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How to extend the range of Zipabox

Clive Hammond shared this question 7 years ago
Need Answer

I have one Zipabox but some of the devices are 20+ metres away from this controller and, although there are several other powered Z-Wave devices in between, the distant devices are sometimes very slow to respond.


Is it possible to use a repeater or another Zipabox in a cluster to improve the range and responsiveness?


Thanks in advance


Clive

Replies (5)

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Clive,


Have you performed a network heal on your network and all routing nodes perform the update succesfully?


I'm aware of this repeater, not sure if it is fully supported by Zipato, you could probably ask them directly on zipato support;


http://aeotec.com/z-wave-repeater

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Hi Alberto


Many thanks for your help. I have tried the Network Heal many times since you suggested it and it never seems to actually complete (as shown in the attached screenshot). It sometimes does nothing before "hanging", other times it does a lot more but never processes every device. Am I doing something wrong?


I have looked at the Z-Wave Repeater you suggested. Apparently there is a Gen5 version available soon so I might wait for that. Do you know if a repeater such as this works better than an ordinary powered Z-Wave device which is also supposed to act as a repeater?


Many thanks


Clive

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Clive,


Just answered to your other topic;


Clive,

I have noticed that sometimes indeed the network heal is slower than others, usually when I have tried to do it several times. What I have done and worked for me was to synchronize the controller, reboot and then try again. Also one or two times I have had the process hanging up in the same spot where your picture, where a routing node started the update and you can see the assign network route complete message. I gave it a few minutes and it kept going.

Now, remember battery powered devices need to be manually awaken, process that varies depending the manufacturer but usually is three clicks on their "join network" button. These devices wake up on very long time intervals to save up battery, usually once or twice a day, so when you get to this point get ready to manually wake devices up.

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Regarding the repeater I cannot give you real feedback since I don't use them. I have found that other routing nodes like my Zipato RGBW bulbs, Yale Door Locks and Qubino Relays are good enough on keeping my network stable. I would assume a repeater would be better for that purpose only but cannot say for sure.

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Regarding the cluster first question. First I thought it would help also to solve range problems, I guess it depends the point of view and usage.


In a cluster z-wave devices can be connected to different physical controllers and these are connected through the web to each other so they look as one device. So you could say it will improve the range since you can connect each controller to their closest device and then talk to each other through internet, the problem would be when you loose internet or one of the devices, then the devices connected to it won't be online for the other, if they are part of a security system this would trigger your alarm, which I see as a big problem.


There is supposed to be another option, which is using the network learn function to have two controllers in the same z-wave network. At least in concept this sounds like the way to go, if both are online they would help each other to mantain network stability (one would be a repeater), if internet is down they would still be fully functional and if one of them dies the other would jump in and control the devices. As I said this is only assumptions as there is no documentation or examples or how to do this, nevertheless the option is active an available on zipato interface. We are still awaiting on Zipato to clarify and document this option.

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