I’ve been patiently waiting for Aeotec to come out with their new 800 series USB dongle, as I’ve noticed that response times have dropped as I’ve added more devices on my 500 series. I’ve resisted moving to the Zooz stick, so that I can easily upgrade from my existing Aeotec stick without having to re-pair all of my devices. However, Hubitat’s new C8 hub looks interesting. It provides ZWave, Zigbee and Matter compatibility in a hub with much better coverage and range than my Aeotec. Since my router and HA hub are currently in my office at one end of the house, placing the Hubitat in a central location should definitely help speed things up.
Has anyone checked out the new C8 hub? Is it worth the extra effort to move from ZWave JS to Hubitat? Or should I just cool my jets and wait for the new Aeotec 800 series stick?
Zooz already released their 800 series USB stick back in DEC of 2022. I bought mine when it first came out. You can also buy the atrim 800 series USB. As far as I know they are all the same but I could be wrong.
I can’t automatically or manually backup the NVM so I have to manually make backups in Simplicity Studio PC Controller. Other than that it works well. If you go into Z-Wave JS UI and click on the network map then click on a node it will show you the last working route between the end node and controller. Most devices show as being directly connected to the controller now. My favorite feature about the USB stick is that is has a light on it that blinks when traffic is being sent or received. This makes it easier to troubleshoot at times. Plus it is significantly smaller in size then the Zooz 700 USB.
I’m running a aeotec 500 stick from 2015. I can’t really use those features anyways. I’d be surprised if Simplicity Studio would even work with it. I’m just vetting new sticks at the moment to get on something newer.
I have been using the Zooz 800 USB for the last few weeks and it has been working well for me. I had the Zooz 700 before and had nothing but issues with it even after the firmware upgrade. I did have to exclude each device from the 700 and then include in the 800 as I was not able to get the restore backup function from PC Controller to work.
If you decide to go with the 800 note that there is a firmware upgrade available for it. I recommend upgrading before switching over.
The Hubitat Elevation is marketed as supporting Matter and is hardware capable of but does not as yet. This pretty much par for the course with HA pioneering progress currently