Be wary of only a single repeater because if it ever fauls then everuthing talking back through it will go down leaving you unprotected.

also test it in advance, Texecom is good but getting it to work on its maximum range is always going to be dodgy and if there is problems it will be sods law they only turn up once you've left thinking all is fine !

I thought if it fails it would hope to the next device even if it's weak signal

It will but if you imagine a shed with a MC and a PIR hopping through a MC down the path and it gets lost, the devices in the shed are both lost.

if your going to use a device as a booster then use 2 and position them so you have two devices to route back to the 8 / 32xpw

If you have something way down the garden that needs to bounce off a device, then its better to have two devices somewhere between rather than just one  so if one goes down the other is still available.

 

You don't need to have mesh established to get a signal strength, but if the device cant report back to the panel it isn't going to be much good to you.

get the signal strength of one device that's learned to the panel and keep retesting it so you know where it drops off the panel get the second device learned on, place the system in commissioning mode and walk out past the other device and test it.

 

I prefer viewing ricochet monitor on the laptop to see when its complete rather than timing it for completion.