Searching for the bottleneck - Distance problem

[jaik]

Hi all,

at first I would like to thank you for having that great community. I just moved into a new flat and - due to the fact that we have 2014 - I still have got the opinion, that I should be able to turn out the lights with my smartphone. So I read a lot about home automatisation and came to the z-wave protocol. I'm pretty shure, that using the razberry as a gateway is a pretty good choice for me.

During the last days, I read through the razberry documentations. Today some packages arrived:
- the rasperry pi b, including the z-wave module
- 8GB flash
- 1 POPP 123580 plug-in dimmer
- a raspberry pi case

I put it all together, downloaded the razberry image from the z-wave, copied it to the sd-card, using the win32diskimager tool. Then I opened the http://find.z-wave.me/ and configured the mandatory options. Then I plugged in the POPP plug-in dimmer right beneath the razberry. After the pairing process, the device was recognized correctly. I also downloaded the z-wave app. Everything worked fine. I could turn the device on and off with a delay of around 2 seconds.

Coming to my actual problem:
For using everything in a "real" environment, I plugged in the POPP device some meters away from the main station. The distance is around 4 meters. There is no clear "eye-contact" between the devices, but there is no wall between or anything else. Right now, nothing works anymore.
So I tested and found out, that each distance above 3 meters causes massive problems. When I put the plug back to a plug near the razberry, everything works fine again. I also tried to reset the z-wave module and included and excluded the POPP device several times. But nothing changed on the behavior described above.

Please accept my excuse if I have overseen / overread any important detail, but I have no idea where I shall start searching for the bottleneck. As I read from this forum, this is not the "normal" behaviour, isn't it?

Best regards,
jaik

[jaik]

After around 1700 views of this topic and no answer, my question was perhaps a bit vague, so let me re-ask it in a really simple way:

Is it a common behaviour, that the Razberry and the POPP plug-in-dimmer are not able to communicate over a distance of more than 3 meters if there is a small wall in-between?

I also used the last days to re-install the razberry several times, but the bahviour stayed the same...

Cheers,
jaik

[Edit] Another strange behaviour from my point of view: In a radius of 3 meters, I put the POPP device into several power sockets. When I put it into a socket, where the razberry and POPP device have nearly "eye-contact", I'm still not able to remote control the POPP device via Razberry's web interface. But when I manually switch the POPP device on and off (by pressing the button on the devices), the status change is recognized by the razberry and displayed in the Expert UI. For being honest, I'm a bit lost here and would really appreciate any help/ideas...

[jonespm]

I cannot offer any help in solving the problem, but I am experiencing the same issue. I have a heating controller and wall thermostat that only communicate reliably with my z-wave device if they are less than 4m (approx) from it.

I have read other people's blog posts which refers to this issue, so can anyone else who is experiencing this issue please post here with any clues, steps to solve it, etc.

[pofs]

Another strange behaviour from my point of view: In a radius of 3 meters, I put the POPP device into several power sockets. When I put it into a socket, where the razberry and POPP device have nearly "eye-contact", I'm still not able to remote control the POPP device via Razberry's web interface. But when I manually switch the POPP device on and off (by pressing the button on the devices), the status change is recognized by the razberry and displayed in the Expert UI. For being honest, I'm a bit lost here and would really appreciate any help/ideas...

This might happen because your device transmitter is more powerful than its receiver, so there's enough signal strength to send a report, but not enough sensitivity to receive a command. Probably your device is having some troubles with antenna.

I don't have RaZberry, but I've got a USB stick with exactly the same board inside. It doesn't have any troubles communicating devices (wall plug, motion sensor) at a ~10 meters distance behind the wall. So, assuming your RaZberry antenna is not damaged, I doubt there's a problem on its end.

Is it the only device having troubles communicating with RaZberry? Or all your devices are like that?
Also make sure both your device and RaZberry are using the same radio frequency. Just in case

Also, if you're having more devices than just POPP and RaZberry in your network, try to update routes after moving your POPP. Probably it uses some sub-optimal route to send data.