Im about to give up hope on getting my zigbee network to work reliably. Problem is partly caused by two buildings, house and warehouse having roughly 10 meter distance. Warehouse lights just lose connection time to time which leads in worst cases re-pairing them. Now im thinking of changing the warehouse to use z-wave. I already know that Zipato motion detector works flawlessly on warehouse wall. I need then 10 e27 bulb replaced.
What kind of experiences you have? What would be best/ most reliable choice?
Aeotec Bulb 6 is still unsupported?
Is Fibaro RGBW 2 reliable?
There are Z-Wave Bulbs (E27) from Aeotec, Zipato, Abus.
Nothing I would buy. Because my favourite is Zigbee, if we talking about ambient lighting (RGB(W))
Yeah same here. But that was not his question @Osorkon ! He wants Zwave. And he also wants to spend a lot of cash instead of making his excisting bulbs work.
As i said earlier, it seems impossible to have Zigbee network working reliably because of the distance of the two houses. I have had Homey now since February and before that another controller for 2 years. With both of them nearly every day there is something wrong with some device/network on the far ends of the network. Either device gets dropped from network or flow, when triggered by (flawlessy working) Zipato Z-wave motion detector, just does not turn all needed lights on. And then when trying from the app, light just turns on… sometimes.
The distance between warehouse and house is roughly 8 meters. On the house side, i have on the porch (behind the tree in picture) Philips bulb and Osram Smart plug. In Kitchen - the nearest room to warehouse - two zigbee plugs and Ikea Repeater. On warehouse side facing house: four Philips bulbs, two Osram plugs. There should be enough alternative routes between two houses. Homey is located in middle of the house.
In fact, some device always works on warehouse side, but equally some not. When looking from Zigbee network page in developer.athom.com - if one has patience to wait 30 minutes for it to show everything, the network is sometimes just plain stupid. For example, Warehouse outside lights might be using living room (farthest on the other end of house) Philips bulb as route. Yes, then turn them off from the switch or restart Homey and hope network gets better next time.
In total there are 50 devices on Zigbee network and 50 on Z-wave side. I dont think i can increase reliability with adding more devices.
So if you have good advice on how to handle this, i’m all ears.
Back to the original question - what i’m thinking is that Z-wave networks better reliability would solve this. But it does look that bulb selections is very poor. So it might be that Z-wave dimmer would be one good way to solve this.
Can Hue bridge be connected to network wirelessly? Otherwise i would have to place it in the house near router, then i`m again 8 meters away from warehouse and having separate zigbee mesh in addition to Homeys? But who knows, maybe it could work better.
Ok… i was thinking of buying 2 Zipato bulbs to prove reliability on warehouse side… then if those do work for say, a month, talk to electrician for installing dimmers. I wonder is there difference in Zipato dimmer vs Bulb transmitter reach?
I dont have experience with Zipato, but Fibaro modules work without issues for several years already for me. If you have distance problem, you can go with wifi solution as well. With simple wifi extender and Shelly modules you get working solution that can be controlled directly or over the Homey.
