I’m currently in the process of migrating from Futurehome to Homey Pro. One of the main reasons for this change is that Futurehome couldn’t handle my extensive network of 130+ Z-Wave devices and 10+ Zigbee devices. In the end I’m assuming I will end up with 150-ish Z-Wave devices and 30-ish Zigbee devices. From the research I made before switching I understand that Homey Pro 2023 should have no major problems hadling this.
I do wonder, however, if there are any parameter adjustments or other adaptations I should make to avoid problems and slowness?
My Z-Wave devices consist mostly of Fibaro Dimmer 2/Double Swich 2, Aeotec Multisensor 6, Heatit Z-TRM3 thermostats, Sensative Strips Guard, Qubino and Fibaro smartplugs and a smattering of other devices.
Are any of these known to cause trouble in large networks? (Futurehome support made some adjustments to both my Aeotec MS6s and the Heatit thermostats to try to alleviate my issues, but I don’t know exactly what they did.)
Any and all tips for large networks will be much appreciated.
Keep a close eye on [Developer Tools] https://tools.developer.homey.app/ for both Zigbee and Z-Wave. Sometimes devices can go offline over time and routing may change during setup and use. May be you can consider a hub/bridge in between your devices and Homey*. Your plan might overload your Homey, or go beyond its ˵real life˶ possibilities.
˵If you have a lot of Zigbee I would recommend buying a €20 Sonoff Zigbee dongle and running either ZHA or zigbee2mqtt, as you are currently limited to Homey’s rather stripped down Zigbee implementation.˶ (from Dutch Community: lots of Zigbee / Z-Wave devices
I have 50-60 devices which some offhand comments by Homey support indicate they think is a large network.
Things that helped me:
Get the wired connection. My homey pro is 2 feet from the router and drops continuously every day without the hardwire connection.
Aeotec z-wave hub range extenders made a night and day difference for me. My remote switches were 3 feet from the homey pro but failed constantly and dropped to timeouts of up to several minutes after a few repeat clicks. The range extenders made them work like they were hardwired switches.
Upgrade to 700 series chipsets that support secure connections. In another offhand comment from support I found out that unsecure devices have to be polled. With just a few of these devices the network becomes extremely noisy and delays ensue. Some of my devices even disappeared altogether.
I started adding a mix of zigbee and z-wave on the theory that they are managed by 2 different networks. More z-wave devices make a stronger network, but the other issues made the situation worse, so spreading load across 2 networks (z-wave / zigbee) seems to make things better.
Good luck!
(If anyone can call BS on the above, please do so. Any learning is good learning)
Thanks a lot! Interesting to hear how people manage their networks.
I connected the hub via wired connection from day one, and try to use more Zigbee devices when expanding further as I already have lots on Z-Wave. So we’re thinking the same on those points.
Will definitely take into consideration the other things you mention too!
The number of devices you have is not a problem for Homey early 23 at all.
I currently have 287 devices running on Homey, which are a colourful mix of Zwave, Zibee, Wi-Fi and Home Assistant devices. A total of 231 Advanced Flows control these devices.
Although Homey only has 20% RAM left, it runs with this load without any complaints.
