Aeotec Range Extender 6, Zwave Extender, Z-Wave Plus Repeater, 2 Pack

Ridiculously expensive. Just like the rest of HA IoT junk. Running smart lock(s)? Unfortunately, virtually a requirement that you have at least one. Used on SmartThings v3 and Hubitat Elevation C-5.There are a zillion reviews on this product that all say the same thing so I'm not going to repeat it. The product works. It does what the advertising says its supposed to do. No, there's no obvious way to tell if its working. You just have to trust that it is. No, none of the hub manufacture's apparently have any interest in exposing these devices to the users. You just have to install the device correctly and know that it will do what its supposed to do. Yea, welcome to the world of technology. PFM :rolleyes:After a bunch of research over the last 5 months, what people seem to be primarily using these for: smart door locks. Since that's the only reason I have the 6 I do, that's what I'll focus on.I have a large ranch w/ a partial unfinished basement. Three door locks located at opposite compass points with the hub dead in the middle. The hub is in the basement, 2 locks on the main floor. Plenty of concrete, glass, metal duct-work and electrical interference from wiring.Problem: completely unreliable behavior. A gross understatement.Under SmartThings, I had 90-95% reliable behavior. Under Hubitat that went down to maybe 20-30%. Irrespective of which hub, less than 100% is unacceptable. Would you accept getting locked out of your house even 5% of the time you tried to use the door lock? No, of course not. Irrespective of which hub, stuff was not working.I purchased two extenders several months ago. Read reams of forum posts and documentation from Samsung and Hubitat. The overwhelming majority of which can be reduced to finger-pointing by either Samsung or Hubitat and their respective devotees (fanboys) at the smart lock maker. Since my locks worked almost perfectly on SmartThings, I was unwilling to swallow the swill Hubitat was shoveling and no way was I going to dump almost $1000 dollars of locks so I could spend even more on something they themselves refuse to guarantee will work 100% of the time. So, what did I get out months of research? Absolutely no inclination to call Hubitat tech support, I can guarantee that.But, I did find 5 maybe 6 forum posts of people having the EXACT SAME same problems in the exact same sequence who may have stumbled upon a solution. I'm not going to go into the gritty details because that would take pages.The short explanation: encryption & beaming. These are two things that z-wave plus locks use and absolutely need in some cases to function properly. I paired my locks in both unsecured mode and secure and I can definitely tell you they were worse in unsecured mode both in SmartThings and Hubitat. Beaming has to do with getting data back and forth from the hub to the lock. AFAIKT absolutely nothing else uses beaming except locks. Do you absolutely need it? Yes. No. Maybe. Depends. My SmartThings hub while mounted close to the locks had no issues. My Hubitat ... barely functional half the time and broke the rest.I have a rock solid, well knit z-wave plus network. This the hub and forum people will tell you is 'all you need'. I'm here to tell you that is a load of BS. Relocate your hub closer to the locks they'll say. Seriously? Why don't you just tell me to move the locks closer to the hub. Oh, wait, I know, I should just buy a smaller house. :rolleyes:In my experience, IMHO, what you need are properly paired extenders. Not just properly paired, but the proper NUMBER of properly paired extenders. All these claims of 30, 60, 120, 2M feet range? Also BS. Radio waves are affected by absolutely everything between the lock and the hub. I doesn't make any difference if the lock and hub are 10' apart if they're separated by 5' of concrete and rebar.What I did: I pulled out my original two extenders and re-paired them - making SURE - they paired securely (something I never could do, BTW, with SmartThings v3) with the Hubitat hub. I then put them between the hub and the two problem test lock - about half way between hub and lock. My locks were already paired securely so I didn't do anything with them (except replace almost dead batteries in one). BTW, these are two different model locks. I then ran z-wave repair. A couple times over a week or so.AMAZING! That was enough to get the two locks up to probably 60%. Believe me, a big jump! So, I purchased two more extenders. Lather, rinse, repeat. This time I moved the extenders so they were about 1/3 and 2/3 with the one closest to the lock as close to the lock as possible. That turned out to be 10" for one and 6' for the other. Again, z-wave repair a couple times over a week or so.More than one z-wave repair was probably unnecessary as it was blatantly obvious things were working correctly very soon after the first rebuild. I've since installed a fifth 3' from the third lock and haven't had a problem with any of the three locks since.There are entire threads of posts by 'experts' that will explain ad nauseam why this is totally impossible, it doesn't work like this, encryption isn't necessary or even, in fact, 'bad', or that extenders are 'totally unnecessary' nowadays because everything is a repeater and we're just imagining things. I've even run across quite a few posts stating that extenders are outdated, antiquated, useless technology in the now of incredible, amazing new technology that does 'it all'. Yea, well, my stuff now works now, so I guess I'll keep using the old bustedness and leave them to their new hotness.The important points: The 6 does encryption and beaming. Important! Make ABSOLUTELY SURE you pair your locks and your extenders in secure mode no matter what anyone else tells you. I never did repair my locks after (re)installing the 5 extenders, but DO NOT forget to run z-wave repair. Experiment with the number of extenders and their placement. What works is entirely dependent on your environment. That may be 1 or 5 or .... The distance of the first from the lock - in theory, on the face - should make a difference and I would still recommend getting the first one as close to the lock as practical. In practice, however, I still have 10", 3' and 6' and all three locks are working flawlessly.Definitely happy with the product. It makes my locks work. :) :)

First off I got this thing because I have Z-Wave devices all over my house. One in particular was my Smart Lock which kept draining batteries repeatedly every 2 weeks. I called the vendor I asked for support on that. The vendor kept saying you have to get closer to your hub. I didn't want to buy another hub to have to manage and so I bought these extenders which work great. Easy to set up with smart things application and my Yale lock is now on month 3 without any battery replacement. The fact that they come in two packs. I put one in my basement as well since I have a couple of other devices there and I saw a huge return on my battery life on those devices as well. I realize there's some bad reviews on this, but if you're looking for something that doesn't require a hub easy to plug in, I strongly suggest this device.

What can I say about these repeaters. When I started my journey into home automation, I was only looking to boost my signal into the far reaches of my home. You know, provide some better coverage for door locks, door sensors, and maybe my robot girlfriend. When there arrived I was super stoked! I was so excited I tore open the package and threw to remnants to the floor relegating to the universe of feline playthings. As I opened the box it was as if the light of the gods themselves was shining upon me. Reaching in I carefully removed one of the little precious guys from their ever so lovingly crafted nest. I slowly inspected the device and before plugging it in to it's new home I kissed it softly. You can imagine my surprise when the LED started blinking indicating the device had come to life. IT'S ALIVE, ALIVE!!!, I exclaimed as I placed my ZWave controller in secure device pairing mode and pressed the button on the repeater to include the device in the network. It was at this moment, I knew I messed up. The LED started blinking green, the house started shaking, and the couch started to blur. Yes, blur. Reality itself was bending all around me. Frightened, I looked at the Aeotec Box again and DAMN!!! I didn't buy ZWave repeaters, I bout Z-Universe repeaters. Now that I had universe Z flooding into my home, what was I t do? Well... I just sat right down, had a beer, and felt sorry for myself. No really, these things are great. My new friend, Xylogie agrees!

Easy and intuitive setup.

a must for your zwave network

Was having some Z-Wave networking issues with some of my sensors that were further away from the Hubitat and not within range of any of the other Z-Wave repeaters (Light Switches, etc...). Went ahead and purchased these Aeotec Repeaters and they've done a great job and am getting very good responsiveness out of the sensors that were previously out of range. Prior to installing Aeotec Extenders, was getting many false positives out of the motion sensors.If you have many battery powered Z-Wave devices recommend that you build out your Z-Wave Mesh Network and buy the two pack Aeotec Extenders or at least pair with other Z-Wave Light Switches or Plug-in devices that also double as repeaters. For the Hubitat, you'll need to go download some drivers from the Hubitat Community for the Aeotec Extenders so that they are fully enabled and once installed on your hub you should also rebuild your Z-Wave Network to ensure that they are a part of the Mesh.Overall, used for a few weeks and no trouble on the Z-Wave Mesh Network since installation.

Needed my vera HA system to control an outlet in my detached garage about 120 ft away. Put one extender in the house on the garage side and the other in the garage on the house side. It created a zwave broadcast area extended to inside my garage and works flawlessly.

The extenders I chose were unfortunately not capatible with the wifi system I have. Obviously I needed more research to obtain the appropriate extenders. I cannot provide any pertinent info for reviewers except more research is required.

Ayuda mucho a la cobertura, te amplia bastante el rango de señal

It doesn’t work at all sadly!!!

Excelente funciona perfecto