My parents want me to set them up with Zwave throughout the townhouse. 45 devices spread across 3 floors made of concrete. I brought my Vera3 and a couple of devices over and placed the Vera and the WiFi router on the middle floor.
When connecting through the router (Home Buddy set on local), sending commands from the 1st and 3d floor took a good 30 seconds for the app to confirm the command had been executed.
Would using a Wifi Extender on the 1st and 3d floor be an acceptable approach or would it be better to use 3 Vera3’s? Cost would be the reason for the caution here.
Were you controlling Z-Wave devices on the 1st and 3rd floor, when it took 30 seconds; and did that delay go away when you were controlling the same devices from the 2nd floor?
All devices should relay the zwave signal. Beaming is meant for waking up battery powered devices that support beaming. How many devices were spread between the floors? Did you also do a network heal?
Everything was on the 2nd floor, router and devices. I think it was the comm from my phone to the router that caused the delay, not the Zwave network. Walls are sheetrock but the floors are concrete.
That’s what it sounded like. So there was no delay when the phone was on the 2nd floor?
Is wired LAN available on the 1st and 3rd floors?
You’d probably also want to test with Z-Wave devices that are not on the same floor as Vera, to see if the concrete is blocking both WiFi and Z-Wave?
i have 20 cm concrete walls in my house and it doesnt seem to bother my asus n56u wireless router as it reacts pretty fast . i can even go to the parkinglot and be on 1 stripe of signal strength and it’ll still do the job fast. on mobile internet it takes about 1 second to switch a wall-outlet.
That’s what it sounded like. So there was no delay when the phone was on the 2nd floor?
Is wired LAN available on the 1st and 3rd floors?
You’d probably also want to test with Z-Wave devices that are not on the same floor as Vera, to see if the concrete is blocking both WiFi and Z-Wave?[/quote]
Yeah, Cat6 is run to all floors (recent construction), which should allow the Veras to bridged. I’ll have to check for Zwave blocking as well the next time I’m there (they live a few hours away)…
What kind of phone are you using? Sounds like a good bit of power, either from the router or the phone. I’m using an HTC Legend which, given it’s massive lack of battery life, may account for a weaker WiFi transmission…
dell streak 5, but the dont sell it anymore… allthough its advertised as 56mbit wifi it connects with 150mbit and even got a built-in FM radio. the signal power is prox 1.5 times better then any phone i had before. even 30km from the border of netherlands i can connect home-network and internet,its really great phone. HTC legend has an old network-radio which lacks a good antenna … you could check the forums @ modaco or xda-developers for an antenna-mod. but i would get a newer phone with android… so far it has been most compatible and it can be tweaked. but yeah an iphone 3s aint bad either, though im not fond of apple’s policy so i’d advise against buying it and make this very little difference for a little child / worker @foxconn
the asus router is simply amazing piece of machinery, they even have one with 3 antenna’s and a range of about 250 meters in-sight. there is also a smc wifi-router with 3 antenna’s and this will reach 300meter… adding a yeager boat-antenna for marina-radio to this setup will extend it to about 900 meters in point-to-point config… omni-antenna high-power will do also about 900 meters around. then there is also this WDS a.k. wireless distribution system which can bridge multiple wifi-routers/accespoints.
you happen to have a d-link ? this can also cause problems as these tend to have faulty power-supply and most annoying of all it possibility to set mixed mode with tkip which aint and never will work. it only works good with wpa2-aes. and this is not implemented well in the draft-n routers of any brand for that matter.
I’m very much not a fan of Apple either, so I avoid their products like the plague.
you happen to have a d-link ? this can also cause problems as these tend to have faulty power-supply and most annoying of all it possibility to set mixed mode with tkip which aint and never will work. it only works good with wpa2-aes. and this is not implemented well in the draft-n routers of any brand for that matter.
I’m using an SMC myself. Thanks for the info on the asus router, it’s good to know this stuff
If the 3 Vera3’s is the approach, I’m curious now about WiFi connectivity. If they are bridged, will there be one WiFi connection all three of them have or will each broadcast their own SSID? I’m thinking that if they move between floors with a device set to local WiFi mode (standard in Canada because our telecoms charge us far too much for their services), will it need to change the unit its connected to and force them to refresh the app or whatever it is running?
I have a three-story townhome, but with wood floors. Vera 2 on 2nd floor connected to a hardwired network switch. Single wifi access point/router on 3rd floor. Wifi disabled on Vera 2. 22 Z-wave devices, mostly on 2nd floor, with 2 on 3rd floor and 4 on 1st floor yet. I use plug-in modules where there are perceived gaps… probably the only necessary one links my 2nd floor to the 4 devices in the far corner of my 1st floor.
I guess I’d recommend intermediate nodes over bridging, but then I have no experience with bridging, either.
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