So, I’ll be the first reacting. Shortly and strongly
Indeed Z-wave is not dead at my home and as long, as I will be able to manage it, I will care for it.
From any protocol, I use here, Z-wave has proven to be most stable, most reliable, most privacy respecting and has the most possibilities.
I Z-wave and I really wish, the community will never completely abandon it in change for cheap unreliable rubbish.
Tell me, what can I, as a user do to support it, and I will do it
I’m very happy to hear, the top of HA community is not done with Z-wave…
I concur. My extensive Zwave network (60 devices) is more stable than my Zigbee network (14 devices).
At some time in the future I’d like to explore Lutron.
Different members came up to me to said that they agree. The general alliance stance is that they want to be more open, however they want to move slowly and careful. They only recently changed to be an SDO which already brought a lot of change. But don’t worry, I will keep poking
It was our pleasure to have Paulus and the gang from HA at our summit. As the Chair of the Z-Wave Alliance I am excited about the opportunities that HA and the Foundation represent. We look forward to broadening our relationship and support for the users of HA. We believe in open standards and we are working hard to continue the process to open more of the Z-Wave protocol.
I’ve always agreed with this. But, the only devices I have problems with on my network are all Z-Wave from Zooz.
Bad firmware bugs that go unfixed, the most egregious cause in-gang light switches to crash and become unresponsive to physical input. This happens to one or more switches on a regular basis and seems to be triggered by (but not limited to) power fluctuations like brown-outs or really fast power loss and recovery. Unfortunately this happens at least once a month where I live. The only way to bring these devices back online is to cut power at the breaker and then restore after 5-10 seconds.
Given that vendors making even these most basic of Z-Wave devices are disappearing, while the alliance says they’re still pushing forward, the practical implications are that the standard may as well be dead.
When I replace these switches, do I go for newer Zooz models? Search for some other vendor that isn’t Jasc? Or swap them out for Zigbee alternatives?
I’m strongly invested in ZigBee and haven’t used Z-Wave (not actively avoiding it, just keep defaulting to ZigBee).
That said, Z-Wave working over half a mile away means some project ideas I had that I thought were DOA due to their distance for ZigBee are now back on the table…
I’m looking forward to the official HA Z-Wave stick. I have 59 Z-wave devices still connected to Smarthings and have just been lazy holding out for a first party stick to connect to HA. I’ve been happy with my SkyConnect since migrating all my zigbee over from ST. It’s been far more stable!
In some world, there’s someone who has time to research this stuff.
I am 95% Z-wave (including GE/Jasco early stuff from like 2017). I have lost 1 device in that whole time, and I live in an area with 3-4 incidents a year of trees of power lines causing brownouts, plus usually one 2-3 day blackout a year.
To only lose one device in all that time is soooo opposite of your experience…I would love to see someone analyze aspects of the electrical systems, etc to see where the vulnerability really is on this stuff. Is it the devices themselves, or grounding, or relative voltage variation coming from the PoCo, or just dumb luck?
All of this indeed sounds like awesome news! Hoping this will make Z-Wave JS community grow bigger!
Uwe leads the development of the Home Assistant Z-Wave stick that we’re working on
I would suggest that Nabu Casa include a long (and shielded) USB 2.0 extension cable in the Z-Wave Controller USB dongle package with very clear instructions that users should use it to help place it further away from sources of EMI (electromagnetic interference) if they want to get the best possible user-experience out-of-the-box!
And of course, don’t forget to add a unique USB product ID to CP210x for automatic USB discovery to make the getting started user-experience even easier for beginners which can attract more people!
It was by the way also cool to hear that Silicon Labs (who makes the Z-Wave chip it will use) has also partnered with Nabu Casa to support this effort as that shoud hopefully make this the easiest way you can start using Z-Wave devices in Home Assistant:
Definitely agree with it. All my main concern about all the other protocols is the usage of the 2.4GHz. SubGHz solutions has not just fewer ‘interferences’, but has longer distance, stronger ‘wall handling’ capability, etc. Gore example, from this aspect is totally understandable why Somfy also uses subGHz solution for is IO product lineup.
I manner had any problem with my Z-Wave devices, while I had lot with my ZigBee background.
But to be honest it is not me, as a proper reference, as I have only ~10-10 devices from each ‘side’… (Plus the mentioned Somfy - IO shutters, and 2 WiFi plug/socket which were just some early experimental thingies)
The only downside of the subGHz solution is the bandwidth… but for usual home automated devices (lamps, switches, locks, valves, etc. this could be not problem, as they usually do not want to see 4K movies on their network)
I have a mix of Z-Wave and ZigBee with no strong preference for either, it usually comes down to the other features of the device. And both have been reliable here. I am not in a 2.4 GHz saturated environment, so I haven’t had issues related to that. And Matter is still a wait and see for me as of now. And I have no need or any urgency to jump into that.
What is VERY intriguing to me is Z-Wave Long Range. It looks like it can fill a role for more distant items beyond the range of standard Z-Wave or ZigBee. As of now I have given up any hope that the LoRa based YoLink system will ever be usable in a truly cloud free way. They have totally dropped the ball on that, and have done nothing but make vague promises for over 2 years now. So my next longer range project will take a close look at Z-Wave Long Range.
I’m struggling with our Zooz devices, too. Most of the time, I can just reset the device (via the breaker), and it’ll come back up and work without issue for a long time.
But it doesn’t seem like the physical switch should ever fail. I’ve had issues with both toggle and dimmer switches.
I’ve also struggled hard with their devices and even slightly higher loads. For example, they sell a really neat 5-plug extension cord, where each socket is independently controllable. But it can’t support anything useful. My printer draws too much, the 3D printer is way too much, etc. I’m not sure what the product is intended for, because it’s limited to very light loads, and I don’t know when you’d ever want to remotely control 5 light loads from the same area.
I don’t understand why everything non-dimmable isn’t using an air-gapped relay. If it was, then you’d be limited to the normal in-wall amperage.
I’ve always been a big fan of Zooz (56 of my 65 Z-Wave devices are Zooz!), but I’m not sure they are going to hold up for the long term. They do have good support, at least.
I love z-wave. If it weren’t there 15 years ago I would not have statted with domotica at that time. Wanted to have automatic blind switches only, and at that time I bought zwave.me wall switches (some of them still work today!)
Then I discovered they could be controlled remote and the domotica story began…
Vera Micasaverde was my 1st zwave controller with many addons.
Then 4 or 5 years I wanted to integrate more devices and vera was not fit for it anymore… thus Vera was integrated in Homeassistant (so I dicovered HA ).
Slowly migrated from Vera to OpenZwave and ran 1 year dual. OpenZwave was high touch and lots of reboots…
And then finally Z-WAVE JS
It has never been so steady ever since I stated using Z-WAVE JS
Having over 80 devices of all kind of brands, ages, battery/mains.
I love it!
Edit: my Z2M network with 37 devices isn’t as stable as my zwave is. Frequently philips hue white & color dropvif the nework and power cycle is the only way to being them back.
And obviously it’s always dangerous to say “these things out loud” lets hope it now remains stable🤞
I have many Z-wave and Zigbee devices linked to Home Asssistant and I can say with confidence z-wave is way more reliable for me than Zigbee. This might be related to the crowded zigbee frequencies in our densely populated area.
For me an important Z-wave feature is the ability to create associations, as well as be able to connect these same devices to Home Assistant. If Home Assistant is down, I can still control my devices wirelessly.
The fact that this is implemented in such a way that all brands handle this perfectly is great. Also the fact that you can easily edit and inspect associations is great. Similar concepts for Zigbee have always proved to be way less universal and hard to get right.
I have but few Matter devices. The technology is still in its infancy, so that is hard to compare. But to have Thread using the same frequencies as Zigbee is not a good thing for me.
I love Zwave! I use it nearly exclusively in my home. It’s incredibly reliable, especially thanks to Zwave JS. I’m so glad to hear the future continues to look bright for Zwave.
I’ve been using ZWave for oh probably a decade now… before HA came along… I’m still adding devices here and there. Thank you HA, ZwaveJS/ZWaveJS-UI team
Huge shout out to the Zwave JS team! I have been using zwave for over 10 years.
Back then I would spend hours a week managing and troubleshooting issues.
Fast forward to today, I haven’t visited my ZwaveJS UI for a few months as everything is working so well!
for availability of light bulbs. Combining smart switches and bulbs with varying protocols is a mess for usability. Unavailability of zwave bulbs in varying form factors has killed my continued adoption of smart switches, since I don’t want to try and build out a zigbee mesh.
I currently have 25 Z-Wave devices and my Z-Wave network is rock solid and super fast, definitely my most reliable equipment. I’m glad the technology isn’t going away anytime soon.
I’ve never seen a Zooz zwave device that worked well to be honest. I just threw one away the other day that has always been a pain and will never purchase the brand again.
I have about an even mix of zwave & zigbee and I have pretty much zero problems with zwave. I have more issues with battery powered zigbee devices dropping off the network occassionally. And then I need to do a re-inclusion on them to get them back running. But even that isn’t a lot.
But zigbee is definitely less stable than zwave. And that includes Zooz devices, too. the ones I have have never given me any issues at all.
My smart home is based on z-wave and ESPHome. Big fan of z-wave but here in Europe manufacturers have all but stopped introducing new z-wave devices (except for shelly who have bought Qubino and have been introducing replacements of the Qubino devices under their own name).
I honestly have no clue whether there will be new z-wave devices here in Europe? Did the alliance discuss new products being released (and not only in the US)?
Long range devices would be so cool to be able to do some projects in my garden and even my parent’s house nearby.
And with the higher transmission power here in Europe the potential seems great…
So far Matter devices I’ve seen are unconvincing as many of the configuration parameters of e.g. a Matter lock can only be set using their proprietary app, while only basic things like open/close can be done over Matter. So when the company goes bankrupt then the lock loses much of it s functionality. Not sure whether it’s due to using WiFi as the protocol and whether it will be better with thread protocol devices. With z-wave all parameters can be configured without the need for a proprietary app.
At some point Zooz will have to take Home assistant seriously. I have a firmware issue with them and they immediately blamed HA. I proved to them it was not HA and in fact their firmware, didn’t get a response after that.
I started with Z-Wave with much enthusiasm, but have moved to Zigbee. I was an early adopter and paid a premium for pretty average devices. OZW was a struggle with every update. ZWaveJS improved support, but it couldn’t address the firmware bugs, poor battery life and little to no documentation.
Z-Wave maybe technically superior, but is losing market share due to price. Equivalent Zigbee devices are 1/3 the price and there’s a bigger range of devices on the market. Community knowledge and developer support is superior too, which is a reflection of the strong adoption.
ATM Z-Wave is just too closed. Manufactures aren’t interesting in support/compatibility outside their range. Sure it’s getting better, but way too slowly.
It feels like the Z-Wave alliance is repeating the mistakes of Sony and Betamax, destined to be a niche market.
Add tot that the option off “direct association” although zwave js does not support it (?), JS UI seems to?
Zigbee has some sort of groups but I never got it working as wanted. Zwave’s direct association worked well even 10 years ago but my js install does not seem to support it (?).
Maybe there’s an option to switch more easy from js to ui in the future. I know there’s a manual on the forum but it’s very lengthy and I can’t afford any downtime risc.
What can I do to encourage vendors to ship multiple region versions of their devices? Love my Z-Wave devices, but in Australia, there are so few options to choose from, most running 500 series.
However, regarding to the Fibaro part This is the reason why I banned Fibaro product from my home automation setup as this approach gives also a sneak peak of how much Fibaro cares about security of their own hardware in non Fibaro setups when vulnerabilities are found
On the other side the Fibaro part shouldn’t be in the list as this is Fibaro’s decision and the Z-wave alliance shouldn’t be blamed for it (as putting a vendor lock by keeping the firmware hidden isn’t part of Z-wave regulations)
Just FYI this is possible in Z2M as well, it’s called binding there.
(Not attempting to promote Z2M over ZWaveJS btw, I use both and think both are great. 78 Zigbee devices in Z2M and 130 ZWave devices in ZWaveJS on my networks.)
I know it is, possibly better working than in ZHA, where no one seems to get it working. But the problem is that not all brands implement it, or do not implement it the same, so compatibility is a hit or miss. Also many people seem to experience problems where remotes get linked to all lights unexpectedly. Also the linking possibilities based on proximity are silly imho, way to risky to get wrong.
That to me is the only big negative with Zwave devices.
It’s my understanding that if you run out of node id’s at the end then the controller just wraps around to the beginning and starts using available node ids from there.
I could of course be wrong but at least that’s my understanding.
Well, another big negative is that there is no global sub-1GHz freqency it have been able to use so manufacturs have not been able to sell the exact same device hardware worldwide. They previously had to make different hardware models for various RF regions and now with latest multi-frequency radio SoCs so they still have to make a certify different firmware for various RF regions. Having to manufacture different devices for various regions is also another reason why Z-Wave devices cost more.
Not really a big negative for me personally. I really don’t care what the manufacturer needs to do to get the product to my door. Obviously that likely feeds back into the price so of course that’s a consideration.
Regarding price, is Z-Wave technically more expensive to implement, or could some of the added costs be in licensing overhead? In other words, could making it more open bring the price down?
You make a good point. Take HA for example. There are an incredible number of different components, add-ons, integrations and god knows what else. Volunteers develop things which others come to depend on, then abandon them. If you use even a fraction of what’s available, you are guaranteed to have an ongoing maintenance nightmare.
I just spent the last 2 days recovering from a combination of an abandoned integration, with four updates, two downgrades and re-updates, a restore from backup, some intense debugging and one massively stupid mistake I made myself. Yet still, I remain a fan.
For the record, Zigbee (ZHA) has been in that “it just works” mode for me for over 5 years. Totally plug-and-play. It’s the one thing I never have to mess with, configure or debug. Admittedly I only have 23 devices and they’re simple things like plugs, switches and energy-monitoring smart plugs. I’ve heard it gets worse when you start using more complex functionality.
ZWave unfortunately will lose first due to price (openness - is that a word ?). ZigBee is currently + in Europe anyway.
However eventually Matter/Thread will win although currently ‘beta and early days’, with teething issues, quite expectedly. But work through those through its early entry and if you need stability then wait a while. I have confidence it’s going to be good.
But please don’t stand RF historic ‘Z’ ground out of stubbornness or past investment. Technology is evolving, help the HA infrastructure to get a great standard going forward with Thread/Matter. Continue to use ‘Z’ until you can transition to Matter/Thread when it’s reliable, functional and feature supportive for you.
All RF based networks have, and will continue to have issues of varying reliability and the solid solution will always be bus/wired based. However IP based is pretty solid or can be architected to be so,
Thread/Matter for the win and ZWave for the early bath.
Disagree strongly that IP based is the solution, and even more so wired. IP based has all kinds of security implications when devices stop getting security updates for the firmware. With a hub controlling Z-wave devices, only the hub itself has to be patched.
Wired isn’t going to be the solution for a variety of applications like water sensors, motion sensors for the mailbox, door sensors. Wired has its uses, of course, for things like switches, but we’re talking about power, not communication. Running ethernet wiring to each of the 230+ smart home devices I already have would be utter madness. It’s unaffordable enough to do one run for all 17 rooms.
Z-wave uses RF and is pretty good, but still not the best. I have found Yolink has the best wireless range. Z-wave motion sensors in my mailbox don’t reach, but Yolink motion sensor does.
I have a mix of Wifi, Z-Wave, Yolink and Zigbee devices. With Home Assistant, there is no reason to restrict oneself to a single standard.
What is your reference for Zigbee devices only being ”one or two bucks cheaper” than Z-Wave devices?
In my experince Z-Wave devices cost a lot more than Zigbee devices. I live in the European Union and still use mosty Z-Wave devices (which all more or less just work since started buying more then 10-years ago), but I also bought loads of Zigbee devices for myself + others and on average I estimate that I paid around 3-times higher price or more for each mains-powered Z-Wave device, and around 4-times more for battery-powered Z-Wave device on average.
E.g. a good Z-Wave plug like the one from Fibaro cost €50, and a Z-Wave dimmer module like the one from Qubino cost around €60 in Europe, and Zigbee battery-operated devices costing less than €10 per device and Z-Wave battery-operated devices costing around €40 on average.
I do however not think a direct comparison is fair because both hardware and firmware build quality of all Z-Wave devices have been much higher, probably due to most Z-Wave devices I bought has been designed and/or manufactured in Europe, while most Zigbee devices I use have been designed and/or manufactures in China.
Please don’t get me wrong, I have been willing to pay a premium for Z-Wave devices because of their higher quality reliability, but I definitely think the Z-Wave higher cost is prohibitive which makes less manufacturers adopt the standard and thus the userbase has suffered.
For me, I personally have had many Chinese Zigbee devices fail on me due to hardware or firmware faults (even though I do have a very solid Zigbee network mesh), so I therefore now at least try to avoid using Chinese Zigbee devices in automations where individual devices ”need to work”, because I do not trust such devices to work for sure.
I can pick up (decent, not Tuya) door/window sensors for about £9 each for Zigbee, or from about £30 for Z-Wave.
Other sensors have similar disparity, though plugs tend to be closer - £20 or so for decent Zigbee plugs and from about £40 for Z-Wave.
Yes, here it costs more than twice as much to go Z-Wave over Zigbee. That’s why I switched when I wanted to put a sensor on every exterior window.
Z-Wave is great in that there’s an actual standard, and standards testing. I had a better experience with things like Association than Zigbee’s Binding, and I never bought a duff Z-Wave device. However I just don’t have deep enough pockets to buy as many Z-Wave devices as I have Zigbee ones.
I have recently ditched my entire Z-Wave setup and moved to Zigbee. The key reason was cost! Zigbee devices typically cost 5 times less in my experience. My Zigbee network is also more stable and reacts much faster than my old Z-Wave setup.
I, too shy away from IP devices. In addition to your reasons, it’s just harder to find IP devices which support fully local control. When I need one, I have no problem building my own in ESPHome, thereby eliminating most of these problems. I can choose to update the firmware on my schedule, if needed.
But, honestly, once I’ve got a device which turns on a light, sends me a signal when my sump pump comes on, or whatever, I don’t need or want any more firmware updates. I want it to keep doing what it’s been doing, without any maintenance overhead on my part.
This feeds into one problem you mentioned with IP-based devices, since those are potentially in a more hostile security environment, and new vulnerabilities can be identified in firmware which otherwise works just fine.
Yeah agreed. The last thing I need is more IP devices on my home network, especially wireless devices creating more wireless congestion.
I believe Thread/Matter has ways to communicate directly on it’s own network with only certain devices acting as border gateways but so far every Matter device I have tested is just another WiFi device I have to contend with.
Not to knock Thread/Matter, I know it’s in the early days still, but it’s gonna take years longer to mature before I am ready to replace tried and tested solutions like Zigbee and ZWave which have many years under their belt.
big fan of zwave - still using inwall zwave modules from various manufacturers here in Australia. many are from 2012… so 12years old… thats about $8 per year per device… so cost is not really a big thing for me if its going to last. My zigbee sensors are not only far less reliable, but probably more expensive given the batteries they have burned up… I can still buy Zwave modules and will continue to use them for all in-wall devices… trusted and work well.
Do battery-powered Z-Wave devices really last that much longer on one battery? My Zigbee temperature and door sensors go for 6-12 months on one of those inexpensive button batteries. It seems to me I’d have to burn through them very quickly to justify spending $96 on each device, instead of the $10-$20 I’ve been spending on Zigbee devices.
I’m not knocking Z-Wave. I just want to make sure we’re making a fair comparison.
No they don’t in my opinion. I have Aeotec recessed door sensors in every door and some barely last a month on a CR2, and these aren’t high traffic doors, one of them rarely ever closes. My Zooz ZSE40 do last a long time on a CR123 but my ZSE41/42/43 all have poor battery life on CR2032 batteries
Also not knocking ZWave but anyone is gonna have a hard time convincing most people $8/year for 8 years is a good price when a $10-20 solution exists. ZWave is expensive, period. Do you get what you pay for? Sometimes yes. But I have some great Zigbee devices, and some absolutely terrible ZWave devices. It’s not across the board on either side, it’s up to the manufacturer to make their products not suck.
You didn’t mention how big your Z-Wave network is, but if you like Z-Wave then maybe start by replacing 1 or 2 of these problematic devices with some from a different mfr., to see if the problem persists (which might indicate some wiring, power, or other issue). It’s also more manageable to do one at a time.
As someone who prefers Zigbee[0], I can tell you that’s no panacea, either. Mostly everything works fairly reliably, however I currently have a few sensors dropping off which I am trying to diagnose at the moment, and I have read similar threads from others.
Great discussion, everyone! I read through the whole thread carefully. I really hope that @Z-Wave-Chair did, too!
The earlier posts almost convinced me to jump off the Zigbee bandwagon and onto the Z-Wave one.
But then the later posts reminded me that Z-Wave devices are just too expensive. I can buy several Zigbee devices for the same money. If some of them don’t work out, I figure I am still way ahead.
The switch I’m having the most problems with right now is the Zen27 dimmer in my dining room. The issues in general were common to this model and Zen26 (non-dimmer) of which I have maybe 10.
Sometime in the past month or two, I saw an alert in HA about a firmware update for the Zen26 units. What’s most interesting is that when researching, the release date for the advertised update version was a year or two in the past - yet I’d received firmware files directly from Zooz during that time that were reporting as an older release #. I applied the updates directly from the UI and I believe it’s improved the crashing situations on them.
There wasn’t an update for the Zen27 which is likely why now I’m seeing that one crap out most often. Keeping an eye on the entire network nonetheless. If Nabu release their own controller, I’ll change over to that. At the moment I’m using a Zooz 710 I believe.
Only 25 Z-Wave devices, mostly in-wall switches/dimmers, North-American “Decora” style. In addition I have two in-door magentic sensors and a few plug modules, including one heavy-duty from Zooz which I use for my espresso machine.
I’ve also got 35 Zigbee devices. I haven’t added a Z-Wave device in a few years, as everything I’ve added recently has been module-based switches (to put into things) or wall/door/window mounted sensors and remote buttons. I’ve gone Zigbee for all this stuff and it’s worked very well - the prices have been a fraction of Z-Wave alternatives and there are at least 10-20 times more options/variety (or more).
Every Matter device is IP based and it’s pretty obvious that while off to a slow start, it’s the way forward for most companies producing consumer-facing gear.
Z-Wave is like 25 years old. How much slower do they want to move? We’ll be controlling devices with our minds soon.
There must be a serious price discrepancy between the US and Europe with Zwave.
In my experience Zwave is ALWAYS the cheaper solution and the most reliable
Sorry you guys across the pond have such poor Zwave support….but remember pretty much everyone here does Zwave and Zigbee is the expensive solution
Also all of the major US security systems use Zwave exclusively….so the number of Zwace devices here dwarfs Zigbee and gets bigger by the day. There are likely 20+ million zwave devices in the US alone thanks to the big monitoring security systems and their commitment to moving all of their sensors to Zwave over thr past decade. My security system has 20 zwave devices bound to its controller…most people probably are 10ish. Our company probably has 80,000 households and easily half of them are new enough to be using the zeave control panels
Just due to this, the number of zwave devices in use on the planet is likely an order of magnitude more than zigbee. Its probably why they want to keep the stick proprietary…its big $$$$$
Zwave already won…Europe just doesn’t known it yet
In Canada looking at smart switches, I find that maybe The z-wave ones are 10% more expensive. Not a big deal. And I love my z-wave reliability, controllability through exposed entities, range etc. The new add-on is fantastic in terms of providing information and allowing changes to the devices and the network.
I wish you were right, but given how the introduction of new z-wave products has tanked here in Europe it looks like you’re wrong…
The only silver lining is the rather cheap Z-wave offer that Shelly has been introducing (as a replacement for the products from Qubino that was taken over by Shelly).
Zwave isn’t going anywhere here for a long time…there is a reason Matter has struggled to take hold…the main market for smart products in the world is dominated by cheap consumer wifi gear and cheap zwave for hobbyists & alarm companies. Zigbee is niche here and Matter has a very uphill fight against big corps that have little real interest in changing from what already is available in mass quantities.
I expect Zwave gear will be easily available on Amazon here for another decade
Many older Z-Wave 300 and 500 series devices does not unless they use a larger lithium battery like example CR123/CR123A (which many security system devices uses), but newer generation of Z-Wave 700 and 800 devices have signifigantly better battery life than most newer Zigbee 3.0 devices I have.
It is also important to remember that both Z-Wave and Zigbee depends heavily on mesh networking technology thus battery-operated devices on a mesh network that does not have many mains-powered repeaters/routers will drain out the battery much quicker if they need to keep resending messages because of poor reception to and from the closest mains-powered repeater/router.
So always be sure to add many mains-powered repeaters/routers close to battery-powered devices to keep their batteries from draining faster than nessesary due to them having to resend messages.
Not in the consumer space. In the US, Zigbee dwarfs Z-Wave in device count, device types, retail availability and consumer purchases. It’s not even close. If someone told me Zigbee is 100x larger than Z-Wave I’d only argue that number seems low.
Two widely available brands that alone dwarf Z-Wave as a whole:
IKEA - all zigbee
Philips - all zigbee
Then you have import products. Tuya zigbee devices from 1001 brands, Aqara Xiaomi Opple, 1 million brands no one has ever heard of, etc. All zigbee. When you see something listed on Amazon, if it’s not WiFi it’s Zigbee. At Home Depot? Again, Zigbee if not WiFi.
No consumers outside of hardcore automation fans (like us) use Z-Wave at all. People using Apple Home, Google stuff, Amazon Alexa? They’re all using WiFi and Zigbee devices.
Z-Wave is so irrelevant in the consumer space in the US and Canada that if every product was taken off the market tomorrow, not a single “normy” consumer would even know. And those people are responsible for millions of purchases.
I understand it as most Zigbee fees are includes in the price of the chips, but the “Zigbee” brand and intellectual poroperty of the specifications is owned by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formelly Zigbee Alliance, and if a manufacturer wants to market a product/device as Zigbee compatible using the Zigbee brand in order to sell it for profit then they need to certify the product and that still cost some money (even if some Zigbee devices are based on Zigbee radio modules that have been pre-certified).
And then they also need to get products/devices compliance tested and certified by various government authority agents / regulatory bodies, like the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the United States and European Commission (EC/CE) in the EU, to make sure it complies with electronics safety and radio rules before resellers can legally make their electronic device available to the public.
Some companies, and especially many Chinese companies, are infamous for ignoring all of that.
there is some very interesting reading on DrZwave web site detailing the substantial effort required to certify z-wave devices, as the antenna impedance matching is done in hardware on all 500, 700, devices. There are two chip type available in 800 series, and one of them is "software defined"as I understand it so that the device can be produced for all regions and frequencies. I would love to see a “Z-Wave-Home” project like ESP-Home that uses those 800 series devices and a web based IDE to open up the DIY z-wave market. Maybe Nabu Casa could also consider a z-wave device thet is similar to the SM Light Ethernet Zigbee form factor for connection over Ethernet to HA for a Z-wave controller. I can dream, Right
I therefore believe that it is more likely that we will see Zigbee (and Thread) support in ESPHome sooner than we will see Z-Wave support, especially since ESPHome already supports the ESP32 platform (espressif32) and Espressif has recently released an ESP Zigbee SDK + four ESP32 SoCs with IEEE 802.15.4 radios (for Zigbee and Thread support); first ESP-H2 and ESP32-C6 then very recently also ESP-H4 and ESP32-C5.
Hey @balloob
It’s great that you are building tighter connections with the zwave world.
Could you PLEASE put this new relationship to the test and put PRESSURE on SilLabs to fix this flammin’ “Controller Status Changed to Jammed” bug ASAP? It’s killing our zwave-based smart homes and the progress on fixing it seems to be very slow.
Nabu Casa people: is your new product going to have the same VID:PID as your Sky Connect, which again is the exact same as the VID:PID of Zooz Z-Wave products, Sonoff Zigbee sticks, etc?
Im Happy to read that z-wave will continue to be worked on. I really hope it will get better.
But the real thing is, z-wave will die rapidly if SiliconLabs doesnt fix their firmware on the 700/800 controllers.
You cant expect people to keep investing in z-wave devices that cost much more than other types (i.e. zigbee) when reliabilty has been inexistant since the 700 series was released.
Lets be realistic, the 700 series controllers never worked reliably since they were released. First the infamous “dead nodes” issue and now the “jammed controller” issue.
Cant even turn on 4 lights at the same time or the controller will jam. This is a basic task a premium priced automation protocol should be able to do easily without the users having to implement multiple walkarounds to compensate the firmware flaws, or even downgrade to older gen controllers to avoid these issues.
How can we still have trust in z-wave when the chip manufacturer/sdk provider is unable to fix their own firmware and unable to keep the community updated? We dont even know if they are trying to fix anything and it looks like the support of gen 700 has been dropped in 7.22.0. Is this at least being discussed in these z-wave alliance summits? Asked some manufacturers the same question and no one answered, looks like no one have the balls to put pressure on SiliconLabs. Is the Alliance controlled by SiliconLabs?
This should be the first thing up in the list if the alliance members doesnt want z-wave to die. No one will keep buying z-wave if the reliabilty isn’t there.
I wanted to buy 11 more Inovelli red dimmers but still waiting (since october) for SiLabs’s firmware to be fixed (dont want to throw another 1000$ in z-wave if its not fixed). So meanwhile, an excellent manufacturer isn’t having my money because of this and im sure Im not alone…
Well - my experience with z-wave is not that good. Sticks not adhering to USB standards (AEOTEC), switches that are specced at 2000W load but simply crap out at half of the load and finally random complete network lossess that require me to clean up the z-stick tables using simplicity studio. It’s a mess and i suspect that zigbee is no better…but z-wave needs to improve if they want to keep me on board.
Yes, I’ve been running the Razberry 7 Pros (2 of them at different locations) for more than a year now. I moved them to the TubesZB network adapter as soon it became available (early January this year). It works great. Much easier / more reliable than my Raspberry pi solution with socat / ser2net I was using earlier.
Z-wave and I really wish, the community will never completely abandon it in change for cheap unreliable rubbish.
for availability of light bulbs. Combining smart switches and bulbs with varying protocols is a mess for usability. Unavailability of zwave bulbs in varying form factors has killed my continued adoption of smart switches, since I don’t want to try and build out a zigbee mesh.
