Does hub location affect the offline problem for other devices?

I have had a lot of problem with MPS and water leak sensor frequently being offline . In desperation I moved the Smarthings hub to another room and the problem appeared to be solved. I have LightwaveRF integration with Smartthings and the two hubs were plugged into the same WAP. My home has cabled ethernet to every room with WAP. Now the two hubs are plugged into my home network in different rooms and the problem appears to be solved. The lightwave products are still responding to automations from the new Smartthings hub location. Any ideas as to why this has solved the offline problem?

The lightwave RF integration is cloud to cloud, so those devices shouldn’t care at all where the SmartThings hub is located. As long as they can reach their gateway and their gateway and the ST hub can both reach the Internet, that’s how they communicate.

What is MPS in this context?

MPS = multi purpose sensor.

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What’s the brand and model of the multipurpose sensor?

Smartthings.

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OK, that multipurpose Sensor transmits Using zigbee on 2.4 GHz and the lightwave RF uses 433 MHz, so you’re not getting any direct interference from them.

Both hubs do have Wi-Fi radios, so if you had them close together, say within a meter, it is possible that they sometimes interfere with each other. Just getting some space between the hubs is almost always a good idea.

That said, typically the offline issue, which frustrates a lot of people, is caused by cloud latency with messages not getting to the cloud soon enough to get checked off as an active device. There’s not a lot you can do about it, and it tends to just be variable anyway. It can be bad for a couple of weeks, then be good again for a couple of weeks, then go bad again even without you doing anything at all.

So moving the hubs apart might’ve helped, but I’d be more likely to guess it was just random. :thinking:

You’re of course correct JD, with lightwave being Wifi it wouldn’t have mattered where the hub was.
But those sensors… Both of those sensors are wireless - therefore unpowered and not repeating. Assuming no other repeating devices here I’d bet it was slightly out of range before the move and within range after.

@true.spirit even though spec says you can get up to 100ft/30m (with Zigbee devices, that’s a clear line of sight non interference very best case number… I find I RARELY get more than 40-50ft/15m and therefore make sure I have wired repeating devices every 20-25ft/7.5m OR LESS within my home.

(EDIT: Thanks JD for checking my math… carried a power of 10 wrong - fixed)

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Good point, that could very well be true. :sunglasses: