Way to extend Zigbee or Z-Wave to outer building (a barn/tool shop 120 feet away)

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Hi. I am installing HA from scratch. I have a Raspberry Pi 4 and I have zigbee and zwave dongles.

The challenge is that I have a barn/shop about 120 feet from my home and I can not get zigbee or zwave to reach there. How can I make the signal hop from my home to my barn/shop?

I have tried putting the Pi in various places of my home, even outside of the closest corner to the shop and a device on the closest corner of the shop, and it will not reach.

Is there some kind of “long range bridge” or high powered booster? Or a way to convert the signal to wifi/IP, send it, then convert back to zigbee/zwave at the barn?

Thanks in advance.

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Never done it myself, but there is a digiblur video on long-range zigbee from last year.

From past threads the more common method, if you have LAN access in the out building, seems to be to set up a second Z2MQTT coordinator.

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There is a chat about it being possible. I haven’t done it myself.

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The easiest method is to run fiber or Ethernet to the remote location. Once you do this you can access your Z-Wave network over IP using the Z-Wave JS UI Websocket. The best part is you can connect multiple Z-Wave JS Integrations to a single home assistant instance. This will allow you to control multiple networks in multiple locations.

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Hi. This sound like what I am hoping I can do. I do have my LAN run to the remote building. In that building there is a POE switch and WiFi (all the same LAN as the main building).

Can you please expand on how I can do this?

Here is where I am so far. I have the Pi4 running HA in the main building. It has a Zooz 800 Series Long Range USB Controller (Part ZST39 LR).

I actually already bought a second Zooz 800 Series Long Range USB Controller so I have that. I am stuck with how to connect it at the remote building?

I am new to HA but I believe I understand what you mean about adding a second instance to HA. However, how can it access the LAN to communicate from the remote building?

Thank you!!

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This is very easy to do.

  1. Install Z-WaveJSUI on the remote machine. I personally use the standalone windows version here because of how easy it is to manage. To install it you just download the exe file and double click on it to run the program. I run this on windows.

  2. In the Z-WaveJSUI settings page enable the Websocket Server option and specify the port.

  3. Back in home assistant you setup a new Z-Wave JS Integration just like you normally would. Then type in the IP and Port. Once you connect it you should see (2) Z-WaveJS Integrations.

I can make a video explaining everything if you need more details.

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You can also use ser2net to run the USB dongle over Ethernet (using a Raspberry Pi or other Linux Single Board Computer) if you don’t want to set up an entire Z-Wave JS stack on another machine: Remote Serial Port - Z-Wave JS

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I am so excited that I am trying to do this right now! Hoping I can get it to work. I am a little unsure about part of this. If you have time to do a quick video I would be enormously appreciative!

Also, just so I get off on the right foot with the Z-Wave setup at the MAIN BUILDING. Again, I am new to HA so learning, however I am reading a lot of contradicting info on what app/add-on(s) to use. I am currently using what appears to be the default HA Integrations simply called “Z-Wave” and what appears to be the HA default add in called “Z-Wave JS”. I see suggestions for MQTT and other things saying they are much better than the defaults. What do you use?

Thanks again!

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Sorry if I’m stating the obvious, but you did say you were new to HA.

I don’t know if you’ve tried it yet, but most mains-powered devices also act as routers in the mesh that Zigbee and Z-Wave create. 120’ with a direct line of sight might work, if you put a smart plug or some such at the closest points in the house and the barn. I’ve also heard that dedicated Zigbee routers/repeaters can have even more range than, say, a smart plug which also does routing. I haven’t needed that yet, but something to consider if you’re pushing the limits.

Maybe you’ve already tried that, but if it works it would be a lot simpler than adding (and maintaining!) additional add-ons, features or hardware.

Oh, and of course you can buy WiFi devices which do everything Zigbee and Z-Wave can do, generally a lot cheaper. So if your barn is already lit up with WiFi this may be sufficient. Only warning with that is to research the brand you buy to see how well they tolerate local control. Some insist on connecting only back to the “mother ship” vendor’s cloud.

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I was also going to suggest skipping Zigbee for the remote location and go wifi.

However, there’s one more caveat there as well, besides the cloud need (which isn’t a problem for me, but for many it is, also when your connection is more unstable): depending where the OP lives, they might be restricted on the devices they can buy; here in Brazil I’m mostly stuck with AliExpress, for instance.
Not to mention battery life, which tends to be smaller for wifi-based devices, as far as people usually tell.

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Extending zwave will likely be a mess and when i tried same 100’+ connection the poor communication caused my zwave network to randomly crash. A Raspi with remote zwave network is best.

Standard Wifi by itself will be unreliable. I tried this. It may work great some days and spotty others then down the next. Maintenance nightmare. Wired ethernet or wifi bridge with ACTUAL bridge APs, like uniquiti nanostation, is best.

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If you mean extending Z-Wave over WiFi, I’d tend to agree that it would be good to avoid that level of complexity if possible.

I just don’t want anyone reading this thinking that all WiFi devices, like smart plugs or switches, are unreliable. Of course they can be, depending on how robust the network is at the location where they’re installed.

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Wow this looks like an awesome idea too! I will order another Pi and test this out as well. Thanks!

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Thank you very much for the suggestion. I tried both zigbee and zwave with no luck. I even bought two of the new zwave 800 usb sticks and also two of the 800 switches. The 800 series chip is supposed to reach “1 Mile”. Needless to say I think they exaggerated this drastically. Still no luck :frowning:

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Regarding the “1 mile” range for Z-Wave 800, whether it is exaggerated or not, it refers to the Z-Wave Long Range feature. Z-Wave Long Range is a star network, as opposed to a “mesh” network, where devices connect directly to the controller. It requires both Long Range compatible devices and supporting software. Z-Wave JS doesn’t support it yet, if that’s what you tried to use.

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I meant connecting a wifi device located outdoor or in adjacent building to wifi AP located indoor or outdoor separated by 100’ +. This works but can be spotty compared to wired connection or wifi bridge which are virtually flawless in same conditions. My opinion and results. It can be made to work

Zwave extending over 100’ is spotty also and just more reliable to use raspi at a certain point

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Hi! I just received all new devices. They all have the 800 series Long Range chips. I’m getting about 50 feet out of them so I do feel like something is wrong. I am in fact using Z-Wave JS so that may be why! Thanks so the heads up! Is there any way to use these with HA, or at least some way to set them up enough to use LR so I can at least test their range? Thanks!

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For outdoor Z-Wave routers I found Zooz ZEN05 and ZEN14 devices to work quite well. Might be another option.

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Here’s the video explaining how you can connect multiple Z-Wave networks to a single home assistant instance. The only thing I covered was the software side of things.

You should be able to find videos on how to lay cable.

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Holy cow thanks so much for this! I would NEVER have figured that out on my own. I can’t wait to test it and will report back!