I have 3 SSID, but they are all on the same network…
works fine 
I only have 2, does indeed work fine. Always nice to have a fallback SSID on your iot stuff.
We have 3 floors in our house; each floor has it’s own SSID, if I wouldn’t do that, wifi will be very poor 
I have a unifi setup with the same ssid on all three APs (which are connected to each other by ethernet.)
The phones laptops etc just move from AP to AP as you move around the property.
1 Like
Yes - HAOS is Home Assistant Operating System - see the install page.
Yes, you can use this custom component to do that. It’s easier to install and manage custom components with HACS, which is itself a custom component.
Yes, though you don’t need a second HA for that. Z-Wave JS supports that using Docker.
Z-Wave uses an entirely different set of frequencies (which ones depend on where in the world) and is a completely different wireless standard.
Zigbee uses the same frequencies as WiFi, and Bluetooth, but is again a completely different wireless standard.
Both Z-Wave and Zigbee devices will have significantly longer battery life than their WiFi equivalents. Both are also mesh networks - the mains powered devices will extend the range of the mesh (they’re called routers).
With Zigbee instead of a second system running a full Zigbee stack, you also have the option of network connected coordinators. Then you can run the Zigbee software centrally, while deploying the radio remotely.
2 Likes
That is how I find it also.
Using different SSIDs made my devices “stick” to the wrong access point much longer than it should.
But that was a long time ago, perhaps things has changed.
I have the opposite…my devices did not change AP unless it really got disconnected, hence my wifi speed really sucked.
@Hellis81 said:
That is how I find it also.
Using different SSIDs made my devices “stick” to the wrong access point much longer than it should.
But that was a long time ago, perhaps things has changed.
First - can anyone tell me how to do a proper reply by just hitting a “Reply” button? When I do that, it won’t quote the post I’m replying to.
That was part of my issue with using a single SSID. It’s about 333’ from the house to the barn, straight line from a corner of the back deck to the barn building. (I’m lucky that some of the surveyors who helped us with wetland issues and some of the people at the county have given me data in CAD files that I can use in QCad, a decently priced CAD program.) But the pathway is about 500’ I can point out where, on that walk, I reach the end of where I can get a good wifi signal from the house and where, about 150-200’ later, a mobile device will stop registering that wifi node.
I can also point out the same with the barn. When walking from house to barn, I hit these points:
- End of effective Imladris (house) wifi range
- End of Imladris SSID detection range
- Start of Lothlorien (barn) SSID detection range
- Start of effective Lothlorien wifi range
So there’s a good distance, around both buildings, where a device is aware of an SSID, but still cannot actually use it for wifi data.
In between the two buildings, right near our creek crossing, there are times I can see my phone showing both Lothlorien and Imladris. In that area it can’t use either one, but sometimes (usually during the winter), it sees both of them.
I found if I used the same SSID for both, it got confusing when I was trying to test the range and work things out.
(I wish I could put some kind of access point in a casing, midway between the two, so we’d have wifi throughout that walk and from the glider that overlooks a pretty place on the creek - but I’m not about to dig another cable to run a wire that doesn’t have to be run!)
Original cable should of been run in PVC piping so if it ever needed to be replaced or additional wiring run could be done without the digging. It a requirement for protecting under ground data wiring here. Could have even put a Tee mid way and that would of been able to put a exterior rated repeater/ap.
But of course we are a few years late to do that now!
At this point, I have about 1,500’ of fiber - that includes coiled ends when I had to over-order lengths because I couldn’t be sure of the exact lengths. It’s at least 1,300’ of conduit, probably more. I did ALL the trenching for these lines. It’s probably just about 480’ to the barn, but I can’t be sure. This barn being an old pig barn, there are 2’x2’ trenches that were in the floors - basically, of course, they were for pig excrement. But it hasn’t been used for pigs in 20-30 years and when we had the barn cleaned up as part of the renovation, I hit the trenches with a LOT of bleach. Now those trenches are tunnels, since we had to put an even floor over the original one.
That 480’ means down to the barn, under the foundation and footings, and up into one of the “$#!+ trenches.” From there, it’s another 45’ or so, 30’ of that along one of the trenches. I had ethernet for that and it led to two incidences of burned out ports on network switches. (The only way to run the ethernet cable there was either lay it on the ground or secure it to the top of the tunnel or to one side - and all of those meant the ethernet line was next to the concrete - so any lightning strike that grounded out in that area was charging that ethernet line and burning out stuff on the end.) So now there’s fiber for that stretch, as well.
The big fiber run is from out in our front field, the nearest place where I can put a Starlink dish, since it needs access to a lot of the sky. We don’t have Starlink yet, but I’ve put down a deposit. So I have about 950’-1,000’ of fiber running from that post out in the field to, eventually, the network switch in the house. I also used 1/0 wire to get power out there. Anything else for most of that run would have left me with voltage that could be too low to power anything.
The 1/0 is direct bury cable, so is the 4/0 we used to provide power to the barn, also direct bury. The rest is fiber optic cable and there is no freaking way I would EVER direct-bury fiber cable! While I had to make multiple cuts in an 800’ stretch of HDPE to run the fiber to the post, the run from the house to the barn is about 480’ with one HDPE pipe with no breaks in it at all - going from the house crawlspace to the barn tunnel. (I used compression couplers to seal the cuts I had to make in the long 800’ HDPE run.)
I’m on really good terms with a lot of the building inspectors for the county - in large part because I would ask them questions instead of trying to con them into accepting whatever I came up with. One of the electrical inspectors was a major help in answering questions and telling me if I was doing stupid things while planning a lot of this out.
I looked over my network. I have an Insteon garage door opener active and some Insteon fan controls that aren’t installed yet. Since 2017, I know I’ve seen Z-Wave (or wifi) controllers to fill both rolls, so it looks like I can dump Insteon. I consider that good news!
I’m looking at the Z-Wave devices and I’ve found two from Aeotec. (They seem like a good company to deal with - they were honest with me back in '17 about their doubts about their controllers working on ceiling fans and I see they get the “Don’t phone home” thing.)
I see two Z-Wave USB devices from Aeotec, but I can’t find a clear explanation of the differences. The first is their Z-Stick Gen5+. The second is the Z-Stick 7. It looks like, to me, that the second one is a later model that can do more. Can someone verify this for me?
Also, from what I understand with this thread, if I put HAOS on one of my Pis in the house and connect an Aeotec Z-stick in that Pi, then I can take another Pi and put it in the barn with another Z-Stick in it, and, with both on the same LAN, the HAOS Pi in the house can communicate with the Z-Stick on the Pi in the barn and control the barn Z-Wave devices. Is that correct? If so, what software do I need to run on the Pi in the barn to do that and can that Pi be a 3B+ or does it need to be a 4 as? (I see that a Pi4 is recommended for HAOS).
And another question. I see that using a system dedicated to HA is preferred. I have a Linux based media server with a more powerful CPU than in a Pi. Is it possible to put HA on that server? If so, will it hog resources on it and what are the drawbacks to putting HA on that Linux server over using a dedicated Pi4 for HA?
yes that is correct. As I said the software you need is zwave2mqtt. A pi3 will do for that.
Thanks. Trying to put all the info together - I thought I had read that. Just trying to make sure I have it all straight in my head.
Do you know what the difference is between the two Z-Sticks? Looks to me like the 2nd is a later generation, but I don’t see that stated by Aeotec.
zwavejs2mqtt you mean. zwave2mqtt (without the js) uses the old and obsolete OpenZWave stack and will land you in a world of pain if you try to use it.
I’d like to take this opportunity to point out - that unless you buy something specific like Ubiquity (and others) access points, the majority of WiFi routers default to using “auto” power which is basically max power. In a situation like yours, simply reducing the power output to medium - would make a difference, you will no longer have a zone between the 2 buildings where both SSIDs can be seen.
As for the actual questions - it won’t be a lot different to my setup in reality. I have Home Assistant running on a virtual server host. I started out with ZWave because that was apparently the thing to use, and learned very quickly that ZWave sucks until you have a LOT of powered devices to maintain the mesh. To be fair my ZWave mesh is very stable now, but also cost a fortune. I have a Raspberry Pi that is running docker, and it runs ZWaveJS2MQTT (but with the MQTT part turned off) and Home Assistant connects to this Pi over the Network using a websocket.
I have started getting Zigbee stuff because it’s like 1/3 of the price of ZWave stuff, specifically temperature sensors which I want to be able to provide Home Assistant with an AVERAGE house temperature for the boiler control. I have a second Pi which is again running Docker, and it is running Zigbee2MQTT and Home Assistant discovers and controls my Zigbee devics flawlessly.
Interestingly Zigbee devices respond faster than my ZWave devices, only by like half a second - but still noticeable.
Now You mentioned in one of your posts about how your G network went further, and believed it to be because new WiFi routers aren’t as powerful, but that’s not what is happening -
With a radio signal, the lower the frequency it is, the further it will travel given the same transmission power. So ZWave goes further than Zigbee for example because Zigbee is 2.4GHz and ZWave is around 898MHz. With WiFi B/G/N they all ran on 2.4GHz. 5GHz WiFi though is obviously a much higher frequency so would require a lot more power to be able to cover the same area that 2.4GHz could, and the same is true of the newer 6GHz. It’s also worth noting that the reason that a microwave ALSO operates at 2.4GHz is because that happens to be the optimum frequency that water will absorb, this means that in exactly the same way that the microwave cooks food - human bodies (~70% bags of water) absorb WiFi signals (but it doesn’t harm us because Microwaves use 800+ watts, and WiFi doesn’t even use watts, it uses microwatts). Trees with wet leaves, rainfall, mist will all affect the outdoor signal at 2.4GHz, but not as much at 5GHz
I’m trying to clarify about the IR and I’m finding confusing information about the YTF remote IR controller you linked to. On the page you linked to, it talks about using Tuya-Convert to flash the device with the Tasmota software. But on this page there is a mention that Tuya is now making devices with a RealTek chip instead of the ESP one and that there are no plans to work with the RealTek chip.
Is the YTF device you link to already flashed with Tasmota, or does it work with HA out of the box? Do we have reports or clarification that they’re still using the ESP chips? At this point I don’t want to order one with the possibility that it could have a RealTek chip in it and not an ESP chip - unless it already works with HA to replace my infrared controllers.
Also, any idea of the range? I have a projection TV about 15’ from the entertainment center and about 7’ above that level, so I’m going to have to find a place to put it where it can be “seen” by the project TV in the back of the room and by the entertainment center in the front. I’m hoping it has a good range!
If you compare the hardware of the RPi4 and your linux server, you would realize HA doesn’t require a lot of cpu power.
I would go for HA on the linux server 
Thanks for all the clear and detailed information about the wifi signal behavior and the pros and cons you’ve found comparing Z-Wave to Zigbee. Back in 2017, when I compared the two, I went with Z-Wave because I could find more devices, and a larger variety of them, under Z-Wave. Also, I had read about the mesh networks, but from what I read, Zigbee had more trouble with resequencing devices if one went bad or lost a connection. For instance, if I had added 5 to my system and #3 went bad, that it’d have trouble handling #4 and #5 after that. Do you know anything about that? I realize that was 4 years ago, maybe longer when I was doing the research, so things may have changed notably since then.
As far as I know, the real YTF still comes with a ESP8266, but tuya-convert does not work anymore. You have to flash serial.