You have a Smart Home using Z-Wave as a wireless technology for all these Internet of Things (IoT) devices to communicate with each other. But maybe things are not working quite as well as you expect. You press a button on your phone and 1… 2… 3… and then finally a light comes on or maybe it doesn’t come on at all! Another common problem is when a battery powered sensor was updating the temperature last week and this week it just doesn’t seem to be sending updates anymore or at best sporadically. As a Z-Wave expert I’ve built and rebuilt hundreds of Z-Wave networks and have come up with a few habits to make Z-Wave networks more reliable.
Some steps to strengthen your z-wave mesh network is:
- Minimize polling.
- Have enough devices to create a mesh.
- Place the hub in a central location.
- Heal the network on a regular basis.
- If a device doesn’t pair, first exclude it, then include it.
- Low battery life.
- Remove dead nodes on your controller.
Following these guidelines will help your Z-Wave experience be more robust.