I was always under the impression that since one of the touted advantages of the 700 series was long range, that it would just automatically be there. (Which is why I’ve been dismayed as to why my Inovelli fans + lights never directly connected, despite having 700 chips). I was using it with a Hubitat C-7, and now C-8, hub.
So am I correct now that neither Inovelli nor the C-7 ever implemented long range? (I know LR has not yet been implimented on the C-8). Or is there a setting in the C-7 for it that I just hadn’t turned on?
Since I still have the C-7, I know I can do what they call a hub mesh and control the Fan + Lights on the C-7. Do you know what I have to do to “turn on” Long Range? I’m assuming it is something in the device settings in Hubitat.
Well, I’m glad to hear I didn’t miss it, but it certainly seems strange that they never implemented it. I know they are still working through some issues with the C-8, but it seems like they are getting a good handle on that now. I just hope they implement it soon. If/when they do, is there anything Invoelli would have to do with the Fan + Light? If so, I’d have little hope of that as they’ve stopped making those.
It just seems so strange and frustrating to me that they both made a big deal out of having the 700 series chips but then seem to have done nothing to implement this major feature that distinguished the 700 from the 500 series. Oh well.
As I understand it, there were essentially no LR devices due to the pandemic impacts to the supply chain, so there would not have much of any value in implementing It. They plan to implement it first on the C-8 and then on the C-7.
I don’t know how many devices had 700 chips, but I know that the Fan + Light had it before the pandemic, and Hubitat made a (justifiably) big deal out of the fact that they were the first certified 700 series hub. So what’s the point of being them being the first one on the block to have the ability to implement the new 700 improvements, but then not implement them? I know about the issues with the C-8 (and I just got a Hue motion sensor today that worked perfectly with the C-7 and ported perfectly to the C-8) but the new one, while it paired seamlessly, simply isn’t reporting anything once it is paired.
Z-Wave Long Range seems like a very limited solution to what is a niche problem. Long Range devices are all limited to direct device-to-Hub communication with no hops and without any ability to participate in the mesh and they don’t act as repeaters for other devices. Thus, if you could have jointed the device to your z-wave mesh as a “normal” device, but you instead use
long range, you can weaken your mesh by removing repeaters. The only real applicability, IMO, is a niche one - if you have some “lone” devices that are far off by themselves such that they can’t be a part of the mesh then LR would help. Z-Wave LR would made more sense if the long range device could have acted as a mesh repeater allowing you to join a remove set of devices into the mesh, but it doesn’t.
Personally, I think that Matter, with its ability to use any TCP/IP carrier (thread, wifi, ethernet) and ability to combine multiple border routers into the thread fabric will be a solution that applies to many more situations.
I live in a 2,500 sq. ft. rectanglar condo that has 5 Inovelli fan + lights in them. I do have 1 caveat in that they are all in metal boxes and are 2 gang boxes with an Inovelli Red Dimmer as the 2nd device in each box. For some reason virtually all of them are connecting at 9.6 with multiple hops and there is a noticeable delay between the button push and the light coming on. (I’m using Hubitat and have params 1-4 as 0, 3, 0, 0, which turns on other lights virtually instantly). I was hoping to use Long Range to have them connect directly, without multiple hops, and hopefully, at 40 if not 100.
If you’re a Hubitat user, the C8 with external antennas may be your best solution. I switched from the C7 to the C8 and it greatly improved performance - I think that’s due to the better antennas.
The delay you’d be seeing would be the RF communication from the switch to the canopy module installed in the fan which is completely unrelated to the zwave connection. That is of course unless you’re using them to control some other light through an automation instead.
The biggest lag difference I saw was when I first installed my Hubitat C-8 both my Fibaro Keyfob and the Fan + Light were connecting at 100 and the light came on virtually instantly. Within a couple of days they both fell back to 9.6 and the lag increase was very noticeable. So it isn’t the switch to canopy lag.
We’re still talking the lag between the button push and the light coming on correct?
When you push the button on the LZW36, it sends an RF command from the switch directly to the canopy module. This has nothing to do with Zwave at all. There is 0 hub interaction required to turn that light on. You can confirm this by excluding the device from your network so it’s not connected to a hub at all and if you press the button on the switch, the light will still turn on and off.
Your Zwave connection only comes into play when you remotely turn the switch on/off, when you manually press it and you want a dashboard entity to update, or use the button as a trigger for an automation. But none of that will affect the speed of the actual light itself turning on since that is done with RF.
I installed the C-8 in early-mid April and my connections were “better” only 1 day since them. (By better I mean more devices were connecting faster than slower). They had me switch the antennas, but that didn’t help. I then bought a bigger antenna, on that is rectangular shaped and tried it with the flat side parallel to my house, and when that didn’t help, turned it 90 degrees, and that still hasn’t helped.
I created some macros in Excel and copy, paste, and massage the Z-Wave table every day, typically in the morning, to, hopefully, remove that as a variable. As I mentioned above, except for 1 day (when I was 1 net device faster than slower) every single day since installing the C-8 I’ve had more devices connecting slower then before then are now connecting faster then they were on the C-7.
I had 49 devices and on the last C-7 day, in 100, 40, 9.6 order I had:
100 = 39
40 = 4
9.6 = 7
Today, 19 days after they suggested I do the 90 degree pivot so the flat side of the antennas were perpendicular to the main home angle I’m at.
100 = 38
40 = 4
9.6 = 7
With 5 faster, 6, slower and 38 unchanged. This is one of my best days. I am ofter much worse than that. Below is the screenshot I made of graphs of the speeds and faster/slower/same. The first data point is where the C-7 was. As you’ll see, especially from the bottom graphs, except for that one day I’ve always had more devices being slower on the C-8 then were faster with it. (In the bottom 2 charts the orange is slower and the blue is faster). So, at least from my experience, the C-8 has been a big bust and waste of money as I’m getting inferior performance.
OK, then this is related to your zwave connection and the connection speed would come into play.
Part of this could also be related to the hub itself. When I used Hubitat, I often had noticeable delays in executing even the simplest of automations. I then used an old NUC to run Home Assistant with Node Red and the Hubitat custom component to allow them to control all the devices on my Hubitat. By offloading the automations from the hub onto another machine, everything worked so much better and faster. Logically it shouldn’t have because you are sending more data back and forth, but it was very very noticeable. Many others have seen the same (check that huge node red thread on their boards). My only conclusion is that the hubs are underpowered.
If you’ve got some extra hardware kicking around, it could be something worth exploring.
I have a very old Windows desktop computer (though I don’t even know if it works), but even if it didn’t, I think I could now run it off my iMac that is up 24/7 (except, of course, when it is doing an OS upgrade, but I assume that is true of any HA computer, including a Raspberry Pi).
But beyond that, I’ve watched bunches of Home Assistant and Node Red YouTube videos, and read web articles about them too, and even installed Node Red and they seem a bit beyond me. (I know Node Red is supposedly a simple drag and drop, but for all of Hubitat’s UI shortcomings I found it much easier to understand and set up automations with it than Node Red).
Plus, I’ve heard that you have to pay to get Alexa to control devices with Home Assistant (or maybe now there is some workaround, but it is very complex), and that is one of the things we like best about having a smart home. (i.e. a very high WAF score. :-))
I’ve also seen lots a YouTube videos where people rave about HA but say that it needs constant attention and tinkering. I want it to just work once I get it set up.
So, I don’t know if HA is really the solution for me.
But I get what you’re saying, if you’re used to triggers, conditions, and if-then logic then node-red looks a little foreign. But a few YouTube video tutorials and you’ll be building out flows with ease. It’s got a very low learning curve.
As for HA, if you’re only using it for your hubitat automations, you don’t really need to worry about alexa, or dashboards or anything like that. And if you do prefer the trigger, condition, if/then logic for your automations, their built-in automation GUI is so much more intuitive than Hubitat’s Rule Machine. And no YAML required anymore.
If any of those YouTube videos you’ve watched on it are more than a year old, you can safely ignore them. lol 2022 was a huge push to move just about everything to GUI. And it’s probably been well over a year since I’ve had any sort of breaking change. I don’t even think twice about doing updates anymore. I personally moved fully to HA, but I’ve still got my parents setup with the same HA/HE hybrid setup. And while I like to tinker on mine, for theirs I just log in every few months and press the update buttons. I haven’t had to change or adjust anything on theirs since initially setting it up quite a while back.
Either way, it may be worth testing out to rule out your hub processing power as part of the issue.
