I have three Yale Real Living Touchscreen Deadbolt (YRD220) locks that I’ve connected to my Smartthings Hub. However, I can only achieve a reliable connection to any one of the locks if it is in direct range of the hub. If the locks connect via other Z-wave devices, then the connection is mostly unreliable. Smartthings does not accurately report the state of the locks across the network and only occasionally does the lock actually lock or unlock as directed from Smartthings. All other Z-wave devices on the network are reliable, and all of the Yale locks respond fine through their touchscreens or if the ST hub is moved close to them.
It is not possible to place the Smartthings hub in direct range of all 3 locks simultaneously. The best arrangement is the front door lock about 25’ from the ST hub and only a few feet from a Z-wave light switch. The other two door locks are 2 or 3 Z-wave hops from the hub and within 10’ of wired Z-wave devices. How can I make the distant locks work with the Smartthings hub across the Z-wave network?
You may have run into a “beaming” issue. Z wave locks require that the repeater closest to them support beaming. Not all Z wave devices that repeat do, this is a separate feature. It’s only the one closest to the lock that has to have this feature.
In addition to what @JDRoberts mentioned, have you tried doing a Z-Wave network repair after you added all your locks?
FWIW, I have seven YRD240s (in two locations) that work flawlessly in ST, but I also have a bunch of GE light switches and outlets between the locks and the hubs.
There won’t be any confusion, so you don’t have to worry about that. Ideally the closest repeating device to the lock should support beaming, but as long as there’s a repeater within one hop of the device that supports beaming it should be OK.
Z wave only allows for up to four hops per message, however, so we need a little more information about your network.
You don’t have to worry about using a hop just because devices are close together, though. The following isn’t quite technically accurate, but it’s close enough to give you an idea if you imagine that the message will go to the reachable repeater which is farthest away, which will then pass the message to the next reachable repeater which is farthest away, etc. So if you have a room with three light switches in it, meaning they’re all within one hop, it will only take the message one hop to get across the room it won’t bounce from one switch to another and use up all your hops.
So just starting from the lock, what’s the physically closest repeating device to it, and how far is it from the lock?
It’s 40ft from the hub to the garage door openers.
Then 40ft from the garage door openers to the Linear outlet.
And another 40ft from the Linear outlet to the Enerwave outlet.
(This constitutes a bridge from the main house to a guest house.)
Then it’s a cluster with the Linear switches and one Yale lock all within 4 feet of the Enerwave outlet, and the other Yale lock about 10 feet from the Enerwave outlet. Neither Yale lock is communicating properly.
There’s nothing you can do about that, Z wave as a protocol assumes that the hub will be centrally positioned in the network, not at one end of a long string.
If you could move the hub to where the Linear outlet is, you might be able to reach the locks.
The other alternative would be to convert to zigbee modules in the locks and build a chain of zigbee repeaters instead. The ZHA profile that smartthings uses allows for up to 15 zigbee hops into the hub and another 15 out again.
What if I remove the Enerwave outlet and force the Linear outlet to hop directly to the Linear Switches, then it would be Hub>Garage>LinearOutlet>LinearSwitches>Yale.
That’s only 4 hops.
(BTW, the Linear outlet is an outdoor outlet in the middle of a driveway circle, so the hub can’t go there.)
Unfortunately, SmartThings does not provide customers with mapping utilities.
It’s possible to add a secondary controller, typically a USB stick, and then use its utilities to map the network, and some community members have done that:
