LFMc

Teken, That would be nice, but in the reality of home design, the locations you can put a wall wart like the repeater are discreet jumps and add to that the aesthetics of it, it further reduces the "hang it on the wall with an extension cord" possibilities. My wife has been so understanding of all the cables and extension cords laying all over the place. So, the next jump toward the ISY would be about 15' and land it right smack dab in the middle the buffet wall in the breakfast room. This would also add three more walls between the repeater and the meter and I know that it will never connect. Right now it is hanging about 7' off the floor on the wall on the end of an extension cord in the utility room, but it has a direct line of sight view of the ISY down the hall and through 3 rooms, as long as I don't close any doors. So ultimately I really do need some more signal strength. But I am going to try several more positioning maneuvers and see what happens. My report may be a bit premature, but I felt I owed it to you guys to report in and let you know how it was going with the repeater. --Leon

I have received and installed the SmartenIT Zigbee SE 5010R smart energy range extender. The unit is very simple, one button and one LED, that's it. But, it works great. I more than doubled my distance between the ISY and the smart meter. For the initial install of the repeater, I had to have it fairly close to the meter. I went online to my smart meter account at texassmartmeter.com and told it to add my repeater. Within two minutes it was done. I tried the first time from a much further distance and it didn't connect, so I had to remove it from the permission list online and re-add it online one more time. Again, it was very simple. Then I could move the repeater much further away and it would reconnect to the meter with no issues. There is no obvious way to "add" the ISY to the repeater's HAN (home area network?) and know that it is joined. So I simply turned on "join" mode on the repeater and it stays open to joining for 4 minutes. In that 4 minute window, I rebooted the ISY to see if it would join. Afterwards I was able to increase the distance on the ISY from about 25' across the garage to about 75' from the meter across the house. Just to verify, I turned off the repeater and immediately the ISY disconnected from the meter. Upon turning the repeater back on, the ISY rejoined with the meter. So now if I put the ISY in my media cabinet behind a wood door, it loses connection fairly often to the meter. If I move it out of the cabinet a couple of feet, it is about 98% reliable. You can look at the REST meter log and see the very few times it misses some data and it really is no big deal. Inside the cabinet it will run for up to a day or so and then lose connection 100%. Then I have to take it out of the cabinet and reboot the ISY to get it to resync with the meter. So, I need a few more feet of range to get it where I want to go. I have already added a +9Db ~18" antenna to the Zigbee interface on the ISY, so I don't have too many other options as the repeater is a sealed unit that looks just like a PLM, probably the same case. I am contacting SmartenIT tech support to see if they can tell me if there is anything else I can do to get more range out of it. I am guessing that they are using a hardwired fractal internal antenna. So it may have some directional differences based on it's orientation. I may just have to put the 9Db antenna on the end of a 3' coax and locate it outside the cabinet as well as try other placements for the repeater to get a better "line of sight" to the ISY. I may also try the pie pan reflector trick. I have done this before on marginal wifi connections and it works well. Being the ISY only needs the Zigbee to transmit and receive in one direction (towards the repeater) I may put a 9" aluminum pie pan behind the antenna, pointed toward the repeater, to act as a signal reflector. It looks odd, but being inside the cabinet most would never see it. I once got a frying pan to do the same thing. (-; Clearly the SmartenIT repeater has better range than the ISY ZS does, even when I added the longer antenna. In fact I was able to move the repeater from inside the garage to inside the house which helped quite a bit also. If you are needing the extra range on the ZS interface, I can highly recommend the SmartenIT 5010R ZOE-RE product so far. http://smartenit.com/product/zoe-re/ The current price is $59.99. It would be of great help to have some type of signal strength meter for the ISY Zigbee interface. Right now it is zero or one by looking the dashboard sync status. I guess I have found a work around with the REST meter log error rate, but still that is only better than nothing. To really trouble shoot the ZS interface connection to the meter, some real time signal strength feedback would have been immensely helpful, even if it was as simple as 5 bars like a cell phone connection. Thanks, --Leon

Thanks for saving me time and frustration on the power controller Michael. Will do Teken. --Leon

It seems that I would need a 60-75' cable to reach the garage. I contacted SmartenIt and they have a specific Zigbee SEP range extender for $60, so I may try that instead of the long cable which would obviously need an amplifier. http://smartenit.com/product/zoe-re/ They also have Zigbee SEP power switching modules that act as SEP relays for about the same price. Maybe I could hook one up to my toaster oven and get a discount on my electric bill. :-9 I think I will try the relay approach for now. I will let you know how it works. --Leon

The Summary section doesn't have the RF channel showing that I can find. I see that listed in the network section at the top. It says: Joined Securely | 7E73 | A500590000800000 | 21 Would this be channel 21 that is being used? My wifi scanner only shows active 2.4Ghz channels up to channel 13. So I do not see the Zigbee devices on the scanner to verify this.

No, nothing else and the ISY is my only Zigbee device.

Thanks Michael, So repeaters and not devices? Does the Smartenet 5010S qualify as a repeater? They call it a range extender. http://smartenit.com/product/zbre/

Thanks again. This whole process of using the ISY for my smart meter connection feels like trial and error. Thank goodness Michael has been there the whole way helping out and answering questions. So maybe he can shed some light on the routing issue also. I am so impressed with UDI and their willingness to work with you. I just didn't expect that the Oncor service area was so different on the meter reporting info. I do intend to write up my experiences as soon as I can feel I finally resolved the major issues. One being is the code for the My Electricity portlet is 'frozen' awaiting approval from another agency. Something Michael has been so gracious to try and work around to help me get everything reporting correctly for the Oncor data stream. At this time I think I am the unofficial Oncor beta tester for Texas. (-: --Leon

Thanks for the quick replies. In response: 1. Wifi Networks. I would say yes. Using my scanner app I can see 8 or so routers. 3 are mine. None are in the immediate area of the Zigbee ISY. Isn't the Zigbee on ~2.4ghz? My scanner shows the channels in use, can I safely disable channels on the ISY dashboard advanced settings to get the Zigbee to avoid those channels in use? 2. In regards to using a repeating device, are you saying that the repeating device must be the primary device registered with the meter company? I know they are using the UUID of the ISY Zigbee interface to register. Will that not pass through any routing Zigbee device? Hopefully this is not a 1:1 connection only. --Leon

I purchased an ISY994i ZS Pro IR to extend my home automation system to include smart meter monitoring via the Zigbee interface and to have the IR feature on the ISY. My current issue with this is the Zigbee range is way below expectations so I am looking for ways to extend the range to where I would like the ISY to be located. I have a long house perpendicular to the street with the garage in the front nearest the street and that is where my electrical service comes in and where the meter is located. It is standard brick and wood frame construction with no insulation in the exterior garage walls where the meter is located. The furthest I have been able to get a smart meter connection is inside the garage about 25 feet from the meter and that is an iffy connection. I have to have the ISY about 5+ feet above the floor to get a stable connection. It will not work on the other side of the interior wall where the garage is attached to the house. I don't want the ISY in the garage because of the heat in summer, the lack of network connections and it is an IR/Pro unit, so I assume the ISY needs to be near where I would use an IR remote, which is not in the garage. I tried a longer +9DB antenna and was able to move the ISY to the interior side of the same garage wall, but still way short of my room where I would like it to go. So I am looking for options. At this time the ISY and the meter are my only items on the Zigbee network. Solutions I am considering are: 1. Mounting a 3' yagi antenna on top of my media center cabinet pointing towards the meter. I think this has zero chance with the wife's decor. (-; 2. Put in a few more Zigbee devices to get things to mesh for the 80-100' through the house that I need to go. This is most likely scenario, so being a Zig-New-bee, I have some questions. A. I could buy a couple of repeaters, but they are pricey and end up taking up outlet and wall space. B. Buy some Zigbee items on Ebay and place them between the ISY and the smart meter. I know Zigbee is 100% wireless and creates a fully meshed network. But I assume the Zigbee devices can't be added to a "scene" with insteon devices on the ISY, correct? What are the maximum hops a Zigbee signal will use? Can I use most any Zigbee device to act as a repeater? Such as the Phillips Hue Bridge or the Samsung SmartThings? These items are cheap on Ebay. I would prefer to avoid Zigbee switches if I can't add them to scenes on the ISY. Are there any version compatibility issues to watch out for with Zigbee? Thanks ahead of time for any suggestions and feedback. --Leon

Thanks for the link Teken. So I buy and add the High Powered Zigbee Smart Grid (SEP1.1) Radio to my 994i AND I have to have a "dongle"? Where do I get the dongle? My smart meter has a Zigbee wireless sticker on it, so I assumed I didn't need anything on the meter side other than access permission from Oncor.

Hi all, Is anyone familiar with the ISY994ZS and how it communicates with smart meters? Is it a wireless connection? Has anyone used it with Oncor yet? The sales material on the U-D web site says it works with Oncor meters. It would be nice to know if anyone has any feedback on any issues with Oncor before I swap out this for my 994i unit. Thanks, --Leon