I have an unattached garage which is about 40’ from the house and 60-70’ to the nearest Z-wave device. Attempts to connect a GoControl FS20Z device in the garage were unsuccessful and I considered getting a device and putting it in my house closer to the garage, but there’s not a good place to do that. Then, in looking at some posts, I realized that I was probably looking at this the wrong way - perhaps the Z-wave Plus device should go in the garage, and then the FS20Z could connect through that. Might that work?
I’m thinking that a plug-in device would be the easiest to set up and I could move it elsewhere later to use for some other purpose. Does anyone have a suggestion as to what to use? What about something like this?
GW 14282
Thanks.
It might work. You might also need two zwave plus devices, one in each building on the side closest to each other. There are a lot of local factors that can come into play.
Make sure you do a zwave repair utility each time you physically move a device or add a new device, otherwise the Linear may not see the new device.
The pocket socket that you linked to is fine. I also like zwave plus light bulbs for garage situations as it gets the repeater up out of the way of cars and appliances that might block signal. Zigbee bulbs may be flaky repeaters, but the Z wave ones are solid.
There are a bunch of brands that have zwave plus bulbs out now: aeotec, Domitech, Bulbz/go control/linear, Leedarson, hank, enbrighten, homeseer… just make sure it’s a plus version and not the older plain Z wave.
The homeseer site has a great sale price on gocontrol bulbs right now (June 2017), maybe because they are bringing out their own brand. But in any case that’s the least expensive zwave plus repeater at the moment.
Also, you probably already read this, but there is an article in the community – created wiki on getting signal to an outbuilding so I just include it here for completeness:
http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Automate_an_Outbuilding
I got one of the GoControl bulbs and placed it in a high light fixture I’d just set up in the garage, but it couldn’t connect to the hub. I’d been thinking that the Cree Connected bulbs would act as a repeaters but then I realized they were ZigBee. I then put the GoControl bulb in a ceiling fixture on the garage side of the house and after doing that I was able to get the FS20Z Z-Wave Isolated Contact Fixture Module to connect.
Thanks very much for your help!
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