ControlThink Forums

I created a small application which tests the average response times of various Z-Wave devices. 

Could I get a few people to volunteer to run the tool and post their results here?  Post if you're interested.

Thank you,

Chris

I am interested. 

Chris,

I am using the ACT stuff. I bought this when Zwave came out. Where is a good place to get the intermatic stuff? I am willing to try a few of those. I am interested in the outdoor relay device but if you have it already does it respond quickly? The ACT relay switch is slow. It is not your SDK or ZWave that is the hold up. I still would like the TurnOn_NoWait because I can queue up the commands quicker. Also I use ACT USB controller for commands. Looks like you may be a little ahead of the game because we are waiting for new hardware. Maybe next Christmas.

Tom

I bet you have hard coded a five second timeout for getting a response from a device turning on or off. My remote switch where I can turn on/off the LED takes 5 secs to turn on and another 5 to turn off. I know it is the switch that is at fault here because it probably does not respond to state inquiry. My relay switches and dimmers will do 30 complete on and offs in 4-5 seconds so I consider that pretty good. I have not tried doing several at the same time. When you add the asynchrounous on / off though I will try it.

Thanks
Tom

Tombo wrote:

I am using the ACT stuff. I bought this when Zwave came out. Where is a good place to get the intermatic stuff? I am willing to try a few of those. I am interested in the outdoor relay device but if you have it already does it respond quickly? The ACT relay switch is slow. It is not your SDK or ZWave that is the hold up. I still would like the TurnOn_NoWait because I can queue up the commands quicker. Also I use ACT USB controller for commands. Looks like you may be a little ahead of the game because we are waiting for new hardware. Maybe next Christmas.

Tom,

All of the Intermatic devices are very fast.  They're even faster with the new firmware in the Intermatic USB Z-Wave stick.  We have a few of the outdoor modules in the lab, and they scream.  If you send them on/off commands 10-20 times a second, they'll actually turn on and off in sync with the commands :)

For Intermatic 300 watt dimmer switches, I would contact Brian at tech-home.com.  For Intermatic appliance modules (HA04C), visit:
http://www.homeseer.com/products/hardware/z-wave_hardware.htm

:)

Tombo wrote:

I bet you have hard coded a five second timeout for getting a response from a device turning on or off. My remote switch where I can turn on/off the LED takes 5 secs to turn on and another 5 to turn off. I know it is the switch that is at fault here because it probably does not respond to state inquiry. My relay switches and dimmers will do 30 complete on and offs in 4-5 seconds so I consider that pretty good. I have not tried doing several at the same time. When you add the asynchrounous on / off though I will try it.

You are very correct about the 5 second timeout.  We may choose to tweak that further in the future, but 5 seconds seems like more than a reasonable amount of time to wait for a level update report (after the switch has already acknowledged our request).  You should be seeing an instant "turn on" or "turn off" of the light, though--it should just take a few moments for the call to return.

Did you know that you can create a function in your own code to do the async on/off yourself?  It should just take a few minutes to write (using a threadpool thread to launch a sub with your parameters).  If you wanted, we could write you an example of how to do that :)

Chris

Here is a snippet I use to do asyn commands just in case anyone else needed it. I wanted to do a rapid fire on and off sequence without waiting so the following worked for me.

TurnOn is Synchronous and TurnOn_NoWait is what you call to request the command and return immediately to the caller.

declare a delegate in your class

public delegate bool CommandAsyncMethodCaller();


//////////////////////////////////
public bool TurnOn()
{
mError = "";
if (mDevice == null)
return false;
try
{
mDevice.PowerOn();
return true;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
mError = ex.Message + " Device On Failed!";
}
return false;
}

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
public bool TurnOn_NoWait()
{
mError = "";
if (mDevice == null)
return false;
try
{
// Create the delegate.
CommandAsyncMethodCaller caller = new CommandAsyncMethodCaller(TurnOn);
// Initiate the asychronous call.
IAsyncResult result = caller.BeginInvoke(new AsyncCallback(TurnOnCallbackMethod), caller);
return true;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
mError = ex.Message + " Device On Failed!";
}
return false;
}

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Callback method must have the same signature as the
// AsyncCallback delegate.
public void TurnOnCallbackMethod(IAsyncResult ar)
{
// Retrieve the delegate.
CommandAsyncMethodCaller caller = (CommandAsyncMethodCaller)ar.AsyncState;
// Call EndInvoke to retrieve the results.
bool bResult = caller.EndInvoke(ar);
}

Tom,

Very nice. You've got some great coding skills there :) 

The sample you provided could also be really useful to asynchronously control just about anything--including changing thermostat setpoints, etc.

Chris

I would like to..

My testing will have an issue because of the ACT thermostat but curious as well.

 

Brian, all:

Here's a build of the "Response Speed" test tool.  This will enumerate through all your devices, checking their level 5 times each, and will give you the speed results.  This is a command line program.

To use this with a "serial port" Z-Wave controller, simply use the /com4 command-line parameter.

This is licensed with the SDK, and is not for distribution.  Thanks :)

Chris

Here are my results:

Legend:
1 = HA03
2 = HA03
3 = HA03
4 = HA03
5 = Static Controller
6 = Controller
7 = HA02
8 = HA06
9 = HA06
10 = HA06
11 = HA06
12 =  ZTT000

Attached are the results from ZwaveEnumCS and ResponseTime

DrRick,

Those response times are interesting.  What kind of handheld controller do you have?  What kind of static controller (your USB/Serial computer interface) do you have?  I'm going to guess that you have an ACT remote and an ACT PC controller, and that the PC controller is acting as Secondary.

If your USB/RS232 controller is Primary, could you run a Controller.RediscoverDevice() on each of your devices, and let us know if your response times increase?

Average 480ms response times for a double request/response cycle isn't bad in the world of home automation, but I'd like to see that cut in half or more for your system.

By the way, is there anything peculiar about nodes 8 or (especially) 3?

Chris

DrRick wrote:

Here are my results: ... Attached are the results from ZwaveEnumCS and ResponseTime

Node 3 is the one farthest away.  Nothing odd about Node 8 that I can think of.  My network was set up pretty  haphazard and thus the routing could be really messed up...

My controllers are:
 - The primary controller is the HA07
 - I also have a HA09 secondary controller
 - And the ACT USB controller

The ACT USB is not the primary controller so I don't think I can do the Rediscover.

Here are my response times. Act usb controller. Device 5 is the remote switch and device 7 is the furthest away and probably requires two hops.

Tom

Newbie in here my first post , neat test program Chris. Here are the results for my system.

22 devices : Act controller, 1 rcs zstat, 5 act and the rest are intermatic.

Darrell

Wow, those times are much higher than the rest of ours.  Do you use ThinkEssentials?  Between the SDK and ThinkEssentials you should be able to determine why you network is so slow.  Mine was a little slow at first and had a ton of failures and I found that I had phantom devices on the network and some device which were bad.  I also notice that you are going from device 21 to 64 which hints to me that you have removed your devices many times from your network and re-added them. 

If you have a laptop you may want to consider using your PC Controller as the primary for the most control over the network and the start from scratch with your network.  It just seems to me that those times are way too high and you can do better.