Hi I recently cut over from Smartthings, and very glad I did, but looking for anyway to improve my zwave network.
I have RPi 4B 8gb and a NortekUSB Zwave/Zigbee stick for hardware.
I have 26 devices on Z-Wave JS. Both HA and Z-Wave JS are on the latest stable versions.
I won’t go into my devices, and perhaps they are the problem as there is a mix of versions/ages of devices, primarily Levitron wall switches and outlets.
I find myself constantly fighting the health of my switches and zwave network. Switches will just stop responding. There are a couple in particular but they actually are newer Levitron switches.
This is my question:
What is the strongest configuration for a zwave network, with the strongest set of tools for resolving and troubleshooting zwave issues?
I’m just running the basic setup and I see there are different ways to break it out (Zwave2MQTT?). Can I break the zwave stuff out on a seperate RPi (I have a spare)? I only want to do that if it really stands a chance of making things better.
Or is there a more reliable USB stick other than the one I’m using?
I’m fine with upgrading my old switches, but want to understand why I need to do so if that is the route as new switches aren’t cheap.
There’s lots of things that can help… The first is using an extension cable and / or USB hub connecting your coordinator stick to a Rpi. Are you directly plugged into your Pi?
See tons about improving the network by separating the USB stick from Pi using an extender (though if you go over a certain distance the USB voltage drops so that can be an issue?). Thank you for opening my eyes to that. I’ll look around I’m sure I have a USB extender in my mess of cables.
Mine (Zooz 7 stick) is on a small powered USB2 hub (to avoid the issues with Usb3 and Zigbee) that’s on a 1m extension cable. Rock solid.
Under the hood ZWave sticks all use the same Silicon Labs chipsets - so one is rarely better than another. Sure, maybe minor antenna differences but that’s usually not the issue.