Anyone using Z-Wave 800 series hardware yet?

That range explanation makes a lot more sense. Leave it to marketing to somehow figure a way to put out numbers that are huge.
 
Oh, I am sure that you can get a mile with mains power and no exterior walls in the desert or the flattest part of Kansas. Which are both real and in the world, so "real world"

Getting 2x or more the range on battery devices and a quarter mile for powered devices like gates is a pretty nice upgrade, assuming battery life doesn't take a huge hit.
 


Oh, I am sure that you can get a mile with mains power and no exterior walls in the desert or the flattest part of Kansas. Which are both real and in the world, so "real world"

Getting 2x or more the range on battery devices and a quarter mile for powered devices like gates is a pretty nice upgrade, assuming battery life doesn't take a huge hit.
I would think it is more about the surrounding radio noise also. With a rural setting containing hardly any other Zwave the tested range indicates IMHO to about 20-30m in a city environment with so many cell phones, PS adapters, WiFi and electric motors putting out RFI.

Never going to happen in a battery operated device using that much energy to transmit.

Many people in the UDI forum use a USB extension with a higher elevation mount for the HA RF dongles for better results than plugged into the back of a metal box shoved in a drywall or concrete corner.
 
I would think it is more about the surrounding radio noise also. With a rural setting containing hardly any other Zwave the tested range indicates IMHO to about 20-30m in a city environment with so many cell phones, PS adapters, WiFi and electric motors putting out RFI.

Never going to happen in a battery operated device using that much energy to transmit.

Many people in the UDI forum use a USB extension with a higher elevation mount for the HA RF dongles for better results than plugged into the back of a metal box shoved in a drywall or concrete corner.

Zwave LR introduces a wider spread spectrum signal, meaning it uses more frequencies and is more capable of avoiding interference.

However most of the RFI you mention is nowhere near 900Mhz.
  • Wifi :2.4ghz or 5ghz
  • Bluetooth 2.4ghz
  • cell phones : 600-700mhz, 1.2ghz-6hz and 30-300ghz
  • electric motor interference is generally <1Mhz (hence AM radio interference)
Reinforced concrete, however, is the ever-present, low grade urban signal degrader.

Regardless, the "2x" range is applicable as it is relative to the environment. If you see 20-30m in your environment, that should go to 40-60m. Zwave LR in battery power mode is using 350% the transmit power of basic zwave, and mains-powered LR is using 750% power.

Simply throwing more wattage at it will always increase range from sheer power. Using more power in conjunction with more frequencies and better spectrum management is probably a more effective design.
 
I thought I read somewhere someone got the Long Range feature to work via Z-Wave JS by changing a parameter, but can't find this post now. But I don't see any official support for the Long Range feature yet. The stick itself does work, and seems to offer better range over the 700 series, but after my experiences with the 700 series initial launch, I'm probably won't be an early adopter :) I may build a 2nd system just to tinker with it.
 
While I have the ZooZ ZAC93LR GPIO hat on my Home Assistant Yellow, I don't have a way to really test for the LR feature. My switches are the ZEN73 and ZEN74 models (700 series). I may pickup some ZEN76 (800 series) at some point and check it out.
However, looking at the Z-Wave JS release notes (0.1.87 just updated on my HA Yellow PoE today).

No mention of 800 series, unless that's part of 700+

0.1.87​

Bug fixes​

  • Z-Wave JS: Fixed a bug where firmware links that redirected to another URL were not supported
  • Z-Wave JS: Change order of commands so the startup does not fail when a controller is already set to use 16-bit node IDs and soft-reset is disabled
  • Z-Wave JS: Soft-reset is now always enabled on 700+ series controllers
  • Z-Wave JS: Queried user codes and their status are now preserved during re-interview when they won't be re-queried automatically

Config file changes​

  • Add parameters 9-13 to Minoston MP21ZP / MP31ZP
  • Add fingerprint to Yale YRD446-ZW2
  • Add and update Yale Assure ZW3 series locks
  • Remove unnecessary endpoint functionality for CT101
 
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