Secondary controller?

Hi everyone!

Quick newbi question here. Why would someone want a secondary controller? Isn’t the zwave mesh communication enough? Or is this more like load balancing kinda thing? If so, after what point a secondary controller becomes necessary?

Thanks :slight_smile:

Read up on Vera bridging. It is used to increase Z-Wave coverage by adding a second(or more) Z-Wave network to cover an area that a single Z-Wave network might not reach. A common scenario for this is an outbuilding where the gap between buildings cannot be reached across by a single Z-Wave network.

Another reason is if your network exceeds the Z-Wave maximum device count of 232.

[quote=“Z-Waver, post:2, topic:185888”]Read up on Vera bridging. It is used to increase Z-Wave coverage by adding a second(or more) Z-Wave network to cover an area that a single Z-Wave network might not reach. A common scenario for this is an outbuilding where the gap between buildings cannot be reached across by a single Z-Wave network.

Another reason is if your network exceeds the Z-Wave maximum device count of 232.[/quote]

Hey Z, any clever way of getting an accurate device count, other than going one by one in the UI and making some assumptions about plugins, etc?

[quote=“tomgru, post:3, topic:185888”][quote=“Z-Waver, post:2, topic:185888”]Read up on Vera bridging. It is used to increase Z-Wave coverage by adding a second(or more) Z-Wave network to cover an area that a single Z-Wave network might not reach. A common scenario for this is an outbuilding where the gap between buildings cannot be reached across by a single Z-Wave network.

Another reason is if your network exceeds the Z-Wave maximum device count of 232.[/quote]

Hey Z, any clever way of getting an accurate device count, other than going one by one in the UI and making some assumptions about plugins, etc?[/quote]

Don’t get to caught up on device count. Every plugin uses a different amount of RAM. I can have very few devices but heavy RAM users and run into problems with a 1/4 of the max device count. And it’s very possible but most users don’t have 232 z-wave devices. It’s usually the plugins that are the killers.

[quote=“tomgru, post:3, topic:185888”][quote=“Z-Waver, post:2, topic:185888”]Read up on Vera bridging. It is used to increase Z-Wave coverage by adding a second(or more) Z-Wave network to cover an area that a single Z-Wave network might not reach. A common scenario for this is an outbuilding where the gap between buildings cannot be reached across by a single Z-Wave network.

Another reason is if your network exceeds the Z-Wave maximum device count of 232.[/quote]

Hey Z, any clever way of getting an accurate device count, other than going one by one in the UI and making some assumptions about plugins, etc?[/quote]You’ll count em, and you’ll like it! ;D

Or, you could run @RexBeckett’s little script to dump them all to a text file. Then use this Linux command to count the content of the file.

wc -l /www/devlist.txt