I have improved my zwave connectivity by doing the zwave mod on my homey, and connecting the external antenna SMA to a high gain zwave antenna (h-tronic HT250A). The improvement is not spectacular but noticable. Also I have 2 repeaters which I also modified to have an external antenna.
So, looking at further improvement, I read this article : Z-Wave Mesh Priority Routes Explained – DrZWave
The protocol offers the possibility to use Application Priority Routes, to be able to override the standard mesh protocol. Not to be advised to do that for all nodes, but it some cases the standard Last Working Route has more hops than needed. A have seen that in my homey where the controller communicates to a node nearby that it easily could reach directly, through 3 other nodes. I would like to experiment with this APR, but I cannot find it in homey, so I am afraid this is not implemented.
Any ideas ?
Thanks Theo
To begin.
I think you misspelled “I find it more hops then necessary”, as just because you think what is the best route, it might not be the best route.
As it isn’t the only route being taken by a device, it is the last, most fast, route that was taken, it can change with every message. (hence Z-Wave being a Mesh protocol, not just a single route protocol)
But to answer your initial question about Priority Routes.
As this is a Z-Wave 500 or higher only spec it was never implemented, there are too many devices that still use the older Z-Wave spec.
And don’t think Athom sees this is a high priority in any means.
I thus have a very big suspicion that this will never get implemented as it is (too) high risk of failure thanks to an user error, as 99% of the people don’t even know how the routing works in the first place.
