After a recent discussion, I decided to go on and get HA and try it out for Z-Wave and infrared. I have an infrared device on the way, from China. I ordered two Aeotec Z-Stick 7s from a shop on Amazon that is now saying they are not available and there’s been no move to ship it to me. I went to Aeotec’s site, hoping to find another seller in the US and found Popp/to (as they write their name - popp.to as a domain). Popp/to has bad reviews - and all are about the Z-Stick 7. People are ordering it and not getting it. (And these are recent reviews, too.) In one case, they sent the person a Z-Stick Gen5+ instead and apparently did not send the appropriate refund.
While Z-Stick 7 seems to be the latest version, apparently the US version is nowhere to be found. (One eBay seller as them in stock, but when I contacted them, they said it’s the EURO version.)
I went back to the Aeotec site and tried to contact them. Whenever I submit a contact form, the url changes to their page “_contact.php” and says the correct page could not be found. So there’s no way to contact them at this point. That was yesterday. Today I went to check and see if things were fixed and the pages for Z-Stick 7 and Z-Pi do not load properly. Almost all images and most of the text does not come up.
So Z-Sticks seem unavailable now and the website contact is impossible to use, there’s no phone #, and product pages on the site are not working at all.
Does anyone know if Aeotec has gone MIA or something?
Aeotec is in the middle of overhauling their offerings - they just picked up OEM build of all of the former SmartThings devices (including the hub) from Samsung and I also hear they’ve been impacted pretty hard form the global chip shortage impacting most IoT manufacturers. Just be glad you weren’t a SmartThings user trying to get your hands on the new Aeotec version of the ST hub earlier this year.
“they just picked up OEM build of all of the former SmartThings”
By that do you mean they’re now making all the SmartThings devices?
What concerned me is the website issues as well as the apparent supply issues. I would think someone would come into work Monday morning and say, “Hmmm…No contact messages today. Gotta look over the site and see what’s wrong.” (Or notice very few if it went bad over the weekend.) So that, and the non-working product pages make it seem like someone just gave up.
I don’t want to whine or razz them, but these issues, together, just seemed odd.
Yes, they are now the global OEM for ALL of the hardware SmartThings used to make (INCLUDING all of the ZigBee stuff, which is VERY surprising considering Aeotec’s position as a Zwave mfr.) The items you’re talking about are not surprising at all and have been plaguing them since they took over for Samsung hardware in October 2020.
I interacted with their support a lot back in 2017 when I was planning out my home automation - but didn’t get to install the devices during construction, like I wanted, since the electricians were scared of new things like that. Now that I finally have time to set this all up, I’m putting all this in place. I liked them and their attitude back then, including their honesty about whether they thought their fan controller would work. (They told me not to buy it at that time, since there were issues.)
With that in mind, I’m glad to hear that these things aren’t signs they’re in trouble.
Yeah my suspicion is that they were working on taking over for Samsung way back last year and didn’t know how badly Samsung was going to botch the transition nor did anyone know how hard raw materials were going to be to source in 2021. I’ve seen pockets of devices making it out in batches (I check TheSmartestHouse regularly, seems they’re getting a lot of the stuff as they are one of Samsung’s preferred resellers of the hubs) Very little of it has 700 series ZWave chips. (Which is where the bottleneck probably actually lies - but that’s pure speculation on my part.) Inovelli also seems to be being hit particularly hard - you can never find their ZW Plus 700 series stuff in stock either.
If the 700 series is the bottleneck, and since my devices are all at least 2 years old, I may go on and order the Gen5+. I wanted two Z-Stick 7s, but if I get one of the Gen5+ sticks, I can get started. (One stick for the house, one for the renovated barn.) That way I can at least get the house working and set things up and replace the Gen5+ with the 7 when they come in.
I went with the Zooz 700 Series S2 stick and Zwave2MQTT for basically the same reason - but I got something I wouldn’t have to reconfigure later (because I have over 60 ZWave devices and some of them are a massive PAIN to rejoin because of install location, blinds 20’ in the air…) Works great.
Will the Zooz do all the Z-Stick will do? And Zwave2MQTT is easy to install, isn’t it? And can I use two on the same LAN? The barn and house are out of wifi range, but they’re connected (by underground fiber) and in the same address space and on the same LAN, but different wifi access points. The reason I need two devices is to use one for each building. Will the Zooz do that? So I can just put one in a computer or Rasberry Pi in the barn and it’ll connect with the one in the house?
So yes it will do anything the other will do - a z-stick is a z-stick, is a z-stick.
ZWave is not Wifi - it doesn’t care about your LAN. But if you want to do that, you will need multiple HA devices or at least ZW2MQTT installs… THAT I haven’t done but in theory it works, Each stick is the coordinator for it’s own network and they wont care about each other. You won’t be able to do ZWave direct association from one to the other though (Although it sounds like you wont need that)
I would be trying to simplify the install if at all possible but outbuildings always get tricky - how far is that barn?
The barn is about 333’ from the back deck of the house to the near corner of the barn - way too far for wireless, especially during leaf out. There’s a gap along the road where you can’t get working wifi from either place. (Well, it’s odd - my phone detects the LAN for the house well before it can actually use it.)
Will HA be able to deal with both Zooz devices directly without another HA install?
I was thinking of putting a Pi in the house with a Z-Stick in it and another Pi in the barn with a Z-Stick, so I can put ZW2MQTT on the barn Pi without an issue.
Then from the control panel on the other instance of zwavejs2mqtt, put in the settings your main mqtt broker (which should be running on the other machine in the house on the same network). Once you do that the barn instance of zwavejs2mqtt will communicate to the mqtt broker over your lan, and all the zwave devices in the barn will be controllable in Home assistant through mqtt.
Yet they (popp.to) have plenty of the EU version of the stick 7 ready to ship and it’s the same chip in both US and EU versions (the frequency is adjusted in the firmware). Well the antenna is different, but that’s unlikely to be the reason. Also they have plenty of the range extender 7 available, both US and EU versions, and that one uses the same chip. I actually ordered a couple of those from popp a few weeks ago and they were delivered within a few days.
Weird. Seems to be something specific about the zstick 7 US version.
Firmware? But I take it there isn’t anything available to make it easy for someone to buy either one and update the firmware to the region of choice?
Does the range extender need to be within wireless range of the first one, or can it be on the same LAN?
So, overall, Popp is okay and the issue is more about this particular item than about the company itself?
So my choice is to use Docker for that or a 2nd HA install on the Pi in the barn? If I install a 2nd instance, does one act as client and the other as a server? In other words, would I have to treat them as 2 different systems, or still one system, with one in charge? I’m thinking in terms of management of the systems and of using them with the HA app on a phone. I have a few family members who visit often that I’d let control it all through the phone app and don’t want to have to go over with them (or my wife) when to use the House HA and when to use the barn HA.
That sounds like it would behave the way I want.
So why Docker to install ZWaveJS2MQTT (I add the caps to make it easier for ME to read - not trying to be picky or anything!), instead of just installing it by itself?
The docker install is the setup im running with zwavejs2mqtt and can be setup with a few commands from the guides. The nice thing about docker is it configures the perfect “environment” to run the program for you. Docker can be installed on whatever Linux os you like, be it Ubuntu, Debian, or Raspian, and it will work. You spend less time configuring the install environment and updates are just pulling a new image and replacing the old container.
I’m unfamiliar with running two Home Assistant instances, but it seems redundant and unnecessary in this case. The addons in Home Assistant actually already use docker, they are just managed by the supervisor (instead of the user) so you don’t see the docker commands- it all happens in the background. The point is its using docker anyway no matter how you install it (whether as an addon on another home assistant instance or standalone container in docker you install yourself) You’ll want everything in one Home Assistant instance to have the advantage of accessing it all in one place (same app, lovelace, automations, etc). Youll get that with one Home Assistant install, one mqtt broker, and two zwavejs2mqtt installs.
That being said, I’m sure there’s a way to do two Home Assistant instances and link them together “as one”, and hopefully someone more familiar with running it that way can chime in.
Like a lot of things, i’m sure there are other ways to do this, but I know docker and zwavejs2mqtt will work. You can install zwavejs2mqtt in Kubarnates, a snap package, or a NodeJS or PKG version as well but I don’t have any experience with those.
Not that I know of. Modifying the stick firmware would probably be far from trivial. You would also have to change the antenna, as it wouldn’t be tuned to the new frequency.
The range extender is not connected to any LAN, it extends the zwave mesh and operates on an existing zwave mesh only. Its range is pretty good, so it can be used to connect two disjoint zwave networks. But in your case with over 300’ outdoors, that’s probably too far. You’d also have to place it somewhere in the middle between both networks, it needs to be able to communicate with both in order to bridge them.
Yeah they’re OK. The only problem I had with them was when I ordered eight Door Sensor 7 last March. They were badly hit with the chip shortage, so it took quite a while for the sensors to arrive. They were very communicative though and kept me up to date with the order status at all times.
Im with Tim one HA and a second instance of Zwavejs2mqtt… Mostly because you have control over both locations. If the second location was something like a rent home or something id do a second HA, (that was what the second link i sent was - a custom component to tie together two HA instances) but just being an outbuilding, keep it simple. Do the Zwavejs2mqtt docker on a pi and call it a day.
@NathanCu : Another couple questions on the Zooz stick - including on Z-Wave in general.
With the Zooz stick, do you find you wish you had waited for the Aeotec 700 series instead?
I saw, in a description for the Aeotec Gen5+, somewhere, about it being easy to add components by just putting the stick near them and pressing the button on the stick. I saw something similar on the Z-Stick 7 about how it would automatically add Z-Wave devices. Is that true, and will it work with older devices? All the locks I have and switches talk about a pairing procedure that includes me having to be at the switch or device to basically put it in something like a pairing mode.
Interesting additional development. I set up an account on Popp and saw they claim to have over 50 Z-Stick 7s in stock now. I used the contact form to verify that and the response is from an Aeotec website - I didn’t realize Popp was Aeotec’s marketing site.
But here’s what’s odd. I filled out the order form with my address. It auto-completes, so I typed the number and a few letters of my street name. My actual address came up in autocomplete and I selected it. It automatically filled in the rest of the address. Then I clicked to go on to shipping. I wanted to see if it was going to ship soon or if there would be a delay.
The next page said they could not ship to my address because no shipping rates were available for that address!
I tried a friend’s nearby office (well, as nearby as anyone can get when you live in the sticks!) and it also worked with their autocomplete but has the same issue: They can’t ship to it.
But if you want to do that, you will need multiple HA devices or at least ZW2MQTT installs… THAT I haven’t done but in theory it works, Each stick is the coordinator for it’s own network and they wont care about each other. You won’t be able to do ZWave direct association from one to the other though 
(Although it sounds like you wont need that)