Making a ZWave install more "reliable"

[vjk]

Ecolink for the door/window sensors.  Everspring for the climate sensor.  Both are reasonably popular and work well (except for the occasional lost event, but for a given sensor, that is a once every 5-6 weeks event, if that).

 

They are really low-power devices and they are completely asleep asleep unless "poked" (for the door sensors, only when open/closed, for the climate sensors, only when the temp/humidity changes or once every 4 hours).  As a result, door sensor battery lasts at least a year and climate sensors are 8-10 months typical.

 

Gerry

 

From sheer curiosity since I do not own any,  I did some reading on battery operated sensors.  Apparently, they have to be manually woken up for controller initiated communication to succeed. E.g. http://aeotec.com/z-wave-sensor/1323-multisensor-guide.html

 

This sort of sensor design seems to put it mildly pretty bizarre. Why not use the same controller initiated wake-up mechanism as with locks, namely "beaming" packets, to wake up sensors if needed, for example to poll? My Yale lock batteries last about a year pretty consistently and they consume more energy for obvious reasons.

 

But, it is what it is.  So, today one has to wake up a sensor manually, run back to the controller and initiate route discovery hoping that the 10 minutes "wakefulness"  interval is sufficient for the controller initiated dialog to complete. You may consider using a helper with a walkie-talkie

[Teken]

I believe the OP stated the maker went this route to offer the longest service life regarding battery use. I also believe some of the vendors he used simply were using what at the time were what Z-Waved offered. I don't expect gen 1-4 hardware to offer me fantastic performance when most of the devices in gen 1-3 are legacy technology.