom would improve this. Could you please confirm which exact Fibaro Double switch have you purchased? FGS-222, FGS-223, FGS-221, ....?

mightymarc2005

Is there a way to make a Zwave map? I would like to have more insight in my mesh network. Sometimes my Zwave network is flawless. But sometimes a switch is just not responding when it's been triggered in a flow. Most of the time it responds when I trigger it manually in the Homey app on my phone or tablet. I just get the feeling that the feedback from the switch is not handled/received by Homey or that it's not send from the Fibaro plug. Because the switch is perfectly switched on from a flow but can't be switched off from a flow. 

TedTolboom

@mightymarc2005 @ZperX Homey v1.1.9 has today been released to the experimental channel.

It includes the ability to create a Z-wave map (in addition to additional logging and fixed Z-wave bugs); see Z-wave > Z-wave stuff for geeks > Network graph
An example of my own network map:

Fire69

TedTolboom said:

@mightymarc2005 @ZperX Homey v1.1.9 has today been released to the experimental channel.

It includes the ability to create a Z-wave map (in addition to additional logging and fixed Z-wave bugs); see Z-wave > Z-wave stuff for geeks > Network graph
An example of my own network map:

Z-wave inter-connectivity is pretty sweet!  Don't really like the way they handled the map, but it sure shows how great the mesh works!

bvdbos

YvesGeffens said:

Well, I have an EnOcean gateway connected to my automation controller. It covers the whole house from the first floor. EnOcean (868.3 MHz) uses a frequency that is very close to the Z-Wave (868.42 MHz) frequency.
My homey (as I said before) barely reaches 5 meters.

It seems like your EnOcean gateway is disturbing the zwave-network?

YvesGeffens

No it isn't.
I checked that already, I disconnected the gateway for a few days, just to make sure Homey could heal the network.
No progress.
What helped was placing multiple extra Fibaro wallplugs and I got rid of the Aeotec repeater. Now the Z-wave network is running fine, I only had to do a PTP once to get Z-wave up and running again, because it was completely out. This happened once in about 3 weeks.
Both networks are working side by side.

YvesGeffens

Since the upgrade to 1.1.9 I can now show this graph below.
There are a lot of strange things.

1° If you see the graph, you would think that I have excellent Z-wave transmission from Homey, because almost all connected devices are in direct connection with Homey
2° The moment I remove eg N°28 (a Fibaro plug I placed in the middle between Homey and the front door), I can't reach the front door sensor (open/close sensor N°24). I even rebooted Homey to do a network healing. To me this proves that N°28 is needed to do the communication to N°24 and that the graph is incorrect.
3° N°24 is a battery operated sensor and is not designed to repeat its signal to N°22 (a fibaro wall plug), but the graph says it is repeating
4° N°7, my old aeotec repeater was removed about 1 month ago, but it's still showing here (I'm also unable to delete it via settings/z-wave remove device, or via devices. It just keeps returning.
5° While my smoke detector on the 2nd floor N°12 is in the graph, it's not returning any data, while the smoke detector in the Living room N°8 is returning data.

Anyone who can explain this behaviour ?

keverjeroen

I see the same behavor in my graph. It is much much smaller, but I removed nr 2 a day ago (and rebooted Homey 2 times after that). Just before I removed nr 2, I added nr 17. That one is added to the graph, but nr 2 isn't removed. All sensors are still working. Also nr. 15 and nr 3 that (acording the graph) don't have a direct connection with Homey..