433 Mhz range

p0nts

How is the range for the 433Mhz? I currently own a Homewizard and have problems receiving data from devices that are on the second floor of my house which has reinforced concrete floors. How much better (or worse) is the 433Mhz from Homey compared to the Homewizard? (hardware? software?)

Eventually I will change my devices towards z-wave but for the time being I would like to know if a Homey would make a significant upgrade taking the above in account.

Thanks in advance.

JaapPelt

433Mhz devices are limited to output a maximum amount of power, so the range should be more or less the same regardless of the device: about 30 meters with moderate obstructions.

That being said, we have seen various factors which can influence the range:

• Position is generally the most important. If you position a 433Mhz device in or on a wall, it will have a deadzone along that wall.
• Water also has a great impact on the 433Mhz signal. Be sure to position your devices a away from any water tubing. A meter or so should do the trick.
• HomeWizard for example has noticeable better range when turning the device on it's side. The antenna has less range in the horizontal plane.
• KaKu devices have problems when they are positioned close to each other on the same power line. It's like the popping noise you hear on speakers when turning other devices on and off.

We will have how homey does. Does it have a dead plane like the HomeWizard? How will all the other antennas influence each other? There is one clear advantage already: Homey lends itself to be positioned in the open rather then being stuffed away in the utility closet.

p0nts

Jaap,

Thank you for the detailed answer, this helped allot.

Emile

:-)

kriebelkous

nice

Moek

Great!

BasPost

Excellent guys! This is super! Well done! Excellent range and indeed with all that concrete of the building!

This is what we like to see!
Thumbs up!

p0nts

Cool! Thanks for the test! Great effort

MarcoF

Great guys! I'm not a 433 fan, but I have some switches for very simple things like our pump by the ditch for watering the graden. maybe I will get some temp sensor.

Can't wait for the next movie

DanielBartholomeus

Wooow TOP***** Thx for Tst.......

MarcoF

Could anyone recommend a 433 outdoor temp sensor?

kasteleman

Same question as MarcoF, but also a UV sensor!

kriebelkous

Well.. an arduino, some batteries, a 433mhz tranciever, a few sensors and maybe a small solar panel could do both (and more) and would be cheap. I made an outdoor temp, lux, barometric pressure and soil moistere sensor. I payed about €25,- for the parts (already had the battery and reused an old solar panel). UV sensors are around €10,-.

MarcoF

@kriebelkous
Who nice! Did you use a howto/site of complete package?
Here I'm already using 2 arduino's for monitoring a kamstrup multical and kamstrup 162 meter for our heatpump. Recently I bought arduino stuff for a heliostat, so arduino is something I can work with

kriebelkous

@marcoF i just bought the components online and used the mysensor software to get it running. It is running on the 2,4 ghz band now using a mysensor gateway (allong with a few other homemade sensors).
But i expect it to work with homey and a 433 tranciever. Allot of guys are using arduino's or raspberries and then start working at athom (or found it, http://weejewel.tweakblogs.net/blog/archief/2013/01/).
I suspect support and software for arduino to be great as soon as homey launches.

honey

What an update! Thanks a lot for the great effort, you are awesome! It tells much-much more than some blunt numbers, spec. Also it cuts short endless discussions about the range. I hope is not the last video. We know that you have a very busy schedule so really appreciate the time you sacrificed for this.

JaapPelt

Impressie demo.
z-wave and zigbee mesh Networks have even beter coverage.

ErikVanDongen

I use oregon outdoor temperature and humidity sensors for several years now. Receive and process signals with a RFXCOM + HomeSeer solution, but migrate that to Homey.

CypZ

ErikVanDongen said:
I use oregon outdoor temperature and humidity sensors for several years now. Receive and process signals with a RFXCOM + HomeSeer solution, but migrate that to Homey.

I plan to use Oregon sensors + Homey too. Could you please confirm that homey does support these sensors ? Or that's in the roadmap ?

Dountill

Does this means I can sell my RFXCOM433E?

Gerjan

It look like my 433 range is not to good, I have 2 KAKU Motion sensors. about 4 and 7 meters from Homey. inside walls are between them.  Anyone same issue?

GeurtDijker

Gerjan said:

It look like my 433 range is not to good, I have 2 KAKU Motion sensors. about 4 and 7 meters from Homey. inside walls are between them.  Anyone same issue?

You are correct ;-)
Your transmit power/range of the KAKU motion sensors is not good...
(This has nothing to do with the receive sensitivity of Homey btw)

I have experienced the KAKU APIR-2150 has the worst transmit range of all KAKU devices (at least the ones I have) . 
I used a doorbell ACDB-7000A and a normal remote AYCT-102 to test a location where I wanted the KAKU  APIR Motion sensor.  No problems for my location outside to Homey inside. 

After pairing and testing the APIR inside, I placed it outside and no signals coming through to Homey. 
despite the remote or doorbell use a small CR2032 3 volt battery and the APIR uses two 2 AAA 2x1.5 volt it's range is terribly short. I think that is because they want to sell Range Extenders.....  

I fixed it myself the cheap, fun and easy way: open the APIR, and add a decent 16,8 cm antenna ;-) inspired by this blogs:
Both Dutch : 
- http://td-er.nl/2015/01/14/antenne-mod-acm-1000/
- http://td-er.nl/2014/02/22/verbeteren-antenne-homewizard/

ZperX

I don`t think it is the 433Mhz range itself it must be the app or device. I have LightwaveRF devices what is similar to KaKu and it has an incredible range. Homey and the app controls devices 2 floors above with 100% reliability. The Somfy using a slightly different 433Mhz frequency is less reliable. The Z-wave is the most disapointing regarding the range. That is max 4 meters same floor no walls (without range extender). My Bluetooth has 3x of that range (through floors).

Some KaKu hardware are almost identical to LightwaveRF devices, for example the line in relay: Link1 Link2.
So it must be the app. But Athom don`t want to publish that... Andy Wild did an excellent job.

thayoung1

I also have an APIR 2150 motion sensor and the range is very poor. Only a couple of meters. Dont know if it is Homey or the KAKU device. So mine is moved from the outside to the kitchen indoors. Hope it will get better later.

Strange thing is that I also have some old sockets KAKU which work with double the distance (And even 1 More wall inbetween)

btwvince

ZperX said:

I don`t think it is the 433Mhz range itself it must be the app or device. I have LightwaveRF devices what is similar to KaKu and it has an incredible range. Homey and the app controls devices 2 floors above with 100% reliability. The Somfy using a slightly different 433Mhz frequency is less reliable. The Z-wave is the most disapointing regarding the range. That is max 4 meters same floor no walls (without range extender). My Bluetooth has 3x of that range (through floors).

Some KaKu hardware are almost identical to LightwaveRF devices, for example the line in relay: Link1 Link2.
So it must be the app. But Athom don`t want to publish that... Andy Wild did an excellent job.

I have a few KaKu switches that don't work because of the distance I guess. It all worked for me with my HomeWizard. I'm planning to buy new ones just for these but I can't find a retailer in the Netherlands or Belgium of LightwaveRF. If I buy them in the UK do you know if they will work in Belgium?

ZperX

LightwaveRF is designed for the UK market. We use different sockets here and different wall boxes so there is no point selling these outside of UK and Ireland.
The point is that the inner hardware is almost identical to the KaKu. So if someone is desperate and have coding skills could use the code of the LightwaveRF app to create an opensource KaKu app. I am 95% sure it will sort out the range issue. The LightwaveRF app resends the signals I thing 4 times (the code are discrete so no issue with that) and it uses Manchester encoding.

btwvince

ZperX said:

LightwaveRF is designed for the UK market. We use different sockets here and different wall boxes so there is no point selling these outside of UK and Ireland.
The point is that the inner hardware is almost identical to the KaKu. So if someone is desperate and have coding skills could use the code of the LightwaveRF app to create an opensource KaKu app. I am 95% sure it will sort out the range issue. The LightwaveRF app resends the signals I thing 4 times (the code are discrete so no issue with that) and it uses Manchester encoding.

Oké, thanks for the fast respond, so the next question is: I know there are many people that have coding skills but is there anyone who will try this because I can't

MatjaLipu

I suggest you to create a new forum topic with "community app request" to see how much interest is there.

AndyWilde

It also depends on how robust the protocol is that is used by Kaku and the repeatability of the devices that are produced,  in developing LightwaveRF app I found that there is quite a lot of difference in the timing from different devices which can be an issue.  

If the protocol is available for the kaku I can take a look at it, but with no hardwear it would be impossible to test anything.

AndyWilde

btwvince said:

ZperX said:

I don`t think it is the 433Mhz range itself it must be the app or device. I have LightwaveRF devices what is similar to KaKu and it has an incredible range. Homey and the app controls devices 2 floors above with 100% reliability. The Somfy using a slightly different 433Mhz frequency is less reliable. The Z-wave is the most disapointing regarding the range. That is max 4 meters same floor no walls (without range extender). My Bluetooth has 3x of that range (through floors).

Some KaKu hardware are almost identical to LightwaveRF devices, for example the line in relay: Link1 Link2.
So it must be the app. But Athom don`t want to publish that... Andy Wild did an excellent job.

I have a few KaKu switches that don't work because of the distance I guess. It all worked for me with my HomeWizard. I'm planning to buy new ones just for these but I can't find a retailer in the Netherlands or Belgium of LightwaveRF. If I buy them in the UK do you know if they will work in Belgium?

The wall plugs will not be of any use to you due to the different plug, but the lightswitches and remotes will still work.  The way I wrote the app is so you can use a LW remote to activate any other device.  So you could have a LW remote controlling you TV by the Homey IR if you wanted to.

KeepT

GeurtDijker said:

Gerjan said:

It look like my 433 range is not to good, I have 2 KAKU Motion sensors. about 4 and 7 meters from Homey. inside walls are between them.  Anyone same issue?

You are correct ;-)
Your transmit power/range of the KAKU motion sensors is not good...
(This has nothing to do with the receive sensitivity of Homey btw)

I have experienced the KAKU APIR-2150 has the worst transmit range of all KAKU devices (at least the ones I have) . 
I used a doorbell ACDB-7000A and a normal remote AYCT-102 to test a location where I wanted the KAKU  APIR Motion sensor.  No problems for my location outside to Homey inside. 

After pairing and testing the APIR inside, I placed it outside and no signals coming through to Homey. 
despite the remote or doorbell use a small CR2032 3 volt battery and the APIR uses two 2 AAA 2x1.5 volt it's range is terribly short. I think that is because they want to sell Range Extenders.....  

I fixed it myself the cheap, fun and easy way: open the APIR, and add a decent 16,8 cm antenna ;-) inspired by this blogs:
Both Dutch : 
- http://td-er.nl/2015/01/14/antenne-mod-acm-1000/
- http://td-er.nl/2014/02/22/verbeteren-antenne-homewizard/

Hi GeurtDijker,

Would you be able to share or explain where you soldered the antenna specifically.
I opened my 2150, but cannot identify the antenna. There is no label with 433 on any of the chips. Is the metal hook in the first the antenna, or is it just to protect the sensor/plastic cover on the front. And if so, where then is the antenna situated?

Thanks in advance for your help.