Thank you. I was able to connect my Zooz 800 series water sensor to my Zooz 800 series Z-stick following the steps you outlined.
Does anyone know if using Long Range will lead to a longer battery life vs routing a door sensor to a repeater a couple of feet away from it?
According to the documentation long range is supposed to have better battery life because the devices can adjust the power output at each transmission. My 500 series door sensors are at 95% battery after 16 months of usage. In my opinion thatās really good.
How has this been working for you?
Anyone else have experience with LR? Iāve got a chicken coop 160ā away and through a wall or two and wondering if it might be in range. I havenāt been able to find much for real world reports of range.
Iāve been testing with a ZEN37 and a ZEN53. The ZEN37 lets me tests the range of battery powered devices to the controller and the ZEN53 lets me tests the range of my controller to an end device. I think I am getting between 300 to 1300ft. Controller placement does matter when sending and receiving. I have both the 700 and 800 series controller to test with.
I canāt get over 75 feet. Really disappointed.
Dang, thatās way low. What is the environment like? ie. controller and node placement as well as obstructions between them?
@cornellrwilliams Thatās more what Iād hope to see. Whatās your environment like?
any way to pin this as a solution? or put USA (Long Range) right below USA in the dropdown?
My controller is close to a window, itās in the attic so itās high up, and the building materials are not brick so it doesnāt lose much signal. My first obstacle is at 300ft. There are obstacles in the way. Where the controller is going to give you better range. If you can see your house from the coop it should work.
There is a guy named Dr Z-Wave. And he posted this picture getting similar distances. https://drzwave.blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/image-1.png
Thanks. Iāll see what I can come up with. Might have to look into a longer extension cable and a capped PVC pipe so I can put it up high and outside.
Iām attempting to add one of my zen76 switches via LR and in smart start info not see a button if any kind in the protocol column. Iām using the Zooz ZST39 and a 800series Zen76 switch. Iāve generated the keys for z wave LR and switches the region to say USA long range. I excluded the switch. Then scanned the switch qr code within smartstart and it just added it back in normal z wave mode. What am I missing that I do not see the long range button in the screens above?
You need to go to the Smart Start Page and scan the QR code from there.
Turns out my memory is bad and just forgot which switches were 800 series. once I identified the correct switch it worked as described above. thanks, shame this doesnāt work on 700 series chipset since that was also touted as being LR capable.
If devices included as Long Range do not act as a repeater for your non-LR mesh then I donāt see any added value to switch to LR as long as your network still has 500 range devices. It would avoid a few hops (delay) for the LR devices but it decreases mesh reliability. Certainly if you have a 500 range keyfob with which you move throughout your house, it will have difficulty finding a repeater.
The only interesting scenario imho is for devices that are too far away to reach your mesh, are battery operated (less battery usage + does not act as a repeater anyway) or if ALL your devices use LR.
So if you have a Zooz 800 range extender (ZAC38) and you pair it as LR, it wonāt act as a repeater at all? Is this an inherent limitation or something that ZwaveJS just doesnāt support yet?
This is not a limitation of Z-Wave JS. This is just how the protocol was designed. Long Range devices cannot use repeaters or be used as repeaters.
When going from the 700 series chip to the 800 series you do get a range increase even in mesh mode. This is why the ZAC38 has an 800 series chip in it.
Interesting. Thanks for the explanation!
Did you ever figure this out? Iām following @cornellrwilliams instructions and my zooz ZSE44 800LR is still not getting included automatically.
Nope, never worked
I just got it to work! My RF Region was set to āUSAā. But if you scroll down passed what you can see, you will find āUSA (Long Range)ā. (Not sure why there are 2 values for the US. Maybe itās a clunky way to disable LR ?).
After switching to USA (Long Range), my controller showed a new purple icon in the Protocol Column of the Control Panel.
My new device now correctly reports using LR.
So, I guess the next question is, how do you remove the Long Range device from Zwave JS? I tried just switching off the Active toggle. Didnāt seem to do anything.
