My Vera and my Schlage lock are too far apart to communicate. Apparently I don’t have any ‘beaming’ z wave devices that can help bridge the gap.
When thinking about buying an RP200, which I have no use for, I realized that I did have an ethernet cable jack near the lock. It’s sad that I have a nice wired connection a few feet from the lock that goes to my Vera but I can’t use it to carry z wave. Has anyone heard of a device that would let me leverage my ethernet to extend my z wave beaming network?
HomeSeer has a way to extend the Z-Wave network via Ethernet or WiFi:
For Vera, there’s a way to have more than one Vera, but not sure how well that works. There’s a thread that talks about that which I read a while back.
How many devices are in your network? How many devices are between the Vera and the Lock? The more devices the better the mesh. The last device to talk to the lock needs to have the 5.02 or 4.51 firmware. Look at the GE/Jasco, Evolve, Schlage and Leviton VRP03-1LW are all capable.
Another option is to move the Vera closer to the door possibly utilizing the ethernet connection you are talking about. What does that do to the rest of your network?
Just get a couple of the cheapest Z wave plug in modules to broaden the number of nodes the mesh. I did this (but with Ineteon - a motion sensor was far from the duel band PLM plugged into the MCV. One duel band plug in lamp dimmer module nearer the sensor = problem solved)
Over time as you naturally add in more z wave devices, it gets better and better.
In case this is still being monitored, in the case of Z wave locks every device needed to bridge the distance between the lock and Vera needs to be capable of beaming. so if your lock is 50 feet from the Vera and each device has a range of 10 feet then you need 3 devices capable of beaming between the Vera and the lock.
It doesn’t matter if you have 50 devices in your z wave network that are withing range of Vera and the lock. For the purpose of Vera and the lock communicating with each other unless there is a chain of beam capable devices within range of each other between Vera and the lock they won’t communicate. Only beam capable devices are capable of transmitting the beamed, (encrypted signal). As far as Vera and the lock communicating the rest of your non-beam capable devices, (mesh network) doesn’t exist.
Sad but true. I bought a whole boatload of outlets and wall switches for my new house before I found this out. You don’t have to have every device in your network beam capable, just a chain of them between Vera and whatever locks you have.
My understanding is that Evolve and GE/Jasco devices are beam capable. Also, I have been advised to do a network heal as this may increase the reliability of your locks communicating with Vera.
My understanding is only the ‘last’ node between Vera and the lock needs to support beaming. (But it’s good to have a number of beaming capable nodes, so Vera has a choice of routes to the lock, if outside of direct range.)
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