I had a “fine” system of primarily zigbee sensors and plugs throughout my house, and a handful of z-wave devices, most notably my garage opener, door locks, and some power meters. I have a lot of plugs as repeaters throughout my house because it was built in the 40’s and 2.4Ghz doesn’t carry through the walls well, plus i’m in the city so lots of interfering wifi that I can’t control.
With a newly walking and exploring toddler, I wanted to make sure the “mostly reliable” door sensors and locks were as reliable as possible, just in case. So, with the new Zwave2JS integration and the shiny new and affordable zwave 700 tech, I thought it was a good time to upgrade some stuff, assuming the improved range, battery life, and non-2.4Ghz nature of z-wave 700 was the way to go.
Two months, hundreds of dollars, 3 controllers, countless hours, and I still can’t even get a freaking contact sensor to reliably give me open/closed status.
I started with a zoo zstick7 and some ring contact sensors/keypads. I was kind of turned off by the need to re-program the name of the zstick serial device just to be able to reliably use it with HA. The Ring keypad paired fine, but the contact sensors would not reliably report open/closed status and would appear/disappear from the network. Also no 2 of them would pair the same way - some would get S2 with security, some without. Some would populate all fields, some wouldn’t. Some would finish after a re-interview, others would disappear completely after an interview.
The Aeotec 700 controller then finally became available, and I’ve always preferred Aeotec anyway, so I sucked it up and ordered that. Same problems. Decided to give up on Ring, and ordered a batch of Zooz ZSE41 contact sensors. Same problems as the ring sensors. Ordered some Ring Repeaters. Same problems. Ordered some generic zwave 700 outlets to use as repeaters. Same problems.
Found the info about the buggy 700-series firmware, updated the Aeotec controller. Same problems.
At this point, out of 12 contact sensors from Ring and Zooz, all within 10 feet of the controller, I can not reliably get more than 2 fully paired and reporting status. With or without repeaters, with or without smart-start or S2 auth. Plugged-in devices generally pair reliably. Ring keypad still pairs up and works, though I have left it off my network for the most part. I’ve wiped and uninstalled-reinstalled zwavejs a dozen times.
I have read in other threads that some people are having good luck with the Ring sensors when following a specific process for pairing, but they haven’t provided details about what controllers they’re using, what security type, what pairing method- and even then there is talk of them being tempermental. I’ve not seen anyone post experience with the zse41 sensors.
Has anyone had better luck with a 700-series-only network? Pretty exasperated here, and I guess I should have just left well enough alone.