Curious about Z-Wave Long Range experiences

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Have you been using Z-Wave Long Range devices with Alarm.com? If so, please share your experience.

  • Which Z-Wave LR devices are you using?
  • Which control panel do you use them with?
  • Have you experimented with how far they reach?
  • Have they been more reliable than traditional Z-Wave devices?
  • Have you had any issues with them?

Thanks!

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in full transparency - I have two Z-Wave hubs here. I have the IQ5 panel, and also a Hubitat C8 Pro.

I have my 3 locks along with a new ecolink garage door opener (LR) on the IQ5 and about 50 Zwave devices (light / dimmer switches, outlets, some zen34 buttons, zse41 sensors, zse41 that I use to lockout my garage door, and some zse41 and 43 sensors).

the hubitat provides some amazing automation capabilities as well as z-wave troubleshooting tools - which is why I keep the majority of my devices on hubitat.

I has zero issues pairing my locks or the garage opener to the iq5. the zwave network on the iq5 has been very stable.

I don’t know that I could compare the stability of the LR versus the non-LR devices. but based on my experience I wouldn’t hesitate to add LR devices to either the IQ5 or the Hubitat.

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I’ve experimented a little - and while not a huge amount of experience (specifically with LR on the IQ 4/ADC), I’ve found that multi-channel LR devices do not learn in as multi-channel, but rather as one unified channel. Specifically the ZEN16 and ZEN52. They also take a long time to interview.

Whereas a more simple device like a ZEN04 learns quickly and works normally - power monitoring included.

[I’m a bit of a direct association junkie, so therefore I tend to avoid LR. However, I do use LR quite a bit on the Home Assistant side for various installs with great success… but I know HA wasn’t the question :slight_smile: ]

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Thanks for the info!

I have a suspicion that most people aren’t enrolling their Z-Wave LR devices as long range. If you use the normal Z-Wave inclusion process it enrolls them as traditional Z-Wave. You have to use Smart Start on the IQ Panel to get Long Range.

It looks like your garage door controller is enrolled as traditional Z-Wave. If it’s working reliably then there’s no reason to change it. If you ever experience range issues with it then re-enrolling with Smart Start as LR would probably help.

We need to do a better job showing people how to enroll LR devices and documenting this stuff. Thanks again for the feedback!

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That’s interesting! I haven’t tried a multi-channel device as LR myself. I’ll pass that along to Alarm.com.

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Ah, interesting. I wasn’t aware of that.

I think up may have tried to register with smart start but had an issue.

And it’s working great, so I won’t make any changes unless it starts to misbehave.

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I talked to Alarm.com and, in general, multi-channel LR devices should still enroll as multi-channel. It’s possible those specific devices do bespoke things with their endpoints and the controller needs to be tweaked to support them. I’ll follow up when I learn more.

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Thanks Ryan,
In general I’ve been disappointed with multi-channel support. In addition to this LR issue, I see:

  • When commanding a multi-channel device from an automation that is triggered by a sensor, the whole automation is delayed - sometimes by minutes. (I recall there were other threads on this issue with multiple device types.). This makes some things rather unusable in that way.

But, oddly, if it is commanded by an automation rule with a different trigger - like arming/disarming the alarm, say - multi-channel devices work instantly with no delay!?

And, if the automation rule triggers a scene where a multi-channel device is part of the scene, the whole scene is delayed by those minutes - not just that one multi-channel device. Even if you are manually triggering that scene in the app or on the iq 4 panel. (Note that I have set this up where it actually worked quickly for a short period of time but reverted to this slow/delayed behavior a few hours/days later.)

What is super strange as well, is that the trigger itself (say a sensor being opened) is also delayed in showing up in the activity log in alarm.com! (But it is accurate and timely on the IQ 4 panel!?). This means that if you also had a notification configured for that same sensor being opened, even the notification from ADC is delayed despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the automation that is commanding a multi-channel device.

(In other words, the panel may show that a sensor was opened at 1:10pm; but in the activity log it shows as much later - maybe 1:18pm. And the notification and automation action fired at 1:18. Once I removed the multi-channel device from the automation action, those time stamps and actions are in alignment). I’ve had ‘side yard gate open’ notifications as much as 30 minutes (!) after the gate was actually opened! To solve this I replaced the ZEN16 with a Shelly Wave 1 and the delay went away. (I’m closing a contact when that gate is open going to another system.)

In my case the only multi-channel zwave devices I have are all Zooz. But all of them do this (and the LR joining issue) - including ZEN30, ZEN16, ZEN17, and ZEN52. I think another poster was using a non-zooz product with the same issues. If I can get my hands on other multi-channel devices I’m happy to test those too. For now I’ve ordered a Shelly Wave 2PM just to test it. I’ll report back… if I get time I could re-test what I have as well if you need.

Lastly - I’ve tested both of these issues on both my primary IQ4 panel as well as my test IQ4 panel so this seems to not be a localized zwave mesh or other issue.

  • If I ever have a ZWave device causing an error on my panel, it is always a multi-channel device. I usually just have to manually command it off/on from the iq panel to get it to come back to life. No other zwave devices do that, so I suspect it is their multi-channel nature, but maybe I’m just paranoid. :smiley:

Thanks again!