Smartthings Power Outlet, do they act as repeaters?

Hey,

As per topic … My hub is quite far away from some motion sensors (not possible to move hub currently), with more than 1 solid brick wall in between some motion sensors and the hub, these far away sensors seem unreliable, compared to two others much closer. I’ve disabled 2.4Ghz wifi, I have Ubiquity wifi devices on each floor, so will work fine with 5GHz only in the house, in order to minimise zigbee frequency interference. Disabling 2.4Ghz wifi has made a noticeable difference to the reliability of these far away sensors.

If my understanding is correct (I’m relatively techy but new to this automation world …), is that powered devices, i.e. power outlets, will act as signal repeaters, but not battery devices i.e. motion sensors?

I’m in need of 2-3 power outlets, so I’m hoping this will go someway to fully resolving the distance issues I have currently.

I use a couple of the smartthings outlet purely as repeaters.
For this they work well

Once you have set them up I find it’s best to ‘heal’ the zigbee net by turning off you hub (and removing batteries if you use them) for around 30 minutes.
This causes the zigbee devices to ‘panic’ and replan the network.
This can take a while (upto 24hrs) but it does make a difference to the connections and reliability

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That would be a correct statement.

And here is a little something for when you do introduce these into your ST environment:

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Great thanks, ordered 4 just now.

The iris smart plugs gen 2 are zigbee and zwave repeaters.

You probably didn’t notice, but this thread is in the UK section of the forum, and the iris devices are not available there and would have the wrong frequency Z wave anyway.

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The new Amazon “echo plus” uses the same zigbee profile for its “smart setup” protocol that SmartThings uses. If the Echo Plus does well, we should start to see more compatible zigbee devices coming on the market in both the US and the UK.

Meanwhile, as of today the one pocket socket that Amazon is listing for the Echo Plus is one specific model for hive.

That should work with SmartThings as well when used as a generic on/off zigbee plug.

So just another possible option. Choice is good. :sunglasses: