Most stable/unstable parts of your network

Community Playground General Discussions
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As a relatively new user (~5 months), I’m finding pretty consistently that by far, the most stable parts of my network are the ones using third party h/w that has been integrated into vera with a user written app (e.g. our alarm system, MyQ garage door openers, Sonos, Nest, etc…). These are all working well and seem to be completely reliable–this part has been fantastic.

What’s not working very well, and causing a lot of frustration for both me and, more importantly, my SO who was not a huge fan of all of this to begin with, are my z-wave devices. We have a decently large house and not a ton of z-wave devices, so I know some of it may be caused by our network, but I’m finding just in general that many of these devices themselves aren’t very reliable. In less than 5 months, I’ve had two appliance modules (two different brands) just stop working–not a network issue, the modules themselves don’t work. I’ve now tried three different brands of door/window sensors and can’t seem to find one that is 100% reliable–they seem to keep losing connection with the system and needing to be completely reset. Right now I have two that I’ve placed literally 2 inches from an appliance module, right next to their magnets, and they are showing up as tripped. I’ve even purchased a second bridged vera to to and help with any network issues (as well as tons of extenders/appliance modules).

Just curious if I’m alone in this or if others are having these issues. On the one hand, it makes me more confident in my decision to bite the bullet and install lutron for our lighting, instead of going z-wave, but on the other, I’m becoming very reluctant to rely on any of the z-wave components for anything that is mission critical, which is a pretty big problem.

If anyone has recommendations for appliance modules and door/window sensors that they’ve found are uber reliable (or better yet, non-z-wave solutions that can be integrated into vera), I’ll take them!

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Might be useful if you mention which country you’re in - not all solutions available everywhere.

I’ve had fairly good module reliability over the last two years, but have had a couple of wall-socket switches fail for no apparent reason, just as you describe. For in-wall switches and battery door/window sensors, I’ve had good luck with Fibaro devices.

I think there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Z-wave - especially if you have a dense mesh - but there’s a world of difference between implementations. Consumer electronics which seems cheap and cheerful, probably is.

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[quote=“akbooer, post:2, topic:182517”]Might be useful if you mention which country you’re in - not all solutions available everywhere.

I’ve had fairly good module reliability over the last two years, but have had a couple of wall-socket switches fail for no apparent reason, just as you describe. For in-wall switches and battery door/window sensors, I’ve had good luck with Fibaro devices.

I think there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with Z-wave - especially if you have a dense mesh - but there’s a world of difference between implementations. Consumer electronics which seems cheap and cheerful, probably is.[/quote]

Ah yes, good point! I’m in the US and have been looking at figaro as an alternative, but the sales process in the US is just ridiculous–multiple back and forths on email with their rep and then they actually sent me a paper invoice which I’m supposed to fill out and mail in payment–for two door/window sensors! Just nuts! Would love to try their motion sensors as well, but they’ve been ‘coming soon’ for months now.

4

I have a fairly wide range of z-wave devices: switches, dimmers, remotes, locks, sensors, blind controls, thermostats and TRVs. On the whole, the setup is pretty stable now but it took a lot of tweaking and figuring out which brand of equipment works best. With z-wave, you cannot assume that everything works out of the box, works the way you expect it to, and is of good quality (same goes for other consumer grade solutions I suppose).

Some of the changes I made along the way:

  • The earlier Danfoss TVRs were crap. I replaced them with StellaZ ones.
  • As it turns out, not every z-wave switch supports instant status updates (another victim of a ridiculous patent) so I replaced a few Duwi light switches with ZME ones in places where I trigger scenes from these switches.
  • Added an antenna to Vera so it can talk to my lock; working through the mesh network turned out to be unreliable.
  • Only had one plug in switch break on me.
  • My main niggle: there are no decent wall mounted scene controllers in Europe, unless you count the beautiful but hideously expensive Vitrum ones. I’ve replaced a few of the crappy ZME ones with wall mounted iPhones. I am currently turning a blank wall plate into 4 push buttons, and I’ll strip and wire an Aeon labs 4 button remote behind that.

Some crappiness I still have to deal with:

  • Every few months I have to cycle the power on the ZME switches because they stop giving instant status updates.
  • Every now and then, turning off the upstairs light will lower the front awnings as well. I have no idea whatsoever why, but sending a “configure now” command to the light switch fixes this.

So all in all the issues are minor, but getting to where I am took a lot of effort. I still would not recommend z-wave to anyone not prepared to tweak and refine the system.

5

There will always be failures in any electronic product, but there are usually few.

The most important detail is to fill the voids in the network with enough Z-Wave devices so that the network is resilient, with multiple good routes to any device. Once you establish a robust Z-Wave network, you will find your issues go away and the Z-Wave network/devices become rock solid. This is especially true with seemingly “flaky” battery operated devices like door/window sensor. Once the network is sufficiently populated, the just work great and every time.

6

You’re going to get a lot of different opinions on Z-Wave gear, and there appear to be a lot of variations between brands (etc).

The general consensus is that a dense Z-Wave network will address all the issues. In theory it should help, and does when your network is tiny/sparse, it’s certainly no guarantee (in practice) - with RF, every deployment is going to be a little bit different.

I have a very dense Z-Wave setup in the house, almost entirely composed of Leviton gear, with the oldest stuff about 5-6yrs old. In a lot of cases, there are 2 fully powered Z-Wave devices in each room (including the Garage).

I have a few non-Leviton items, but they’re generally one-off devices with the majority of the Network being Leviton.

From my experience, the reliability of this stuff (from lowest to highest), using a dense network, goes something like:

Extremely Poor…
HomePro ZIR000 Battery Motion Sensor
HomeSeer HSM-100 Battery Motion + Temp Sensor (Gen 1)

Intermittent…
Kwikset Battery Door Lock

Periodic hangs…
Leviton VRCS4-MR 4x Scene Controllers - require power cycle to fix ~6 months

No issues…
Leviton VRS15 Switch
Leviton VRI06 Dimmer
Leviton VRI10 Dimmer
Leviton VRF01 Fan Controllers*
Monster ML 1000 Monster Appliance Module (rebadged Leviton)
GE 45604 Outdoor Appliance Module
GE 45603 Indoor Appliance Module
Trane Thermostats

The Trane T-Stats were right next-to, and one-floor-above, the Kwikset door lock (to assist the GE modules in Beaming) and it really didn’t help (even after multiple board-swaps in the Kwikset)

What did help?
It took a while, but the biggest things that improved overall Z-Wave stability were adding the external antenna to Vera, to reduce/eliminate a number of [supposedly] reliable hops, and removing the Battery-powered Z-Wave devices. The Kwikset lock is still intermittent, but it’s on an internal (Garage) entrance door, so it’s no big deal.

Notes:

[ul][li]a) All wall boxes are Plastic[/li]
[li]b) House is 2 story, construction is standard Timberframe & Sheetrock[/li]
[li]c) Vera is on the 2nd Floor with a large external antenna[/li]
[li]d) Wireless Z-Wave sensors have been replaced with Alarm System components (Motion), or Wifi ones (Temperature) and are extremely reliable at long distances[/li]
[li]e) There was a period of interference, prior to the external antenna, where one of the Fan Controllers would turn on occasionally (nothing in Vera logs)[/li][/ul]

7

Thanks all, for the detailed responses. It’s very appreciated! I’m glad to see I’m not alone with some of my frustrations and hopeful that extending our network will solve some of the problems.

Guessed, our latest appliance module which stopped working was the same GE model you mentioned, so I may have just gotten a dud. That’s good to know.

We have a stucco house with plastered walls and metal electrical boxes, so while I do have two powered z-wave devices in most rooms (mostly appliance modules and extenders), I’m guessing that an external antenna may be necessary.

Right now, the biggest issue is our front gate–I’m trying to get a door/window sensor which will reliably provide the status of the gate (opened/closed) and so far have had zero luck getting the sensors to reliably report. They’ll work for a few days and then just stop working. The gate is metal, so thought that might be the problem, but even not attached to the gate, they don’t seem to be reporting reliably. So frustrating!

I have a bridged vera unit placed in a window of the house with direct line of site, about 60 ft away and an appliance module 3ft from where I’m trying to install the sensors, which seems to be working fine, so not sure why I’m having such an issue.

We do have power at the gate, so I could use a hard wired solution, but not finding anything that will integrate. Are there any wired z-wave door/window sensors?

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Yeah, I only have it for the Beaming support and to add hops to the Network. How well it does that, who knows.

That said, build quality isn’t flash, I never plug anything into it and it “rattles” if you unplug it and shake it about :wink:

We have a stucco house with plastered walls and metal electrical boxes, so while I do have two powered z-wave devices in most rooms (mostly appliance modules and extenders), I'm guessing that an external antenna may be necessary.

Likely can’t hurt. IIRC, some brands/makes/devices have their Z-Wave antenna more deeply embedded within the device. On the Leviton’s, it’s just behind the faceplate (see attachment) so it’s always “external” when installed.

Right now, the biggest issue is our front gate--I'm trying to get a door/window sensor which will reliably provide the status of the gate (opened/closed) and so far have had zero luck getting the sensors to reliably report. They'll work for a few days and then just stop working. The gate is metal, so thought that might be the problem, but even not attached to the gate, they don't seem to be reporting reliably. So frustrating!

Since it’s battery powered, you might try “modding” it to use a local plugpack/wall-wart. Folks with HSM-100 Motion sensors had a lot of improvement in overall reliability when they did that (that device also supported being told not to goto sleep)

If you mention the make/model you’re using others might be able to assist with that information (if it’s been attempted)