Sorry about the topic of the post, but I don’t even know what to name the solution I’m looking for.
I mean the solution as shown in the attached drawing. I want to mount a Raspberry PI 4 with Home Assistant installed in the basement. Unfortunately, I currently have a Z-wave stick installed in RP4. After moving the RP4 to the basement, I will not have Z-Wave network coverage in my home. I am looking for a solution that will allow me to build a remote “extension module” in which I will install my Z-wave stick, which I will connect to RP4 in the basement. The connection can be any, I like WI-FI the best, but it can be, for example, an Ethernet cable or something else. Domoticz has such a solution, but I do not want to use it - I am giving it as an example. Maybe some of you have used Domoticz before and will know what’s going on and solved a similar problem in HA.
Buy repeater for middle floor. I’ve tried many and aeotech is best. Mains powered devices are likely enough if wood construction but get repeater if you see lag or packet drops.
I have 18”+ thick concrete walls/floors/ceiling with metal lining ceiling on first floor and zwave stick outside that area. Added a single repeater in room near door to well covered zwave area and problem solved. No lag and no packet drops. Without the repeater…deadspace
Same area has no wifi or cell. Had to add Wi-Fi AP as well
THIS. ZWave is a mesh network. Buy some mains powered switches or plugs or ANYTHING really that makes sense in range on the first floor. (Keep these first devices within 30-40’ / 10m, it should be easy to find places on the first floor that are in range of the pi in the basement.) Then use that as the basis of your repeater mesh for the rest of the house. I’m personally not a fan of a dedicated repeater like the Aeotec - because it’s honestly not doing anything for you except repeating a signal whereas another switch repeats the signal AND - gives you another controllable switch.
+1 to Mesh - whilst there are integrations to link two separate HASS installs together, that would be unnecessary complexity for Z-Wave.
Just buy several Z-Wave mains powered switches - these automagically work as mesh repeaters, and the more devices you have, the better the network will operate.
Battery devices don’t act as repeaters as they would need to drain the battery all the time.
The main point is there’s nothing to configure - the overnight “network heal” measures the best paths better than a human could.
I actually have to think about it, but I think I will use a repeater. Currently I have Z -Wave Stick - Aeon Labs, ZW090 or Z -stick Gen 5 connected to my RP4.
I like the Aeotec smart plugs, great repeaters and allows me to control something and measure its power usage. I do have an Aoetec repeater, still sitting in the box for over a year…someday I will use it!?
My HA runs as a VM on a rack-mount server installed in a large steel cabinet in my basement - my house is two storey like yours. My Z-stick is on a 6ft USB extension and sits near the top of the cabinet at one side, pointing upward as it should be placed.
I have Z-Wave light switches and dimmers on every floor, including the basement, with no issues in Z-Wave response time in any corner of the house or even the garage. I also have some battery-powered Z-Wave devices, including door sensors, motion sensor and multi-button remote control which work very reliably.
The only issue I’ve had with Z-Wave has been the random node non-response caused with 700 series sticks. This used to happen weekly but hasn’t happened that I know of at all in the past month. Weird one.
I have just been through the same thing - HA server in network cabinet in garage - unreliable connection to house.
First attempt was some cheap non-powered USB over ethernet adapters from Amazon. This worked, but every now and again the Aeotec 5+ stick would lose it’s connection causing the zwaveJS add-on to crash. This was running from the server, through a patch panel and over around 10-15m of Cat5E. I suspect there is just too much of a voltage drop at 5v for this to work reliably - powered USB-over-ethernet or a powered USB hub at the distal end might help.
In the end, I installed ZwaveJS on a raspberry PI in a central location, and connected via the z-wave integration over websocket. Working perfectly so far - much more stable. I followed this guide, but instead of MQTT, used websocket:
Correct - I think the guide was for an older version of ZWaveJS2MQTT - still useful though. Just miss out the MQTT setup, and go to the “Home assistant” section. Turn on websocket. Then install the ZwaveJS integration in HA, decline to install the local add-on and enter the IP address of your ZwaveJS instance.
Much more reliable than cable extensions etc. and I presume you can connect multiple gateways, although I haven’t tried it.
I have a similar question as the OP.
I have a main house and a mother in law house on the same property.
Previously I was using smartthings hub in the smaller house to control the doors locks (schlage). But smartthings is dumping the groovy code stack, so I’de rather just ditch ST altogether.
The distance between the houses is about 250’, so zwave will not reach between then. The physical network is ethernet (switch to switch). So wondering if/how I could put a small RPi with zwave stick over there as a secondary zwave device/repeater/server ?
upon further review, I was able to completely wipe out my ST setup then factory reset and re-initialize my ST Hub. I was previously using RBoy apps that are being phased out. Looks like my schlage lock has the basic functionality via Zwave from the ST Hub, so just going to use it for this for now…
Eventually I would like to go the route of a standalone RPi setup with a Zwave stick so I can include the lock in keymaster.
