HUB Overloaded?

I had to rebuild my entire setup few times due to Zwave module failure on 2 different connect home pro devices, within last 2 months.
I have 3 meshed connect pro, many electricity powered outlets (repeaters), etc…
During the rebuild process, I’m constantly checking the livelog and limiting devices reports to very minimum and still see performance / response time degradation once I’m over 20-25 Zwave devices. For example I start with 9 backyard outlets and response is almost immediate, but after adding another 40-50 inside house devices the response can be up to minute.
I’m still looking how to limit reporting even more, but fill that no much to do anymore.
Any ideas?

Just curious which outdoor zwave outlets that report data are you using?

I’m using GE and Inovelli, but not those doesn’t report, however another devices, like Aeon switches, outlets, sensors and halo smoke sensor reporting a lot.

It’s not the number of devices, it’s the number of messages.

Z wave is designed for tiny messages sent infrequently. It’s really not a good match to energy reporting unless you’re talking about the kind of reporting which is stored in the device and then just updates the log once a day or so.

Some community members have managed to crater their networks just by having two aeotec real time energy reporting devices in the same room, which were trying to use the other as a repeater and continually getting frozen out.

You may be able to take some load off of the hub by adding a couple of additional repeaters, but the real problem is the amount of traffic.

I personally only use Wi-Fi devices for real time energy reporting as it’s just a better match to the topology.

I know that’s not a popular answer, but it is reality. :disappointed_relieved:

@tgauchat

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You right, that’s why I’m limiting the reporting to one per hour for the HEM. Most of my power reporting devices are manageable, i.e I can limit reports to very minimum, configure not to report voltage at all for example. But most of messages I see from different sensors, like Halo with humidity update every minute or other smartthings button or motion sensors updating temperatures. Can’t really find the way to limit those.

It will just depend on each individual model device as to whether there’s a way to change the reporting frequency. Are your motion sensors Z wave or Zigbee? The SmartThings button is zigbee, and those have a different reporting requirement, they have to check in at least once a minute per the standard or they will get dropped from the network.

Halo connects to ST with zigbee too.

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Hi @IGI, I’ve experienced some overloading like what @JDRoberts explains, but not in quite some time. I’ve actually started ramping up reporting frequencies for my HEM, and other energy reporting devices. So far so good, and that’s been over several months and many beta versions of the hub’s firmware. You may find my reporting frequencies excessive, but so far I’m not seeing any impact on mesh performance or reliability.

FWIW, I have just about 290 devices. Most are zigbee and zwave, and those are split almost 50/50. A lot are also repeaters.

27 of my devices report power/energy, and out of those 11 are Iris plugs using the default DTH (which reports like crazy). The remaining are a handful of Zooz metering switches, and I have those set to report at a change of 2 watts. Others are Aeon switches, and those report at 1 watt or 2 watt changes. My HEM’s (2) report at 1 watt changes. The Zooz and Aeon devices use my own custom DTH.

A couple hundred devices report temperature/humidity (including Halo’s), and who knows what that looks like in terms of messages flying around my mesh.

YMMV compared to mine, but I thought I’d at least share my experience.

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My experience is similar to John, have some SmartThings outlets, Aeon outlets, iris outlets and others and things are working okay.

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The worst problems seem to occur went two very high frequency reporting devices are physically quite close to each other but both are far from the hub and trying to use the other as a repeater. This has been reported multiple times in the forums for the aeotec energy monitoring devices in secure mode.

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