I have a concrete block wall detached garage and, depending on the atmospheric conditions, I sometimes have a tough time getting Z-Wave signal from my house out there to run the very few devices I have in there.
I purchased a Aeotec Range Extender 7 and mounted it above the walls in the roof area of the garage that is constructed from wood. It worked pretty well but sometimes the lock has issues or a dimmer I have enclosed in a metal conduit box. I get it, I do not have the best environment for this.
I would like to pick up two more of them as I have weatherproof boxes in my yard between the two buildings thinking that this would give me more options as far as the mesh being solid but the only problem with these is that they are plug in 120VAC. I kind of would hate to burn up an outlet for something this small when I have USB power outlets on the power strips (TP-Link/KASA HS300s) that would provide constant power and I would not have to burn up one of my controlled outlets on the strip.
Does anyone know of a Z-Wave extender that runs the higher security needed for a lock that runs off of USB power that you have had luck with? All it has to do is repeat. It does not have to control anything. It would not be exposed to rain but temperature swings from about -10F in the winter to +110F in the summer.
Any mains-powered device can act as a repeater. The security level of the repeater is irrelevant, it will relay all messages if it’s part of a route.
I used a well know chinese store and searched for “eWeLink ZigBee 3.0 USB Signal Amplifier Extender Signal Repeater for Tuya Home Assistant SmartThings ZigBee2MQTT Tasmota” there little usb plug in extenders. you can put them in the wooden boxes and extend the range point to point until garage.
Freshcoast was only pointing out. the lock uses the same security as all the other devices connected on the network.
The ones posted will NOT work. The repeater will pass the same message with out alteration to the lock from the hub. The reppeater will copy the key when it pairs to your network for the first time and will be the same security as the lock and the hub. As in it will adopt the same protocol as the lock. Edited due to me being a dumb ass.
A repeater device does not need any specific security level to repeat secure messages. Your lock at Security S0 or Security S2 Access Control will work fine if an insecure device is acting as a repeater.
Sorry I don’t have any specific recommendation of a device, but I thought it might help broaden your search criteria if you want to consider insecure devices. Either way, any 700 or 800 series device will support security.
I think you might be stuck with a 120V device on this and maybe an outlet extender to give you more room on that outlet. I looked around a bit and don’t see anything that is powered by USB that allows you to repeat your Z-Wave signal, which kind of makes sense because the ~5V might just not be enough to keep a radio responsive with all that activity.
How’s the wifi in the garage (guessing also bad)?
If it’s possible to have more than 1 zwave network with zwavejs (this I do not know), you could use this setup: Make a Z-wave to WiFi bridge with esphome stream server and Zooz ZAC93 GPIO
and have the garage be its own zwave network and backhaul over wifi. Looks like this project can be usb-powered.
I have a couple Cat-5Es run through a conduit underground (with an old RG-59). I have an access point in the garage running off of the PoE from my network switch and it is up in the peak of the attic. LOTs of great WiFi Signal.
For that matter, if you really had to, you could set up a second HA instance and use a few methods on these forums to “mesh” them (I use that lightly, it’s not really a mesh but sort of like one) or even just MQTT or API call your sync between them. If you have strong wifi then this might really be a better solution in the long run.
ZOOZ ZSE11 Q SENSOR – ZOOZ (getzooz.com)
older product, and some might argue not particularly a good one when it comes to sensors, but the product page literally said this:
There might be other sensors being designed the same way. Good luck.
Ok… happened to see a few relevant threads this weekend. POE powered Zwave controllers. You should be able to just make a separate mesh for this structure.
I think you’d want the znet option running its own zwave JS instance on the unit itself, then add a 2nd zwave integration for the garage mesh in HA.
Not USB, but I use z-wave 120v outlets on the outside of a block wall house to extend the signal to a garage. One controls a transformer for landscape lights, and the other normally has nothing plugged in and acts only as a repeater. I’ve not had any temperature related issues with these. You could replace the dumb 120v outlets in your weatherproof boxes with these. Only one of the 2 outlets is switched with z-wave.
