I’ve recently been in the process of migrating my Z-Wave devices from Hubitat to Home Assistant, and I’ve been curious about how the mesh network behaves in this new environment. On Hubitat, I remember having the option to configure specific devices as mesh hubs, which supposedly improved their performance as you moved further away from the main hub. I wanted to see if something similar could be done in Home Assistant or if it handled mesh networking automatically.
After some digging, it seems that Home Assistant does manage the mesh automatically, which is pretty convenient. Devices will naturally form their own mesh routes, and you can actually see this in the device statistics where it shows the ‘Last working route’ and ‘Next to last working route’. It’s interesting to see how the devices communicate through each other, almost like a relay system.
However, I did notice that as I moved further from the main Z-Wave hub, the inclusion process became slower and less reliable. This made me wonder if there was a way to manually configure certain devices to act as mesh hubs, similar to what I was used to on Hubitat. While I haven’t found a direct setting for this in Home Assistant, I did come across some community suggestions about adjusting the device’s configuration to prioritize certain nodes.
One thing I tried was manually setting up a few key devices—like a switch near my office and a dimmer in the living room—as primary mesh points. I did this by ensuring they had a strong connection to the hub and then observing how other devices connected through them. It seemed to help a bit with the slower inclusion times, though it wasn’t as seamless as I hoped.
I’d love to hear from others who have experience with Z-Wave mesh optimization in Home Assistant. Are there any specific tools or integrations that can help with this? Or maybe some advanced settings I haven’t discovered yet? I’m still learning the ropes, so any insights would be greatly appreciated!