Is there anyway to have a Z-Wave Panic Button look for a different device in the network to repeat after it moves out of range of the Hub?
Looking to extend the range of a panic button for my elderly grandmother, but it looks like Z-Wave is very sticky once its paired. Thanks!
OK, I did some more checking, and it looks like this specific device is in fact not connecting to anything other than its initial pairing table. Which is annoying, but there it is.
You could try excluding it from the network and adding it again in whatever part of the House you expect to use it in. It’s possible that a Z wave plus repeater could add it even though it’s more than one hop from the hub. There’s a small possibility that it would then work within one hop of that repeater or one hop of the hub itself. But I can’t say for sure until somebody tries it.
I wish I had a better answer, I know this isn’t the desired behavior.
Hmm, are we aware of any Panic buttons that do operate with the optimal behaviour? this is the only panic button I could find.
You should be able to use any button device. There’s nothing really special about the Aeon button in a SmartThings environment.
How big is the area that you want to cover? And, perhaps most importantly, how critical is the reliability? I myself have a panic button as a medical monitoring device, but I just would never use SmartThings for this. Mine has GPS and cellular capability, which means it’s also useful when I’m away from home. It costs $20 a month, but includes fall detection, and I feel confident in its reliability.
If you do want to use something directly with SmartThings and you’re OK with the base reliability of the system, You might want to try one of the zigbee devices, just because I know those will work through repeaters. That’s exactly how the smartthings brand arrival sensor works. There are a number of different button type zigbee devices that work with SmartThings, although they are going to require that the SmartThings cloud be available, another reason why I use an entirely different system.
I know a lot of people now rely on the Amazon echo Dot placed strategically throughout the home, because you can either have it start a SmartThings routine or, if you happen to have AT&T, you can have it send a text from your account. But some people have cognitive challenges that might mean they couldn’t remember exactly what to say in an emergency.
I know I’m being hesitant in recommending specific Devices, it just depends very much on exactly what use case you’re trying to solve. As a person who needs a reliable panic button system (I’m quadriparetic), I’m just quite cautious about trying to use any non-cellular system for this Purpose.
I was under the assumption that’s what Repair Z-Wave Network was for. I’ve been pairing and repairing thinking it would find the new nearby devices and update it’s tables.
Not exactly.
The hub and the secondary controllers should have a list of all of the devices on the network.
The other devices each keep a partial list that only includes the controllers and the device’s closest neighbors. They literally don’t know the other devices exist.
When you run the Z wave repair utility, it tells each of the Z wave devices to update their neighbor tables so they have an accurate list of who is closest to them.
Zigbee handles this differently.
Anyway, the point is that the repair utility is just creating a new Snapshot picture at the time that that utility is run. If a week later you start moving devices around again, then the tables get out of date again.
A handheld remote is supposed to act as a secondary controller so it could talk to any of the devices. I have no idea why the Aeotec panic button seems to work differently. The manual says it can act as a controller, but it doesn’t appear to be.
Thanks for the reply.