Z-Wave Future....

[kfxo]

Night and day difference for me. I think I was getting a lot of interference in my media closet. Devices were very slow to respond and sometimes not at all. Switched to UZB and used a USB extender to place it a good 5 ft from the location of my pi. Now things are fast and reliable.

[rafale77]

This is what I have been suspecting too: the Razberry PCB antenna is likely not as good as the one on the UZB but most likely it is the fact that it can be located away from a lot of interference sources (the raspberry itself is likely a source)

[akbooer]

Interesting. Thanks for that. So this is just about RF performance, and ease of siting the antenna, rather than any other differences?

[rafale77]

Yes,

Technically they are based on the same chip. The uzb has an additional serial to usb interface chip and that's about it.
I did notice that the razberry has the possibility of adding an external antenna. It requires some soldering job to add a connector though. The solder pads are already there. You also would have to break off the PCB antenna or at least break off the trace connecting to it.

[Black Cat]

The UZB aerial is helictical ( it is in a Black Cat UZB, so I'll assume that they are mostly similar), superior to a copper trace.
It's radiation pattern is also superior to the polarization of a copper trace.
You could add a full wave antenna to a UZB, but you will get positive results just with a USB extender and another marked improvement if you add a Powered USB Switch.

[powisquare]

@black-cat said in Switched from RaZberry to UZB:

The UZB aerial is helictical ( it is in a Black Cat UZB, so I'll assume that they are mostly similar), superior to a copper trace.
It's radiation pattern is also superior to the polarization of a copper trace.
You could add a full wave antenna to a UZB, but you will get positive results just with a USB extender and another marked improvement if you add a Powered USB Switch.

Would you plug the dongle into the hub or at the end of the extender plugged into the hub?

Am thinking of powering the pi and a ssd with the same hub (say 15w?) - would there be any downsides to this?

[Black Cat]

Plug the UZB into the extender which plugs into the powered hub.
The idea is to supply power to the UZB not other equipment. Best practice would be to power the Pi with it's own power supply.

[chali]

@rafale77 i added 3 high gpio rizes to my rpi4b and now its -90-95db from -65-70db is really fast now, if you use the fibaro app and plugin to zway it also makes a big difference in speed.

[rafale77]

@chali

It's a great confirmation, thanks!
Note that it is not as simple as the noise: it is the signal/noise ratio that matters. Moving the antenna further from the noise source makes a big difference but the antenna on the UZB may still be more sensitive... meaning it will pick up weaker signals and have a longer range. That part I have not verified.

Note also that -95dBm = below detection limit. This was a change I requested to make the data graph cleaner. Before that the data point value would be nil or NaN and therefore distort the graph by showing a lot of step like forms not reflecting the reality.