• Thanks, I'll look into the process for using a dongle BT receiver on the Pi-Z-W.

    Adding that would probably be the quickest and most effective solution in my specific case. Doing a mesh type model might be a good theoretical exercise for me to learn more but to get running quickly the antenna is probably easiest.

    I think I am right on the edge. When I tried the same system model using a Pi-4 (more capacity than needed for this simple scenario) it seemed to perform a bit better. Maybe the Pi-4 internal antenna is just different enough from the Pi-Z to give me that little extra margin I needed.

    Then again, a Pi-z with antenna might be equal in price to a Pi-4. Hmmm. I'll test with the 4 again to see how often that one is out of range.