Design question for multiple ZMatter networks or controllers

[Scott Korvek]

I have a corner-case question here regarding Zigbee (and possibly ZWave).  I have an eisy and a polisy both running in the same home as my Insteon network is too large for one to contain all nodes.  The polisy handles exterior and basement, the eisy handles floors 1-3 in the main home and the entire HVAC system. Polisy handles polyglot and external intgrations and the eisy references polisy for polyglot.

I'm now adding Zigbee to my home- currently for Hue-style lighting using the GLEDOPTO 5 in 1 LED drivers and their exterior wall wash and garden lighting (integrated Zigbee 3.0).  Problem is I'll have some inside the home, where it will be important for them to integrate with the interior scenes and programs on eisy, and also the garden/wall wash exterior ones which should be integrated with the exterior scenes- on polisy.  Since z-matter works without a hub I don't have one so I don't need or want to use polyglot/nodeservers.  That would make this easier as both could "see" the nodes (like I do with Elk).

I have no problem getting a second ZMatter dongle for the Polisy. But then I have two controllers.  Can they be on the same network? Should I just change the frequency of one of them (no idea how to change the frequency of the listening devices or if they even support that)?

I don't have any way I can reconfigure which IoX controls what given the HVAC is all on eisy and I've previously run out of Insteon nodes/scenes and my final insteon network plan has gotten substantially bigger since then.

Thoughts?

[Techman]

You can't change the frequency, it's determined by the Country you reside in.

Not sure if adding a second Zmatter board would create a conflict. The eisy should be able to support a large network.  Are you experiencing an out of memory issue, or are you maxed out of the number of nodes that can be supported?

[Scott Korvek]

I don't have a large zigbee network, I have a large Insteon network.

The Zigbee devices will be in locations covered by each of the IoX controllers (max nodes/scenes/devices per PLM) and cannot be reconfigured to condense the Zigbee network to one IoX controller.

Edited July 22 by Scott Korvek
clarification

[Scott Korvek]

As an aside- just received my first actual Philips Hue bulbs and tried one out. Amazing that I can set commands directly with scenes included alongside Insteon switches- so I can use the regular wallswitch button to turn the light on AND reset the temp back to a "normal" bulb rather than the last on. Well done native implementation! Kudos!

[Techman]

Attached is an interesting paper comparing the various technologies.  It was written a while ago but is still relevant. On page 37 it mentions that a Zwave network only supports one master controller.

About how many Insteon devices do you have?

 

 

Insteon compared.pdf

[Scott Korvek]

I currently have zero Z-wave devices at this location so could live with that.

Too many scenes with each devices a member of multiple scenes to accommodate on insteon PLM.

Attached article not too helpful- one network manager per network- but I'm looking at making multiple independent networks - or at least that would be fine as I see no need to make both see each other. It does mention "start network and join/leave network" so presumably each controller should set up their own independent network - otherwise how would interference between neighbors be prevented?

Found this: https://www.rfwireless-world.com/Tutorials/Zigbee_tutorial.html

which mentions each controller starts its own personal area network- so I can see on my eISY this in X-ray of the network: 

Integer  DATA controller.data.defaultPanId = 27238 (0x00006a66)

I would assume that if I bought another ZMatter dongle it would create a different network ID- either randomly or upon detecting a collision with an existing network but that is a something one of the UD developers would have to confirm.

[Techman]

If you used both the eisy and the polisy, each with a PLM, you would have a PLM link capicity of about 4000 Insteon links.  If your PLM memory is filling up then by doing a factory reset on the PLM and a restore PLM, you should gain additional memory in the PLM as deleted data usually remains in the PLM taking up memory

If you do a PLM link count, ideally when the system is not active, you can get a fairly good idea of how much space you have available.

If you currently don't have Zwave devices and just now adding Zigbee then one Zmatter dongle should suffice. You could add repeaters in order to cover the entire house.

[brians]

I was running two separate Z-Wave networks for a while. When I moved from Home Assistant I moved Z-Wave devices from my Polisy manually by first excluding and then including in Home Assistant (Z-Wave JS). Both networks worked fine but I am only talking about 40 devices in total. I had my Polisy Z-Wave still working for long time as a test, but I recently disabled the radio since is useless to me. I only use Polisy for my legacy Insteon in case anyone reading this is wondering.

I am not sure what would happen if had multiple larger Z-Wave networks, but I suspect it would still work because Z-Wave is encrypted to a particular controller so the other network will just ignore, and I don't think there is too much network chatter with Z-Wave.

With Zigbee you can change the channel to run multiple coordinators, but cannot after adding devices or they need to be repaired. The Zigbee channels sit in the valleys between the WiFi channels' peaks so not really an issue with interference(at least I never found one and I am using all three common 2.4Ghz WiFi channels).