Moving Z-Troller to a better location

[simonmason]

My Z-Troller is currently in my HA closet which probably in the worst place from a transmission perspective. I am looking to relocate it to get better transmission. I saw that someone extended the serial cable using CAT5 up to 70 feet. I thought of doing something similar. However, I recall that there was some sort of WiFi/Serial extension available but I can't find the post? Thanks.

[rmasonjr]

Yep, I used with WiFi to serial to locate my second one and it works well.
It's the global cache W2SL

[Pete]

I moved my Homeseer Z-Troller over to the 2nd floor spare bedroom connecting it to a Quatech box; working well as I placed Z-Wave devices to the periferal berms on my lot outside and they work well (testing still). Here with so much wireless stuff floating around and even using an Ubiquito AP with an Omnidirectional antenna in the attic I still have RF propagation issues. So I leave the wireless stuff to mostly just the laptops and tablets type things. HA though wired is my personal preference (that is me though and my personal opinion).

I did take it apart one day and noticed that it uses a "trace" on the board for an antenna; not needing though to modify the hardware and my 2nd floor set up works well.

[simonmason]

I like the idea of the Global Cache serial extension. I see on the Homeseer site there is a wifi unit and an ethernet unit. If I plug the Z-Troller into one of these, how do you configure homeseer to look for it? Thanks.

[rmasonjr]

HST built special code to support the GC - after it is configured, you tell it the IP and the port:

[simonmason]

That's nice. I think I will go the Global Cache route and re-position the one Z-Troller I have to a more central location and see how it goes. I have optimized the house reasonably well with the devices I have but there are a couple of outlying areas that don't work all of the time right now.

[prsmith777]

I moved my z-troller from my home automation closet to the center of the house about 100 feet. I used a Geffen USB extender over cat5e with no issues. It made a huge improvement in the reliability of my zwave network. I have 170 something nodes now.

Keep in mind that you probably will have to redo your whole network when you move the z-troller. This could take some time depending on how many nodes you have. There are guidelines on the best way to create your network, and I found that it was somewhat counter-intuitive to what I thought would be best. In a nutshell, when you rebuild things, your first nodes need to be as far away as possible from the z-troller but still have good signal. Spread these first nodes out in all directions inculding upstairs if applicable. After these are established, they will be the backbone for any nodes that may need an extra hop and are further away. Add one node at a time and optimize network after each addition, preferably three times. As you enlarge your network, optimization takes longer and longer. Good luck.

[simonmason]

I have ordered the wifi unit to give me the flexibility of moving it throughout the house.

A lot of my devices are installed so I can't easily remove them. However, I can unplug all of the plug-in modules and go from them. Thanks for the tip.

[Beltane]

Hello,

I'm trying to move my primary z-troller to another location, so I ordered the global cache wifi unit, WF2SL. When I change my main interface from "HomeSeer Z-Troller Serial" to ethernet, homeseer treats it as a secondary controller. Really what I want is this controller to be my primary controller (I only have the one) and to have it connected via wifi instead of a com port.

How do I convince homeseer HS2 2.5.0.78 to treat the same z-troller connected via a different interface as the same primary controller?

Thanks!

[rmasonjr]

Hello,

I'm trying to move my primary z-troller to another location, so I ordered the global cache wifi unit, WF2SL. When I change my main interface from "HomeSeer Z-Troller Serial" to ethernet, homeseer treats it as a secondary controller. Really what I want is this controller to be my primary controller (I only have the one) and to have it connected via wifi instead of a com port.

How do I convince homeseer HS2 2.5.0.78 to treat the same z-troller connected via a different interface as the same primary controller?

Thanks!

I think you can choose "Ethernet" and configure it that way:

[Rupp]

Hello,

I'm trying to move my primary z-troller to another location, so I ordered the global cache wifi unit, WF2SL. When I change my main interface from "HomeSeer Z-Troller Serial" to ethernet, homeseer treats it as a secondary controller. Really what I want is this controller to be my primary controller (I only have the one) and to have it connected via wifi instead of a com port.

How do I convince homeseer HS2 2.5.0.78 to treat the same z-troller connected via a different interface as the same primary controller?

Thanks!

Do you have a recent backup of your Z-Wave controller?

[Beltane]

I did exactly what rmasonjr suggested above, before I posted to the forum and HomeSeer was able to connect to the Z-Troller. However, it treated it as a secondary controller: no full optimize, no backup, etc. Z-Seer tells me when it connects that the features will be limited, because this is a secondary controller.

Rupp: Yes, I have a backup of it from today. Does your question imply that I should erase it and reset it, then move it, then try to restore it?

Thanks.

[kaldoon]

Silly question - did you reboot the HomeSeer box? Can you post the start-up log? Network port is 4999? On the WF2SL the baud rate is 115200? What firmware version is the WF2SL running?

Had this happen on primary controller one time a couple of years ago and reloaded firmware to fix it.

[Beltane]

I did reboot the system running Homeseer, half a dozen times by now.

I don't see an obvious place for the WF2SL's firmware version on its own web page.

I didn't find obvious settings for the z-troller's serial parameters so, I left them at the WF2SL's default, which is:
Multiple ports: disabled
Baud rate: 19200
Flow control: none
Stop bits: 1
Parity: none
Data bits: 8

Should I change any of the above?

Here are the logs:
4/14/2013 6:05:55 PM Startup Restoring Device Status...
4/14/2013 6:05:55 PM Z-Wave :- :- :- :- :- :- :- :- Initializing Z-Wave Interface -: -: -: -: -: -: -: -:
4/14/2013 6:05:55 PM Z-Wave Initializing Z-Wave Interface on Ethernet port: 4999 IP Address: 192.168.72.51
4/14/2013 6:05:56 PM Z-Wave Z-Wave Ethernet at IP 192.168.72.51, connected to interface ok.
4/14/2013 6:05:56 PM Z-Wave Getting node information from controller...
4/14/2013 6:06:12 PM Warning In Z-Wave init(A), no response getting initialization information.
4/14/2013 6:06:30 PM Warning In Z-Wave init(A), no response getting initialization information.
4/14/2013 6:06:30 PM Warning Trying to re-connect to Ethernet interface at IP 192.168.72.51...
4/14/2013 6:06:30 PM Z-Wave -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
4/14/2013 6:06:30 PM Z-Wave Z-Wave Ethernet at IP 192.168.72.51, connected to interface ok.
4/14/2013 6:06:30 PM Z-Wave Getting node information from controller...

I get the "no response" and "trying to re-connect" entries periodically in the logs.

Thanks again.

[vasrc]

This is telling you that it found the WF2SL (ie IP), but it couldn't talk to the Ztroller (serial). Ztroller's "talk" at 115200 baud. Try setting the WF2SL to that and it should see it (HS should retry automatically (ie without reboot) to find it.

Z