Extended range Z-wave

Community Playground General Discussions
1

Have an application where I want to control lights in a remote outbuilding that is about 1000 ft. from the main house.

I don’t want to add another Vera unit but would like to repeat the Z-wave signal out there.

What are some options?

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2

Your options unfortunately are very limited. Z-wave only supports a maximum of 4 hops. You will most likely run into distance issues and reliability issues. If you have network access to the building it is best to add another vera unit.

  • Garrett
3

Alternatively, you could wait until Tim completes this:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,10873.0.html

and then run 1000ft of shielded cable out there to drive the Leviton RZC0P. At 1000ft, you’re also at the very-edge limits for RS-232, so you might need active signal repeaters along the length.

4

I will probably be able to bridge the home network wirelessly to the outbuilding. The problem I have with a second Vera unit is the ability of triggering lights and events from modules on the home vera network.

An RS232 solution might work using a network to serial bridge.

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5

Price out the options, it could well cost as much as buying another Vera (or a used Vera2) and running it in a Bridged configuration.

In both cases, the Z-Wave devices themselves will be on separate Z-Wave Networks, so the devices cannot “directly” talk to each other (over Z-Wave), but you’ll be able to write Scenes that couple it all together (either with Bridged Veras or with what Tim’s going to build)