I’m sure that’s very frustrating! These are both very popular devices in the community, I haven’t heard anything in particular about lag being a problem. So it’s more likely to be something local.
You may have already checked all of this, but just to be sure… The first step is to make sure that the device has a good signal path to your hub. This can be affected by the distance to the closest repeater, the physical material surrounding the device, and/Or if your network address tables are up-to-date.
- Distance matters. In a typical residential home, classic Z wave signal will travel about 40 feet (12 meters). So if the Fibaro is more than that distance from the hub, it will need to have its messages “repeated” by another mains-powered Z wave device. This is typically an in wall relay, a pocket socket, or a plug-in motion sensor. Battery powered devices do not repeat. Zwave repeats only for Z wave and zigbee repeats only for zigbee. The devices broadcast omnidirectionally, meaning 360°, so it’s fine if signal goes down to one floor to a repeating device and then up again to the hub.
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Material matters. Some materials are easier to get signal through than others. This is exactly the same issue as for Wi-Fi. Common materials in a Home that might degrade signal include brick, concrete, plaster over metal mesh, water pipes, tinted glass, foil backed insulation, metallic wallpaper, large metal items from refrigerators to automobiles, etc. For an in wall device like the fibaro, if it is installed inside a Pattress box, plastic will let through much more signal than metal.
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routing information. In order for message routing to take place efficiently, every device’s network neighbor tables must be up-to-date. These do not get automatically updated just because you add a new device.
Instead, every time you either add a new device to the network or physically move the location of the device, you need to run a “network repair” Utility to get each device to update its own neighbor tables.
The Utility itself may take only 15 or 20 minutes to run, but you may not see the full improvements until the next day. Just running this utility can significantly increase transmission speed.
Another issue that can slow down and network is excessive polling. Ideally polling messages should be no more than 5% of network traffic. Otherwise some execution request messages may be delayed or even lost because devices are busy answering polling questions. As it comes out of the box, SmartThings does pretty minimal polling. But if you have added custom code to do things like query battery status or other wellness checks you may have inadvertently introduced excess Polling. So it’s just something to be aware of.
the strength of the mesh
All three of these factors affect what is called the “mesh strength” of your network. That is, how quickly a message can move from the hub to a device and back again. These can vary a great deal from one house to another, so when you have issues with lag on an individual device, you typically just have to start doing your detective work and check each of the three: distance, materials, and routing information.
If you’ve already checked all of these and everything looks good and you are still seeing 10 second lag even with an official feature like routines or smart lighting, then I would definitely report it to support in case they can see something on their side.
Of Course it could always be a physically bad device. It can happen.
What code are you using to operate the dimmer when you see the lag?