Z-Wave mesh with Zooz switches

Configuration Z-Wave
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Hi all, I’m taking my first dive into Z-Wave and am having a connectivity issue with one room.

I have HomeAssistant installed on a Raspberry Pi and added an Aeotec Z-Stick 7 Plus to the Pi. This lives upstairs in my home.

I’ve purchased 11 Zooz Zen76 switches and started on the end of the house (downstairs) nearest to the hub. I’ve added 3 of the switches in the garage almost directly below the Pi and they work great.

I then added 3 more switches in the laundry room and the also work great.

I then moved to my shop area. It is detached from the main home and has a brick wall like the home. I’ve tried adding the 7th switch here and cannot get it to be found in inclusion. It is 12 feet away from the laundry room switches with two brick walls in between.

Is it unreasonable to think that the mesh would make it this far?

Before I bought the switches, I had purchased a Kwikset ZWave lock (which is what started me on the “I need ZWave everywhere!” kick). I was unable to pair it at first and temporarily moved the Pi into the shop a few feet away ang got it added that way. It was able to be controlled when I moved the Pi back inside the house (something about “whisper” during pairing from what I read). While it was working, the Pi was actually downstairs. I wanted it upstairs with the rest of my network stuff and noticed that the lock stopped when I did so, but assumed that buying more zwaved devices would bring the network close enough that it would connect again.

I’ve read an old post that said ZWave + only behaves as “+” when there aren’t any non “+” devices in the mesh. Not sure if that is true or not, but since the lock wasn’t working anyway (and I don’t believe is +), I pulled the batteries out of it when I was trying to get the shop switch to be found. No luck. I’ve also tried to get the door lock to pair again (after excluding the original instance of it in HA) now that there are some switches nearby and it won’t be found either.

I started out in Z-Wave JS, but have also tried disabling it and trying Z-Wave JS UI to see if I could gain any additional insights via that flavor.

Any ideas to try? If it flat out can’t make it 12 feet in this current setup, what options do I have to get another hub set up in the shop? I have plenty of Ethernet connections over there that tie back into the main house. Kind of a waste of a Pi to use another one over there, but I guess I could if that and another USB hub are the only way. Any issues with two hubs in HA?

Many thanks for any suggestions!

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Brick wall and whatever else might be in there… I’ve had signals in certain areas that could only do 6’. I use 25-40’ for planning purposes between nodes.

Do you have any other nodes to install that mat also cover that destination?

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One thing you can try is to include the switch close to the hub and then move it to the desired location.
I put together a receptacle (plug + electric cord with line and neutral) specially for that purpose and it has done the job when I encountered the same issue.

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Detached and brick is signal killer. You can try an aeotech range extender in garage on closest wall to nearest node but this is hit ir miss. Check stats of the device to see if you have a lot of drops.

A poorly connected node can cause havoc in your network so be aware of this if issues occur

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6’… Interesting. No, nothing else planned, but if I did come up with something else to add, the doors on either end of the breezeway where I’ve added the switches would be shortest possible point between the shop and the house unfortunately.

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I had considered trying to move the Pi down into the shop temporarily like I had originally done to get the door lock talking… I wasn’t (and still am not) quite sure how the mesh adjusts to changing circumstances. Or how the device would behave if I paired it directly to the hub and then physically moved it further away where other devices would then wind up in between. I assume that it self heals? Or do you have to kick off a network rebuild?

Cool tip on the power cord trick… Going to have to try that, thanks!!

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Good tips, thank you. Bummer on the brick + air gap… may have to explore a remote hub inside the shop if HA can handle it.

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I have never moved my HA on Yellow Box to include a Zwave device, but in the past when I was using the Eisy hub of Universal Devices, before moving to HA, I have done that a few times and it did not cause an issue with the Zwave mesh network.
Another tip that works for me is that I have my Yellow Box connected to a secondary pod of my Google Wifi (mesh network). The reason is that my router is at a far end of my home (where the Comcast cable is) and by connecting the Yellow Box to a seconday pod, it is now right in the middle of my home, and this works great.

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Really its the brick. Brick, block and concrete can reduce range by a lot.

For such a short distance wifi switches may be a better option

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Good to hear because I’m just about to put that to the test and move the Pi. I had some luck with the tip above about pairing the device close to the hub and then moving the device… Thank you!

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asbril, great idea with the extension cord. By pure chance, I had a pigtail already set up and just sitting there waiting for a switch to be slapped on it.

I just took an unused switch, wired it up, joined it to the network here inside the main house and then moved it and the extension cord out to the shop, plugged it in and it kept right on switching. Must be a lower energy signal when pairing… ?? Kinda what I was seeing with the door lock too.

I already have that other shop switch wired up and don’t feel like messing with opening it back up so I’m going to drag the Pi over there (I need to get the door lock paired again anyway) and pair the currently installed switch. Hopefully it will survive the Pi being moved back to its final home.

Thank you and everyone for the insight and ideas! (Again, really cool idea with the extension cord!)

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You should always heal the device when you move it. If you get it to final location and it can’t connect. Bring it back half way ad heal again. Repeat until you reach final destination. If you can’t get there… More repeaters.

Oh. And heal DEVICE not the entire network. Heal network only when you absolutely have to itll flood your communication until it’s done.

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Thank you Nathan. That actually helped lift some fog for me. Didn’t really grasp the purpose of healing a device since I couldn’t connect to it to heal it in the first place.

I actually struggled a bit after my claim of success in the note above. I had gotten the “switch on an extension cord” paired and working in the shop area that I was fighting with. The lesser of my evils was to temporarily move the Pi into the shop rather than uninstall the switch and door lock that I was needing to pair.

So, I did that and got those two paired, high fived myself for a small victory, took the Pi back inside to its permanent home and was no longer able to see the shop switch and door lock that I had just paired. AND I lost one of the physically closest switches in the garage that had previously been working fine. #$%^@

I eventually found the heal network option and started that. Naively thought that would take a few seconds for 9 devices. The missing switch popped up relatively quickly, but the door lock that is 2 feet away from it never did. I tried all kinds of things thinking that the network heal was long since done. No luck. Finally went to bed. When I woke up the next morning the lock was magically online and both have been rock solid for a couple of days now.

I need to take a step back and go find a white paper on z-wave… I think I have a few too many assumptions in my head that I need to validate or throw out.

Anyway… All is well at the moment. Thank you everyone again for the help!

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