I had a 4-5 hour power outage about a month ago and my Z-wave network hasn’t been the same since. I cycled power to my main breaker and pulled the Aotec Z-wave stick from my Pi4, and rebuilding the network and it seemed to work for a little while but nodes are dropping like flies again. Short of blowing away a lot of devices and reassociating them are there any other obvious steps I am missing to recover my network?
My battery devices are stable except a Z-wave remote that can’t be found anymore (strange), and my mains-powered devices are 50/50. I’ve had an automation for a while that pings mains-powered nodes as they switch to ‘dead’ but even that can’t revive the connection to the devices, or keep up as they die. I can power cycle individual devices and the connection lasts about 10 seconds. Good thing I live alone and I’m the only one who has to deal with a half-functioning lighting system and a few other inconveniences.
This isn’t the first time my Z-wave network has fallen apart and I blindly poked around to get it working again the last time. This is getting old so I have to ask, what hardware or connection standard is both more reliable and faster than Z-wave? I have Aqara FP-2s for room presence and they report almost instantaneously but there are times when my Z-wave switches and lightbulbs take a solid 30 count to switch on.
From your experience what are the best standards these days, Zigbee, Bluetooth, or direct connected Wifi (Matter or Thread)? I’m willing to burn a little cash to get rid of this headache.
I currently have a Unifi network that can handle 100-200 wifi devices with three APs spread out over 1700 sqft. for full power 5ghz and 6ghz coverage and low power 2.4ghz coverage (to cut down on interference). I should be able to use something in the 2.4ghz range without too much congestion, my devices are also sequestered to their own VLAN to again cut down on congestion with the rest of my network. Even a Zigbee mesh sounds like it would add latency, that is why I am considering direct attached wifi devices as they should, in theory only need to get to the nearest AP and then ride the ethernet to my router and into my Pi4.
I have recently changed over all of my kit from a mix of WiFi and Philips Hue (Philips uses ZigBee, but a proprietary version of it) to just ZigBee (inc Philips interpretation of it) now. I found the WiFi-based stuff I had so unreliable in maintaining a good connection that it was becoming pointless to use it and the WAF was disappearing fast. I have a main router acting as a DHCP server and a couple of AP’s for steady connection throughout the three floors of the house and the garden, and even went to the extent of reserving IP addresses on the DHCP server for WiFi-based kit based upon the MAC address of the said kit - but it still was hit and miss at maintaining a decent connection.
I now have the ZHA implementation of ZigBee within Home Assistant, and I cannot fault it. I substituted my WiFi kit for Aqara battery-operated kit for door sensors, temperature sensors, push buttons etc which cost me a few quid and I cannot fault it. The battery life seems very reasonable too (approx 2 years+ on some kit using a CR2032 button cell from what I have read) and also Loratap for multi-button remote units, again, ZigBee based.
Quite a few people on here have said that ZigBee2MQTT is even more stable, but I haven’t looked at that yet, as I have no need at present - however, I may do so just to keep up to speed with everything.
All my WiFi-based Smart Home gear (with the exception of ESP32 devices I have built myself) is going on eBay in the next week or so and the Tuya (both cloud and local) app has been removed from my setup. There is a noticeable speed difference with the ZigBee kit compared to the WiFi kit, as the ZigBee is all local. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t “instant” and this is particularly noticeable with 15 downlighters in the kitchen ceiling, but I’m just happy they all come on within a second of the button being pressed, and all turn off when they should.
well start with a better controller… usb stick give under 5db try a z-station instead from z-wave.me. 2 shift to z-wave 800 devices like shelly, this is very stable even att large systems with 200 units.
I use mainly Z-Wave and local-only WiFi, with over 100 total devices, about half of each. In my experience they all perform practically flawlessly and instantaneously, with only the occasional hiccup.
Z-wave can definitely be disturbed by a power outage. Usually my mesh may have some added delay for a day or two until it settles back to optimal routes. If you’re still having problems after a month, there could be a bad device somewhere or just bad routes. Rule of thumb when rebuilding routes is to do one device at a time, always starting closest to the controller. Battery-powered devices won’t know about the rebuild command until the next time they wake up, so check their manual for manual wake-up methods.
The issue with WiFi isn’t congestion, since IoT devices use hardly any traffic, but finding devices with support for Tasmota, ESPhome, or other local-only operation. Props to Shelly, Athom, and Martin Jerry for embracing local-only WiFi; websites like blakadder and esphome offer tips for flashing (and replacing chips in) many cloud-based devices for local conversion. Matter devices are mostly local, but the protocol still has some early-adopter pains.