Z-Wave 3.0 speed and responsiveness?

[Poom 7]

I'm using HC3 gateway (running firmware 5.070) with gateway connection with another HC3 for a 3 storey-house with about 1,000 sq.m. space with total 400 z-wave devices (around 200 devices for each HC3).  What I experience with Fibaro system right now is very unpredictable slowness in most device action.  For example, I have a very simple motion light on scene which when I enter the bathroom, the motion detect and light swich should be turned on automaticly.  9 out of 10 times, it take longer than 7 seconds for lights to be turned on (left me in the dark in the room for so long which ruins the purpose of the scene).  Most of the time, when I simply use my app on the phone to turn on lights or other devices, it took over 30 seconds to work.  Many scenes take longer than 2 minutes to be executed.

 

Does this slowness happen to other users with large system?  What's wrong with my system?  Is there a way to fix this slowness problem?

 

Will Z-Wave 3.0 in the firmware 5.072 BETA fix this slowness problem?

 

 

[m.roszak 763]

This big (100+ zwave device) networks tends to slow down and this is related to protocol itself - to much traffic generates even more traffic as the bandwidth is limited - if a device reports something but during that time something else uses the network there are re-transmissions which can cause domino effect which cripples the network for several seconds. 

There is some good practices to lower network load - you will find a lot of information about it on this forum.

Regards,

Michał 

[Poom 7]

Is it possible to off-load the network by adding more gateway, for example, HC3 Lite as slave gateway, and separate some 40-50 devices to each HC3 Lite?   Would this help speed things up?  

Or adding devices to new slave gateways do not off load the network?

And would Z-Wave 3.0 solved this speed problem?

[m.roszak 763]

Getting a slave will definitely lower the network load, it will still use the same frequency but different HomeID (address of the network).
Z-Wave 3.0 should be a little faster but in this kind of networks it will probably suffer with similar effect.  

Just to let you know, gateway connection is not currently available for Z-Wave 3.0.
Additionally migration from 2.0 to 3.0 is in development so moving to Z-Wave 3.0 for now needs building the network from scratch.

Some examples of additional tweaks to network configuration for reducing the load:
- disable polling in devices if enabled
- set global polling setting to high value
- change parameters in devices to reduce unsolicited reports (thresholds, interval based reports)
- do not use Secure inclusion if not necessary (~3 times higher load on every device which uses Security S0

Regards,
Michał   

[Comfortica 17]

25 minutes ago, m.roszak said:

Getting a slave will definitely lower the network load, it will still use the same frequency but different HomeID (address of the network).
Z-Wave 3.0 should be a little faster but in this kind of networks it will probably suffer with similar effect.  

Just to let you know, gateway connection is not currently available for Z-Wave 3.0.
Additionally migration from 2.0 to 3.0 is in development so moving to Z-Wave 3.0 for now needs building the network from scratch.

Some examples of additional tweaks to network configuration for reducing the load:
- disable polling in devices if enabled
- set global polling setting to high value
- change parameters in devices to reduce unsolicited reports (thresholds, interval based reports)
- do not use Secure inclusion if not necessary (~3 times higher load on every device which uses Security S0

Regards,
Michał   

Hi Michal, has the bug been resolved that completely disabling power reporting on dimmers and wallplugs results in high z-wave network load?

[m.roszak 763]

A feature to completely disable reports is not available in those devices, only changing frequency.

If there will be another firmware revision - maybe. It is in the backlog

[Comfortica 17]

2 hours ago, m.roszak said:

A feature to completely disable reports is not available in those devices, only changing frequency.

If there will be another firmware revision - maybe. It is in the backlog

For the dimmer 2: parameter 50, 52 and 53 .....  They should disable reporting ?

[m.roszak 763]

Yes, but device itself measure the power just after turning on and one report will be send anyway if I remember correctly.

 

[LiteHouse 3]

Question in this topic. Previously, on HC2, for large installations, it was possible with connected controllers, it was possible to manually specify the devices necessary for transmission to the master controller, execute part of the code on the slave controller, and this greatly relieved the master controller. Now with HC3 this is not possible and everything is performed by the master controller, and with the number of devices in the network more than 300 + scenarios + QA, the load, in my opinion, is high and is not justified for good reasons. It was more logical earlier. Now the slave controllers are not loaded at all, for which the master almost always works at the limit. And if you add a third-party system here (for example, hombridge), then it turns out just trash.

[m.roszak 763]

Understand your point of view, GC is now handled differently but not without careful consideration - the "old" GC works on a different level and there were a lot of limitations and potential issues when configured wrong way.
Configuration only on one gateway solved most of problems related to wrong configuration and for less advanced users it is easier to use.

I will talk with the team about possible scenarios for boosting up the performance in case of using the slaves.

[Poom 7]

Thank you.  I hope that I do not need to switch to other solution.  Hope Fibaro can fix this z-wave responsiveness issue.

[akatar 208]

On 7/20/2021 at 9:54 AM, Poom said:

I'm using HC3 gateway (running firmware 5.070) with gateway connection with another HC3 for a 3 storey-house with about 1,000 sq.m. space with total 400 z-wave devices (around 200 devices for each HC3).  What I experience with Fibaro system right now is very unpredictable slowness in most device action.  For example, I have a very simple motion light on scene which when I enter the bathroom, the motion detect and light swich should be turned on automaticly.  9 out of 10 times, it take longer than 7 seconds for lights to be turned on (left me in the dark in the room for so long which ruins the purpose of the scene).  Most of the time, when I simply use my app on the phone to turn on lights or other devices, it took over 30 seconds to work.  Many scenes take longer than 2 minutes to be executed.

 

Does this slowness happen to other users with large system?  What's wrong with my system?  Is there a way to fix this slowness problem?

 

Will Z-Wave 3.0 in the firmware 5.072 BETA fix this slowness problem?

 

 

build yourself a zsniffer (search forum) then you can actually see what is going on in youre house (which device is spamming etc)

I had the same issues and thanks to zsniffer and the help of @petergebruerswe could find the device causing all the problems (this case a fibaro wallplug v1)

[LiteHouse 3]

Still from a not very pleasant experience, with a large number of devices, opening a device tab takes a very long time, often in the browser you have to click a pop-up window so that it continues to wait for a response from the web interface. And if the button to show hidden devices is pressed, this can lead to a complete inaccessibility of the system. At the same time, the speed of setting up the system suffers greatly; for simple changes in the configuration of this or that device, you will think ten times before starting to change it. Perhaps it was worthwhile for such systems to think over a lightweight configuration interface.

[Comfortica 17]

3 hours ago, LiteHouse said:

Still from a not very pleasant experience, with a large number of devices, opening a device tab takes a very long time, often in the browser you have to click a pop-up window so that it continues to wait for a response from the web interface. And if the button to show hidden devices is pressed, this can lead to a complete inaccessibility of the system. At the same time, the speed of setting up the system suffers greatly; for simple changes in the configuration of this or that device, you will think ten times before starting to change it. Perhaps it was worthwhile for such systems to think over a lightweight configuration interface.

This is something we noticed as well. Interface is extremely slow when using multiple slaves. Especially when showing all devices , including the hidden ones. On of our clients has a system with 7 slaves.... It takes forever to load that page. 

[LiteHouse 3]

Seven controllers, this is certainly too much :-), but I think without reducing the load on the master controller, even three controllers are already a lot. It is a sad fact that with so many controllers in the installation, it is not possible to distribute the load between them. There is a picture when one works very hard and the rest smoke on the sidelines and do not even help with advice :-). In such installations, it makes no sense to take HC3 with secondary controllers, HCL3 would have done well if you removed the limit of forty devices (all the same, they only work for Z-Wave service).

Edited July 23, 2021 by LiteHouse

[LiteHouse 3]

In the meantime, we have come to a deplorable conclusion for us that in large installations it is not in any case impossible to combine controllers. It is easier to delegate the user interface to another system, and leave the controllers separate. And given that the Yubii Home application is still far from good, it becomes difficult to explain the deployment strategy in large installations with fibaro to the customer and to yourself.

[Comfortica 17]

4 hours ago, LiteHouse said:

Seven controllers, this is certainly too much :-), but I think without reducing the load on the master controller, even three controllers are already a lot. It is a sad fact that with so many controllers in the installation, it is not possible to distribute the load between them. There is a picture when one works very hard and the rest smoke on the sidelines and do not even help with advice :-). In such installations, it makes no sense to take HC3 with secondary controllers, HCL3 would have done well if you removed the limit of forty devices (all the same, they only work for Z-Wave service).

Distance was a problem, hence the 7 slaves

[afendikov 37]

On 7/21/2021 at 7:21 AM, LiteHouse said:

Question in this topic. Previously, on HC2, for large installations, it was possible with connected controllers, it was possible to manually specify the devices necessary for transmission to the master controller, execute part of the code on the slave controller, and this greatly relieved the master controller. Now with HC3 this is not possible and everything is performed by the master controller, and with the number of devices in the network more than 300 + scenarios + QA, the load, in my opinion, is high and is not justified for good reasons. It was more logical earlier. Now the slave controllers are not loaded at all, for which the master almost always works at the limit. And if you add a third-party system here (for example, hombridge), then it turns out just trash.

Frankly speaking, I don't understand your post earlier.

Because I clearly see this interface below and in my mind it's simple - if you choose slave HC, then you add device to slave controller.

But today I tried it and it not working   I chose slave controller - my socket is added to "something", but not shows in any interface.

 

 damn! ? 

 

@m.roszak,  maybe it will be implemented in future releases - possibility to add devices to different controllers in gateway connection?

 

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[afendikov 37]

On 7/27/2021 at 9:25 PM, afendikov said:

Frankly speaking, I don't understand your post earlier.

Because I clearly see this interface below and in my mind it's simple - if you choose slave HC, then you add device to slave controller.

But today I tried it and it not working   I chose slave controller - my socket is added to "something", but not shows in any interface.

 

 damn! ? 

 

@m.roszak,  maybe it will be implemented in future releases - possibility to add devices to different controllers in gateway connection?

 

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@Poom, @Comfortica, @LiteHouse, @m.roszak - Hi to all,

 

Yesterday I tried with firmware 5.080 - it's working now, I just added door sensor to Slave device manually and it shown on interface:

 

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[LiteHouse 3]

On 31.07.2021 at 13:16, afendikov said:

@Poom, @Comfortica, @LiteHouse, @ m.roszak - Привет всем,

 

Вчера я попробовал прошивку 5.080 - теперь она работает, я просто вручную добавил датчик двери на ведомое устройство, и это отображается на интерфейсе:

 

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When the ID of your devices exceeds 1000 :-), everything will not work, even with firmware 5.080.9, It is very sad, while we are waiting for at least some kind of stability in the operation of linked controllers. It doesn’t work in principle yet.