I seem to remember hearing somewhere that zwave is limited in the number of hops a signal can take. Is that true for the LR? How many?
I understand. What I actually meant was that you put the hub in the main building, near the window that is closest to the other building.
Unfortunately I have no magic solution with regards to Zwave. Another possibility and that is what I have done with my private garage in my condo building that is 31 floors my own condo, is to use Tuya Wifi devices.
The Tuya devices in my garage are on a different wifi but in the same Tuya account. With those devices in the same Tuya account that is in my HA, I can ‘read’ and control those garage devices in my HA.
It is complicated and would require wifi access in your secondary building, but I’m trying to be helpful.
As I tried to explain above, LR does not use any hops. It is 100% direct from controller (stick) to device (switch, etc.). There are no extenders or hops when using LR. But the range of LR is much longer than standard Z-wave (which does use hops when needed.)
Question: If the “hops” are all LR (800) would those not extend the mesh ?
Nope - sorry. LR does not use any hops - all communication is directly to and from the controller. Only “standard” (ie non-LR) Z-wave uses hops when necessary as devices communicate to each other to find the optimal path back to the controller (this is what a mesh is.)
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Here is a portion of my Z-wave network. The purple lines are the ones set up using Long Range. They all communicated directly with the controller.
The green (good signal) and orange (fair signal) are my non-LR devices. As you can see, some use mesh (e.g. the Towel Warmer and Bedroom Lamp connect back to the controller via the Bedside Light.)
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So what is the purpose of an 800 series extender? I don’t see how they are of any use.
It can extend standard ZWave. 800 chips are fully backwards compatible and can do standard Or LR…
… Just not at the same time.
And for the standard. Yes you are being overly optimistic. Like I said before I’ve NEVER succefully got more than 60 feet reliably, and why I use 25’ for planning. 40 is easy. 50 probably. Even 60 or 70. Beyond that on standard. You’re sketchy.
Also remember you DO NOT want just one route. If you only have one valid standard route an the repeater dies…
So does everything else on the end of the repeater chain. So consider that in your planning. Sounds like you MIGHT be successful with LR for that link but… Standard. Eh.
Do you have network out there? Another possibility is a network based coordinator out at the outbuilding?
WiFi
Another possibility perhaps would be an extender outside each building? They would have line of sight.
I want to make sure I’m not coming across as negative about LR. Your situation seems like it should be ideal for it. The significantly longer range of LR means it should likely work for your remote buildings right off the bat. Of course, you’d need to get a stick (the Zooz 800 LR is a good one) and an initial LR device and install them to verify, given your particular environment.
Yeah, I understand. The problem will be that the total distance between the hub and the device will be 80 to 100 feet with something like 5 walls in between. I’m not optimistic that LR could handle that.
I’ve contacted Zooz tech support to find out about what the expected range of the 800 series range extenders is when they’re not in LR mode. They list the line of sight range as 400 feet but I’m not sure if that’s true for all use cases. If it is I’m sure two of them could easily bridge the gap between buildings.
The 800 series Z-Wave chips give you
better range in mesh mode vs the 700 series Z-Wave chip. This is why you see the 800 series range extenders.
Some people from Z-Wave did a test and where able to get 0.7 Miles range line of sight in Long Range Mode. Z-Wave is not dead - #120 by Hedda. I personally have been able to get 300ft line of sight in mesh mode.
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Thanks. I guess I had a misunderstanding that 800 and LR were the same thing. I see now that ZWLR is a completely separate conversation and I doubt I’ll need it with the 800 series chips. Zooz has 800 series outdoor receptacles that should cover the distance easily. I would rather use the mesh network since I think that’ll make adding more devices later much easier.
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The beauty is, you don’t need to pick one or the other. The 800 series controller supports both mesh and LR at the same time (see my picture above). So you could use mesh for most things and also have some LR devices in your remote building if needed (ie if the mesh can’t reach across that gap.)
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But if I understand correctly if I set the 800 series USB stick to LR mode I’ll need another one for mesh. It can’t do both at the same time correct?
The 800-series controller (USB stick) can absolutely do both at the same time.
Any individual device (switch, sensor, outlet, whatever) can connect to the controller via only one method at a time: either standard mesh or LR. You set which mode a device uses when you set it up. (Of course, older devices can only use mesh, only newer devices, usually with “LR” in their name, have the ‘connect via LR’ option.)
But a single controller can happily and automatically connect to some devices using mesh and other devices using LR.
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Very interesting. How can I confirm in Z-Wave JS that my LR devices connect directly to the 800 Series dongle (and not through a hob) ?
Thanks
You don’t need to. They won’t do that.
There are multiple ways to tell if your device is included in Long Range mode. Inside of the Z-Wave JS UI control panel you will a see a column called protocol. It will display a blue Z-Wave icon if a device is included in mesh mode and a purple Z-Wave icon if it’s included in Long Range mode. Also long range devices get assigned node IDs from 256 and above while a device included in mesh will have an I’d from 2 to 232.
Inside of home assistant you can view the node id by going to settings > devices and services > click on the number of Z-Wave devices > click on your device then expand Z-Wave info section. If you click the menu button next to configure then click statics and expand the last working route it will tell you if you are using Z-Wave or Z-Wave Long Range.
Re bridging between buildings: I have HA server (w ZWave & Zigbee sticks) in the house, & an outbuilding about 60 feet away. Which has steel siding & steel roof (i.e., Faraday cage). I was using ZWave in the outbuilding, via a pair of Aeon Labs ZW117 ZWave range extenders in the windows, providing a bridge. Worked pretty decently.
I’ve since moved to Zigbee out there (using a Zigstar UZG-01 Zigbee-to-MQTT gateway).