Delay in switching light on when motion sensor

I have used both Fibaro FGMS001-ZW5 Motion Sensor and Aeotec ZW100 MultiSensor 6 to register motion on bathroom and trigger turning lights on (Fibaro FGS213 Switch) with use of automation in HA.

Sometimes there is minimal delay from motion registered to light switched on. But other times it is significant delay where I need to manually turn the lights on by using physical switch on the wall.

Bathroom is very near (3-4m) from HA and I have plenty of wired devices all over the place, including the bathroom.

So I wonder why this delay occurs? Given high spec on the HA hardware, only one jump between devices and z-wave controller I dont suspect it to be a HWD resource performance issue. But I suspect that the z-wave network may be too busy (see the spec below) and that processing the motion event or automation commands are queued.

If my assumption is valid, what would be possible solution? Maybe separate z-wave network in two distinctive networks with separate Aeotec Z-sticks?

My HA spec

  • Total Z-wave devices: 79
  • Wired devices: 56
  • Battery devices: 23
  • Z-Wave network ready: ~10 minutes
  • Z-Wave controller: ZW090 Z-Stick Gen5 EU by AEON Labs
  • HA installation: Docker
  • HA version: 0.115.3
  • Hardware: Intel Nuc i7 (NUC7i7DNK2E), 250 SSD disk, 16GB DDR4 RAM

I had the same in the pass.
How are the devices connected?
In my situation I had some devices by accident secure connected, not helping the communication speed. So I reconnected these devices not secured.
Beside that I did keep some slow reaction in some cases. So I decide to split up my zwave network in 2 zwave networks by using a Vera edge zwave hub beside my zwave dongle.
Now I’m happy about the speed

Beside this you can check your zwave log to check if there are error messages

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How are the devices connected?

I have by default included all my Z-wave devices secured. As I thought that was best practice (see Z-Wave Devices - Adding and Removing) for secure devices. Have never thought about that this could impact speed/performance. So in my case I should try including the Fibaro Dimmer and Fibaro Motion Sensor as not secured devices?

Beside that I did keep some slow reaction in some cases. So I decide to split up my zwave network in 2 zwave networks by using a Vera edge zwave hub beside my zwave dongle.

That is interesting, because I was thinking about doing the same. What was your strategy dividing Z-wave devices in the two networks?

I guess I do not need Vera edge Z-wave hub to achieve the same? Couldn´t I just setup two HA instances with dedicated Z-wave dongles and integrate these in some way? Or do you actually keep two completely separated, both as Z-wave networks and home control systems?

Beside this you can check your zwave log to check if there are error messages

I have tried inspecting the Z-wave log, but to be honest its quite impossible to get anything meaningful out of it. Messages are quite cryptic and without any type of log aggregation tool its impossible to do the inspection with “blue eye”.

I do advice to connect all devices not secured. Because secured devices are using about 90% more communication than unsecured and are so occupying the bandwidth of the zwave. ( as people at this forum told me)
As far as I know it is not possible to use two dongles on the same HA. For me the reason to use a Vera Edge.
I did split up my zwave network as two more or less the same networks.
After doing this I learned about the secured devices. So maybe having a not secured zwave network is enough to approach your speeds again.
I do advice first to insecure all devices and test again. If not satisfying you can decide to go for a second zwave network.

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I do advice to connect all devices not secured.

This is kind of contradictory to what is recommended by the HA doc: Z-Wave Devices - Adding and Removing. I also read in the manual of my Fibaro devices that they recommend adding secure devices as secured.

By the way; related thread mentions also that you can gain speed benefit of using Z-wave Plus devices and Z-wave dongle, which I already have.

People told me that secured devices where ment to use for doorlockers etc.
What is the purpose to use secured for ordinary switches?

Im not sure, but from HA doc:

Don’t use this for secure devices, since this is likely to limit the features the device supports.

I did reconnect all my devices unsecured resulting in no limit any way of my used devices

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