Currently I am using an Aeotec 500 controller which I am running for a while. After the last Black Friday and some renovation I added a whole bunch of new (Shelly Wave) devices to it. All are fairly well spread around the house but somehow them and previously existing devices became totally unreliable. One day they are working the other day they won’t. I suspect the controller to be the cause as the devices are brand new and with the new ones the mesh topology should be even better than before. I also did trigger the new route function after the new devices were added.
So before looking to get my hands on a new controller I was wondering what the status of the controller is, which was mentioned in the “Zwave is not dead” blog article a while back? I would rather spend my money on that to support the project than spending it for some other vendor.
Unfortunately there has not been any update on the status anywhere or even a rough estimate when the controller might become available for purchase. Especially since what was written in the article sounded so promising I wanted to wait and not go for a Zooz 800 stick or something.
So I’d like to figure out if it’s worth the wait or what is going on? Maybe anyone in here knows anything? Thanks!
Would like to know that too, even though I have switched from an Aeotec Gen 5 to the Zooz 800. It would be nice to have an extra stick from HA itself, like the SkyConnect that I use.
You might want to check the logs for those Shelly devices. I just returned a bunch of them because their firmware is buggy. Among other things, it was flooding my z-wave network with a gratuitous number of pings. That kind of packet flood could cause reliability issues.
Thanks for the hint. I will check. I have a bunch of them but only a few do not work reliable. All with the same firmware. And some more fibaros which I choose to avoid in the future because of them not willing to make their firmware accessible outside their hub.
EDIT: logs did not look suspicious nor somehow flooded atm.
How is your experience with this one? I would prefer a HA stick as well as I do too have the SkyConnect one. However before I was aware of HA developing something I was between Homeseer and Zooz.
I am really happy with the Zooz stick. I used an Aeotec Gen 5 before. I could not backup it up, so had to repair everything manually. Have 63 devices connected now and it’s rock solid. No issues at all.
Thanks. Was there any reason you could not do a backup? I have the same Gen5 Stick currently in use and a lot of my devices sit behind switches in walls so having to take them out to repair will be a lot of work I would definitely like to avoid (also some are in outdoor blinds which I would then have to take apart to get to them as there was no other way to attach them).
I could not do a NVM backup with the stick, because of old firmware. The stick would also not update to a newer firmware as the model was too old. Needed a version build in or after a certain year. Aeotec mentions it in the documentation.
I eventually added the Zooz stick with an extra z-wave network. I did that using zwavejsui next to the zwavejs supervisor addon. Had them both connection to a different port.
Then I slowly removed one device from the old network and added it to the new one. Including all the in wall items. I mainly use Fibaro switches, so I was able to (un)pair them using the toggle switches. Did not have to open the walls. Took me a couple of days to have moved everything. Could have done it faster, but wanted to take my time and be sure everything was running ok. 
Before any device can be sold in the us it has to get FCC certified. One guy used the fcc listings to get a heads up on the nabu casa voice module. https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1g931za/nabu_casa_home_assistant_voice_preview_edition/. You might be able to do the same for the new z-wave controller.
Also Aeotec is coming out with a new controller as well. Its a Z-Wave and Zigbee combo stick. https://ces-lasvegas.german-pavilion.com/en/sites/products-services/170460
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