Homey Pro Zwave Stability Issues

Hi,

Im new to Homey, moved from Hubitat, and Im having huge issues with my Zwave network stability.

I have 3 devices, two brand new Aeotec Smart Switch 6 and a single Fibaro Smart Implant. One Smart Switch is in the same room as Homey 6 Meters away. The other two devices are in an adjoining room and they are approximately 7 and 9 Meters away from Homey, plaster and weatherboard wall between the rooms.

Devices will work, then fail with TRANSMIT_COMPLETE_NO_ACK randomly.

I have tried

  1. Healing the devices in the Developer tools
  2. Factory resetting Homeys and starting from scratch, same issues.
  3. Tried “REST Z-WAVE NETRWORK”, same results, unstable Zware network.
  4. I have tried added devices very close (1M) from Homey and then putting them in there final location.
  5. I have tried adding devices in there final location, doesnot work unless the devices is in the same room as Homey

I really don’t want to give up on Homey because there is a huge amount to love about Homey but a lot of my devices are Zwave.

It is massively frustrating because this stuff should just work, and I never had an issue with Zwave on Hubitat, it works flawlessly worked every time.

Please help

The advice for adding ‘very close’ to Homey means, within 10 cm distance.
Further you can try to place an extra router-device at a shorter distance (less than 3 meters) from Homey.

Next to Jan’s good advice (6 meters is most probably too far away for Homey’s zwave signal),
this word alerted me:

I’ve read several posts about these things ruining your mesh, because they’re very ‘chatty’.
Try to increase the intervals, avoid "every 1 second’ check-intervals and such;
Here’s an excellent explanation and howto:

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Thanks for your response on this. If the best Homey can do for Zwave coverage is 3 meters then clearly this product has an issue. The specs advertised talk about is 40 Meters. Are you really saying that I need a repeater 3 meters from Homey. Its a very expensive product and surely I should able to support an average Zwave network without too much re-engineering.
Thanks Again !

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Thanks Peter. Really worries me that an expensive product like Homey cannot preform any where new as well as a much cheaper product like Hubitat.

I was suspecting the chatty-ness of the plugs could be overloading the network. I will give your suggestions a try. Thanks for you help !

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Yup, the everlasting story of marketing vs reality…
If I were a salesman I’d never sell anything :sweat_smile:.

All you need is to place the nearest router device a few meters closer to Homey. That router device most probably has a (much) bigger range than Homey.
This should solve the possible range issue.

Also note the antennas are located at the bottom of Homey. Try putting it on its side for a while, to see if it improves the zwave range.

Hi,
My system is only a couple of months old when I replaced my old Tellstick with Homey Pro.
I now have 33 Z-wave and 13 Zigbee devices + 4 Sonos, 4 A/C and a TV connected without problems.

The most challenging are a couple of sensors communicating directly with the Homey about 8 meters through 3 25 cm concrete walls. It works both ways if I want to change parameters from the Homey.

I have had a lot of Telldus plugs acquired over the last 7 years. Most of them have died by now. I have found that in the last weeks of their life they tend to block Z-wave - random to start with and then more frequent until they won’t work anymore. Once removed it all works again. This is not conclusive, but something I wanted to share if there could be other “bad” devices causing stability issues.

Thanks Peter, I will give that a try. Thanks for your help !

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At this moment my network contains about 50 devices, z-wave, wifi , 433mHz and zigbee.
The furthest is more than 30 meters away from the HP23, including 2 walls.
To create a stable mesh network I put some z-wave devices ( continuous powered ) at certain points which work as a router chain. Or better said, in a star shaped setup.
The first device is indeed close to the homey.
Maybe worth mentioning, half my setup consist of Fibaro devices as they are, in my humble opinion, realiable. I have them since 2015 with only one defect.

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Thanks for your help.

I managed to fix my issue. I had a rogue Zwave device that was upsetting my Zwave network. Once I turned it off, everything worked beautifully.

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Ah, great you’ve found the culprit.

Thanks Peter, pretty happy about it. Now I can really start playing the powers of Homey

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How did you find which device was that? I have severe issues with Homey’s z-wave stack. Sometimes my network became unoperational for 30-40 minutes. I’m struggling with shelly z-wave relays - I simply can’t add them to my network. I have a support ticket opened with A since 25.08 and there is no progress there. I have around 20 Z-Wave heltun switches in my house so the coverage should be good, it should work as a mesh, right?

Zwave details can be found here:
https://tools.developer.homey.app/tools/zwave

Maybe you can find device(s) with (very) deviating values in tx queued / tx errors