Z-wave network slowdowns & preventing network congestion

Other Products General Discussion
#1

I’m maybe 90% done adding Z-wave devices to my network: I have around 60 nodes, comprised of a few motion sensors, door locks, appliance modules, but the brunt of the network is made of up of Inovelli switches and dimmers.

The network is generally responsive… lights that are triggered by the motion sensors come on pretty quickly. The trouble comes when I want a whole bunch of nodes to respond simultaneously: e.g., at night, when I want to shut off all of the lights in the house. It often takes 20 seconds or more to get all of the lights to shut off.

I plan to add some more motion sensors and possibly thermostats (unless I end up with a home-grown, non-Z-wave-based solution for those). I’m using Home Assistant and Node-RED for automation, but I don’t believe those are playing much of a part in the slowdowns I’m seeing. Most devices were included as S0 non-secure, except for the door locks and IIRC some motion sensors.

I’m wondering if there are steps I can take to prevent Z-wave network delays. I have several Red Series dimmers that report power usage. All of the related parameters are set to defaults:

  • [58-112-0-18] Active Power Reports - 10% (not sure what this does)
  • [58-112-0-19] Periodic Power & Energy Reports - 3600 seconds
  • [58-112-0-20] Energy Reports - 10% (not sure what this does)

I’m not currently interested in power reporting. Can I change these, or any other parameters, to reduce network traffic? What other changes can I try to speed things up?

#2

S0 is a secure pairing. AFAIK S2 improved on all the traffic S0 created.

Other than this, S2 devices also have better battery life, greater reliability, and less latency than S0 devices, due to the usage of a single frame command process rather than the former three-step process for security.

#3

Hmmm… I probably have that incorrect, then. I used standard inclusion in ZwaveJStoMQTT:

Non-secure

I have… two? battery-powered devices, and only a few of the devices in my network (including the battery-powered devices) are legacy, non-Z-wave-Plus devices.

#4

Have you done a Zwave repair/heal lately? It should be done each time a Zwave device is added. I’d also check for dead nodes.

#5

Thanks. Yes, I’ve healed the network. I cleared dead nodes quite awhile ago, and none have come back.

Recently I’ve broken up some of my groups so that my network isn’t flooded with commands. It’s helped a lot, but I’m still looking for ideas to optimize.