Interesting. I bit the bullet on the Wyze Sense integration via HACS. After the last update it has been flawless, and at $5/contact sensor and $6/motion sensor the wife is happy.
I think the pico switches are awesome too.
I haven’t moved my wifi dimmers from the cloud to tasmota. Right now I am just happy they are working always. I think I will try to do my deck light dimmer with tasmota. If it takes awhile that is ok, as the deck is covered with snow!
This is exactly how I felt. If I would breath wrong one switch would be unresponsive.
Z-Wave is very very popular with the professional security companies. My friend who owns one most likely will buy my z-wave switches.
Off topic, is there a market on this forum for selling items? Once I replace all my z-wave switches I won’t need my Gen5 stick.
That makes sense, as professional security companies install the stuff once and then never touch them again (and certainly don’t let the client touch them).
For the DIY-er, though, it’s crazy. It’s been over a year now and I still don’t know what the DeConz log looks like or where it’s kept, having never had a single issue with my ~15 Zigbee devices, whereas at every restart of HA there are warnings from 5 non-existent ZWave devices (of which 4 don’t even exist in the .xml and one keeps coming back in there like a damn vampire).
agree z wave is hard for diyers. Lots of potential and things to look forward too in the 700 series, but the first usb stick was only just announced at CES a few weeks ago, no word on when we can buy one.
my main reason for not switching to zigbee is lots of interference. I live in a dense apt complex with 90+ wifi networks visible from my living room. My hue/xiaomi devices do not respond 100% of the time
I’d like to stay away from 2.4GHz if possible, and that leaves Lutron and zwave. Lutron switches and pico remotes are great but there are no motion sensors for the caseta pro
Nice! looking forward to the release
more details
$50 is pretty steep, but if it’s really 10 yr battery life and is more reliable than everything else I’ll probably pick up one or two
Z-wave was my first foray into home automation and I found it really easy. I’m genuinely curious why so many people have issues.
Zwave has always been better for me than zigbee. I had issues with zigbee interference with wifi for a long time. But really no significant issues with zwave.
I’ve got modemmanager installed but have never had a problem…
I’ve been installing a few Zwaves when my Insteon switches that aren’t linked die.
I wish Insteon has taken off. They are far easier to program than zwave.
tman75,
Coming to HA from Vera, I can attest to all the comments rig papa made on the Vera forum you linked. There were a ton of talented folks there, probably because the Vera units were in dire need of talented folks like him.
That said, I really don’t thing the platform is to blame. Z-wave is a solid protocol that works simply perfect for the large majority. However I can tell you there is a significant difference in controller platforms. Vera did a good job wit Z-wave on their devices and my stuff always ran well. Where they lacked was in the UI and its stability. Firmware upgrades were a Pepto moment every time they were released and many simply stopped doing any FW upgrades. This was my situation up until a year ago when new hardware simply wouldn’t run or include with older FW. Platform stability became an issue and I migrated to HA. I still use my high end Vera Secure as a radio and nothing else. It offers me a wide variety of option and my 7 year old Z-wave devices still work perfectly, even on HA. Its hard to argue that Z wave is to blame for the negative feedback some have posted. My first question to the would be Z-wave on what controller platform? Some sticks just plain suck, other are better.
Its not the gas you put in that old VW that made it a dependable little car, its the engineering under the hood that made it what it was.
I have had z-wave for over 6 years migrating about 4 years ago from smartthings to HA. Z-wave has been rock solid. What was not though was smartthings, and trying to run ha on an rpi3 with an SD card. I migrated about 1 year ago from an rpi3 to a home built j4105 NUC and since then I truly have home automation… I don’t have to mess with anything that is not related to adding new equipment or automation. I also have a gen 5 stick and I while I don’t have anything that needs to be expanded right now, I wouldn’t think twice about getting a z-wave device if I did.
Yeah I also agree with the rpi thing. It caused me lots of problems which instantly went away when I migrated to a desktop.
I had a bit of a rocky start with some Aeotec switches & dimmers but since I got those all sorted out my zwave stuff has been really good.
I have a zwave doorbell that I can’t fully utilize all features until v1.6 gets implemented but even that works serviceably until then.
I have way more problems with support and/or stability on my Zigbee stuff than on Zwave.
I have a small z-wave network with probably a dozen or so devices. After the initial learning curve i think things are pretty solid and have no intention of switching tech. Hope with the pending licensing changes we get a few more budget z-wave devices.
I also have a few wifi devices (3x sonof powr2 with esphome, raspberry hookd up with temperature sensors, esp32 controlling led lights, peacefair power meter…) but they were chosen purelly for economic purposes, if budget was unlimited i would trade for equivalent z-wave solutions.
My concerts right now:
All in all I’m still planing on expanding z-wave and keeping wifi to a minimum.
If you’re using that square-ish 4in1 (Monoprice and Zooz both sell the exact same one), I’ve had battery issues with it as well. I try to reset it every few months, but it continues to be my one Z-wave device that sucks.
For all the other feedback in this thread, I have found it really nice to have a Vera Z-wave hub to actually manage the adding/managing/mesh of Z-wave. The HA Vera component is great. I’ve had mine up with absolutely zero issues (about 30 switches, 15 battery-powered sensors, 3 plugged-in sensors) for 2 years or so.
I’m currently removing all my Hue stuff because it’s slow and unreliable, which I imagine is because it operates on 2.4ghz (same as wifi, bluetooth, sonosnet mesh, nest thread, and my baby monitor). I love that Z-wave is in the relatively clear 900mhz spectrum. But of course to each their own, environments are different! And I do wish there were some turnkey LED light strips that were Z-wave – they all seem to be Zigbee 
.
@ datzent83 Sorry for the delay, was away traveling.
Build and compile OpenZWave, Zwave2Mqtt and disable Home assistants built in z-wave stack.
I have 2 of the 4-in-1 sensors from monoprice. They’ve been running great for over a year and the batteries are reporting > 90%. Either that’s correct and they’re great or it’s incorrect and I’m going to be confused soon.
Inovelli have great looking switches with consistent design. Packed with features, responsive support, reliable gear.
I had some trouble using the at-switch configuration process to select non-neutral-wire installation, but simply added it in zwave2mqtt and sent the config via zwave instead. My wife favors teal blue so I tried to match the rgb of the dimmer stripe to teal. Zwave2mqtt v2.1.1 and later IIRC in OZW-1.6 and I have scenes appearing as events but not doing anything with them. Very versatile switches.
I have a 6,000 sq foot home and over 90 z-wave devices with no problems.
However, let me state that this is “version 2” in my home. By that, I mean, I used to have z-wave and I have since replaced all of them with z-wave plus devices. Before I replaced all of my devices, I discovered the exact same problems that you are having. Many of my devices would not respond or could not be reached. I moved my zstick central to the entire house so that there was no distance problems. In addition, there was no device that was ever more than 10 to 15 feet from any other device. But, with z-wave, I had absolutely no joy what-so-ever.
I decided to give z-wave plus a try before I gave up completely. Not only is everything faster, but I no longer have problems where it cannot find devices.
I should warn you though that you should NOT mix z-wave and z-wave plus. You can, but you should not. You open yourself to problems getting to the z-wave devices from z-wave plus.
Mike
hmm, I have a mix. I’ll disconnect my non plus.