Just wanted to get a feeling from everyone. I have had months when my small z-wave network has worked great, and days on end when it doesn’t work. I heal it, it works for a bit, then stops working. Wife is ok with the items I get as long as they work when she wants them to.
I just can’t grasp how z-wave fails so often. I have a Gen5 stick, and all my switches are about 10 to 20 feet away. Yet more often than not one of them does not respond to HA.
I recently purchased some cheap wifi dimmers from Costco, and they seem to be much more reliable. I am totally comfortable with wifi, so I get how it works and what to do if it fails.
Just seeing if others have the same issues, or am I a one off.
since I am only in with my Gen 5, one dimmer, and 2 switches I just want to know if I am barking up the wrong tree right away. I just wish people would make a single pole, 3 way, and dimmer look relatively the same. Why do they all have to look different. I love that the Leviton looks like a normal switch, but they are so expensive.
My Zwave network has been reliable both under home assistants build in handling and openzwave 1.6 and zwave2mqtt. Mixture of mains and battery operated devices inside and out across 3000sqft home.
How is your system failing? Are devices still paired, high latency etc?any log entries you can share might help us to help
You more.
I keep pointing people with issues as you are describing towards removing ModemManager. Check out the Z-wave docs to see if this applies to your setup.
Hello,
I have 2 sockets, one fibaro motion sensor and a fgd-212 for my main light of my living room. About my sockets, sometime, my HA doesn’t detect if they are on or off. So, my automation doesn’t work correctly. I have to refresh every 20 minutes all sockets to be avoid that.
About my fgd-212 and my motion sensor I don’t have really problem, but I thing modules are very expensive module but they are a quality products.
If I could the same product which work in other protocol, I think I remplace its.
Troy, I use just standard wall switches, to match the aesthetic (wife’s choice).
BEHIND the face plate I put the switches (dimmers) I want. And feed the poles of the switch as inputs to the dimmer.
Edit : examples are : -
@Emphyrio, I must admit that the modem manager thing came completely out of left field.
Why would anyone install that? What is it used for? I assume you mean something installed to the OS as a Linux package (as maybe part of the standard installation/build) ???
It’s a standard package installed in most Ubuntu/Debian linux installs by default. It manages serial communications on the system, hence the name “Modem Manager”
Mutt, I hear you about the wife. However, my wife is more concerned with price than anything, and once I told her I could get the wifi dimmers for $12.50 a piece, or the Leviton for $40, she said the wifi dimmers are fine. Purchasing 4 more today!
First thing I did when I setup zwave 1.5 years ago was remove modem manager. I think it was part of the install I was following. I just did a double check and it is not installed.
I gave up on it almost completely in my house (I really want a esphome’d version of the zwave GE motion sensor switches). I spent way too much time copying xml files and trying to be able to set parameters on switches only to have random lag and the zwave network not coming back up after a reboot.
I’ve switched to a combination of esphome & alarm decoder (honeywell security system) devices for sensors and Lutron RA2 devices for switches and dimmers. Adding a device requires a bit more work outside of home assistant (using the Lutron desktop software), but it always works on the first try to add something new & switching works 99.99% of the time.
As an added bonus I love the pico switches as a way to add more direct control options for poorly placed light switches (& it can operate independently of HA).
From an infrastructure standpoint I also like moving from usb devices to network devices where possible.
If I didn’t have 30ish such devices at the moment from pre-HA days, I’d also give up on it…if I don’t touch it even with a feather, it’s fine, but there are zillions of things that make the network go crazy and every time such an issue comes up, fixing it is a major exercise in frustration.
I don’t even fix it anymore, actually, I just roll back and give up on what it was I was trying to do to it (this Monday it was renaming ZWave entities in HA that for some reason made the ZWave network not start anymore after I restarted).
Also, I have a Fibaro ZWave device that expects to be factory-reset with, I shit you not, A MAGNET (provided by the client, just the kind of thing you wanna be looking for around the house at 1AM). Any company that releases a public product that is factory-reset with a goddamn magnet deserves its technology to die a horrible death.
In comparison, the experience I’ve had with DeConz+Zigbee, ESPHome+BLE and WiFi devices is amazing, not to mention the enormous price difference per item.
I would actually like to know why someone (especially after ZWave was excluded from the new IoT standard party and hastily decided to drop the license fees, a drain-circling sign if ever I saw one) would buy a ZWave device in 2020, what possible advantage could it have for a new smart home builder?
