Dignan17
posted this
19 November 2016
In general, everything is slower than I'd like. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, though. A while back I came to the conclusion that my really bad delays were being caused by the super cheap Intermatic switches that I had throughout my house. I could tell that every time I replaced one of those with a good ol WD500Z the system sped up a bit. I've swapped them all out now, but things are still slower than I'd like.
I'll hit a button on a scene controller, and a good 3 seconds later the lights will start turning on, and don't finish until about 5-10 seconds after that. That's for scenes with the largest number of devices, like my evening scene that turns on at least 12 lights on my main floor.
I've said this before, but I've been spoiled. When I first got into ZWave, I had bought a bunch of stuff from a Radioshack fire sale. I installed over a dozen GE switches and lamp modules in my condo, and controlled them with the annoying GE remotes. Configuration was a nightmare, but when it was all set up, pressing a button on those remotes resulted in an instantaneous reaction from every single light. There was zero delay and everything happened at once. Ever since then, all the ZWave controllers I've used seem to turn on the lights in sequence, so there's already a delay for most of the lights, and then it takes a second or more to get the command to start in the first place.
I don't have any motion sensors in place yet, but I'm not confident that their reaction time will be quick enough to be useful. I already have an accessory switch in my laundry room that takes anywhere from .5-1 second to turn the light on.
I'm setting the new laptop up now and I'll see if things improve. I don't know how my HP Stream compares to your Atom laptop, but I'd guess that they're similar...