Z-Wave [Last Working Route]

Can anyone explain how the routing “should” work?

Basically I am still really new and trying to understand how this works. I understand they are capable of jumping a command from one node to the next. So today I decided to look around on the developer page and stumbled upon the Z-Wave route.

The reason I ask this is, why in the hell are they sometimes taking such incredibly wonky routes? I have a smart plug about 5 meters away from the Homey itself. For some reason the working route is jumping to a Fibaro Dimmer 2 first, a floor higher before it jumps to the Homey. The Dimmer 2 is quite a bit further away from the Homey.

What I understood, that zwave device will use last working route as the first option and if that fails, it try another option = build up the new route. Yes sometimes it seems to be not the best route from human eye perspective :slight_smile: Routing can be influenced by more factors from my observation:

  1. quality of reception - Homey has not the best antenna and that is why some devices rather hop on other first (with better reception). This can be improved by antenna mod.
  2. Device itself - I noticed, that some zwave devices “prefer” routing more than the other. In my case, fibaro roller shutters are routing almost always over the other devices over time, even if they find the direct route at the beginning. And other devices sitting next to them, go directly to Homey.
  3. Battery devices that are being relocated often (e.g. remote controls like Fibaro Keyfob), have the most complex routing in my case.
    There is no reason to investigate in this until you experience issues. E.g. Fibaro controllers dont offer the option how to view the routing for users at all. But if you want to rebuild the mesh for some reason then try following:
  • restart/ptp Homey - it should rebuild the mesh
  • in developer page, use the healing option for selected device, however it wont heal immediately. To make sure that it will build the new way, try to disconnect from power the next device it is hopping to and send on/off command to the healing device. It will find the new route immediately. Then you need to refresh the page to see new routing.
  • do the antenna mod :slight_smile: It will definitely improve direct connections to Homey.