Hi All,
I am looking for smart switch recommendations (both rocker as well as dimmers) in US. I have poor reliability experience with Z-Wave so it needs to be Zigbee only preferably <USD 30.
I looked at Leviton ones mentioned on works with smarthings pages but I cannot find them in stock at most places. A couple places where I did find them, they were priced at $90 or so which I think is insane given a dummy Leviton switch is only $2.
Thanks in advance.
I think about the only thing you will find with those restrictions are the GE zigbee versions of their smart switches, and you have to wait until they are on sale at Home Depot or Lowe’s. They are more typically right around $42, but they do occasionally go on sale.
Here is the manufacturer site. GE licenses its name to Jasco for smart devices.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of reliability issues are you having with Z-Wave? I ask because if it’s a distance thing, Zigbee has about 1/3rd the range of a Z-Wave device if I’m not mistaken. I believe it’s 10 meters for Zigbee and 30 meters for Z-Wave, so you could have more issues with Zigbee devices. You may just need some sort of repeater.
I am using the Iris Smart Plug (Centralite 3210-L) which has both Zigbee/Zwave repeaters. Zigbee works fine for me even at 50 feet away but Zwave doesnt work. I think its more to do with line of sight/ wall issues which zwave has compared to zigbee. If someone can guide me how to make zwave more reliable, I am happy to work with those too 
I’m sorry you’re running into trouble. Z wave should actually have fewer line of sight/wall issues than zigbee in most cases because it’s lower frequency with one exception: zigbee almost always does better through water, including water pipes because of some disparity in the algorithms being used for signal spread. In addition, of course, zigbee runs into potential Wi-Fi interference, which Zwave does not.
So in terms of just signal traveling through the house, both should be pretty equal unless you happen to have radiant heating with water pipes in every wall. Or big aquarium tanks in multiple rooms. (I was a network engineer and worked with both zigbee and zwave before ever buying smartthings for my home.)
So let’s take it back a step and see if there’s anything that might be done to improve your currenct zwave performance.
There are several different things to look at. Personally, I would start with running a Z wave repair and just see what kind of messages you get.
When’s the last time you ran the zwave repair, and in particular, did you do one after you added the iris smart plugs to your network?
Meanwhile, just to get this out-of-the-way, typically the only things in the US home that will interfere with Z wave are either old cordless phones or baby monitors. So just check around and see if you have anything operating in the 900 band or thereabouts.
Also, since you are relying on the iris smart plugs for your zwave backbone, what device type handler are you using, and are the Plugs showing up on your things list twice, once as zigbee device and once as a Z wave device?
Also, how old are your Iris smart plugs? There have been some firmware updates for these devices in the last year or so, but the smartthings hub won’t do that update for you.
Finally, what kind of unreliability are you seeing, and with which brand and model of device?
That should be enough to start with. 
Water/ radiant heating shouldn’t be an issue at my place. I just realized I probably dont have any zwave devices other than the Iris Smart Plug (Centralite 3210-L). I do have both zigbee and zwave version show up for the device. The issue I had was whenever I tried to toggle that plug on/off using zwave it didnt work. Maybe its just a repeater and can only be controlled using zigbee?
Another reason I say it didnt work was the status always shows up as: Inactive in the IDE.
I have tried zwave network repair a few times and it usually fails. I bought the devices less than 4 months ago.
Name: Living Room Z-Wave Device
Type: Z-Wave Device
Location: Home
Hub: Redmond Home Hub
Device Network ID: 02
Status: INACTIVE
Execution Location: Cloud
Last Activity:
Please guide me if there is a way to check/ upgrade the firmware.
Please recommend me some zwave in wall switches, dimmers and outlets. I guess it wouldnt hurt to try to add some. If they don’t work, I could always return them.
The iris smart plug is a zigbee pocketsocket that also includes a Z wave repeater. The zwave device does not control the plug. So toggling it would not turn the pocket socket off or on.
I’m not sure what the usual status is on the repeaters. As far as the zwave repair, we’d need to see the specific error messages.
There lots of good Z wave devices, just depends on what you’re looking for.
Start with the device class features FAQ and see if that helps clarify anything. The light switch discussion starts around post 40.