Best external Z-Wave hub - best device support?

Configuration Z-Wave
49

I’m on the same route here. I can see four main things that will be important for me in the choice of Z-Wave Controller (HUB).

There are quite a few to choose from; Z-Wave alliance has a long list of devices and controllers for those who want options. https://products.z-wavealliance.org/regions

1. Interpretation of Z-Wave

Home Assistant and some others (…like Domoticz) are reliant internally on OpenZwave (OZW). It’s an open source platform that keeps on developing with all the perks and flaws that comes with it. My experience here is though that OZW doesn’t really fulfil my needs, hence I’m looking for an external code platform.

Looking at non-open source platforms there are several to choose from like Vera, Fibaro and others. My conclusion here is that to be superior to OZW it needs a real company with support behind it and many fall short right here.

2. Device support

The device support is reliant on what Z-Wave stack is supposed to support them.

Homey, Animus Heart, Fibaro, ZNet etc etc… has also their own lists on their homepage.

——

Whats tricky is that many devices are not either fully supported, missing entities or can require one or two a hacks to get them to work correctly. This can be crucial as I read many have slow Z-Wave meshes that are flooded with errors and time outs. Sometimes prematurely people blame the hardware, while their logs are filled with errors and warnings. This is a two edged problem:

  • It can be Z-Wave devices that throw some weird errors or require firmware updates.
  • It can be that the controller has no real support built for the specific Z-Wave device.

So I try to stick to well known device brands, especially when installing things permanently such as In-Wall solutions.

3. Z-wave connectivity (This seems like a popular blame, but I doubt it)

Most devices have either Z-Wave built in or use a stick such as Aeotec. From my experience, this is only part of the equation as performance is reliant on the whole mesh net. When it comes to connectivity; my Aeotec has worked just as well as any other. 99% of the problems have come from either 1. or 2.

4. Platform setup and open integration

This is the reason I have Home Assistant. It has a very wide support of platforms and can integrate with a lot of services. Once entities and sensors are setup, I can mostly run it from HA. I can basically throw around devices, entities and sensors between different platforms and produce good result to the GUI and automations

So basically what I’m looking now on is:

  • Home Assistant running in a container on a dedicated device such as a Raspberry, NUC or something.
  • Vera External Z-Wave Hub for easy Z-Wave integration and good device support
  • Only well known or supported devices in the mesh network

If OpenZwave continues to evolve, I’ll glad throw out the Vera and use the Aeotec + the ConBee sticks instead.

2 Likes
50

This is a great summary of exactly where I’m also at after a lot of trial and error.

Thanks.

51

I’m about to go the other way with ZigBee and replace Hue with ConBee. I wonder if it will be yet another painful experience… :pray:

52

If you haven’t already, I’d recommend checking out zigbee2mqtt.

This is where I’m looking at going, to reduce down my various (Xiaomi/Ikea/Hue) zigbee hubs to a single extensible hub. That way, it’s just my VeraPlus and Zigbee2mqtt “hub”, which seems like a pretty solid combination. :smiley:

1 Like
53

Interesting, worth a separate discussion probably. I’ll look into it. Thanks

54

I think this is spot on, it’s not the AeoTec stick as such, it’s the OZW stack that HA uses to control it.
I believe there is some talk of ripping out OZW, but I’ve seen nothing concrete.

I’m still looking for a local solution where I can do most stuff on HA, including the HomeKit export and off load the ZWave to a more reliable device. SmartThings looks good, but although HA now bridges to this, it does not run locally.

The new Homey looks interesting too, but that might actually replace my whole HA set-up…but it doesn’t have an Ethernet port.

Based on what I see above I think I’ll orde a Vera Edge and control this from HA.

55

I have an Aeotec USBZ STICK running on docker enabled HASS.io an NUC. Just cannot get it to run reliably at all. Sometimes it works after a reboot, sometimes it doesn’t. Totally unreliable.

56

interesting… I have had perfectly stable and reliable use of an Aeotec stick with my RPi3 running HassIO but I’m in the process of setting up a NUC to replace the RPi3… I hope the Aeotec remains stable on the new platform as I have not had any problem with it at all. I guess as a worst case scenario I could leave the stick in the RPi and use it as a remote hub to the NUC… but I’d rather not. I’ll post my findings in due course.

57

When I started with HA, I used a VeraEdge and while it worked OK, I wanted faster response and better control over my devices. I got an Aeotec stick and am using that on a HassIO VM with much success.

I have 44 Z-Wave devices with 40 of them being hard wired, 2 are MiniMotes and 2 are locks. Most of my devices are older Leviton (I have all Leviton switches, outlets and controllers). When I reboot HA, Z-Wave takes < 3 minutes to start up which I find quite acceptable. I don’t have any Z-Wave sensors (they are all hard wired sensors connected via Envisalink).

I did have to do a little work to get my Leviton in-wall controllers working and I’ve documented it at https://blog.gruby.com/2019/01/04/setting-up-a-leviton-vrcz4-m0z-for-use-with-home-assistant/. I have an old Wayne Dalton HomeLink to Z-Wave gateway that I had working on the Vera, but don’t have working on HA/OpenZWave, yet.

I’ve also found that the logs in OpenZWave give me a better feeling of things working whereas Vera was kind of a black box and I had no clue if stuff worked or if it didn’t, why. For instance, Z-Wave associations kind of magically happened for my controllers on Vera whereas on HA, I can explicitly set them. I’ve also had a few devices that drove me nuts in Vera (2 button switches) that I was able to easily get working in HA.

Of course everyone’s mileage is going to vary. Personally I am glad I dropped Vera and have been happy with HA and the Aeotec Stick.

58

are these the Aeotec 4 button keychain ones? I have one but haven’t got it working yet. Wondering if you have any tips…? I paired it but it seems stuck at ‘initializing’… maybe I just need to try the pairing again

59

Not the keychain ones, but I suspect they are similar. I think the trick is to keep the device awake.

See https://aeotec.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/6000035629-in-depth-minimote-guide

Wake up the Minimote

  1. Press and hold the Learn Button (or Join Button) for 3 seconds, then let go. This should keep the Minimote awake for 30 seconds.

  2. Now sending in the configuration within the 30 seconds.

I use Node-RED to handle all the events coming from it.

Hope this helps!

1 Like
60

Thanks, I’ll give it a try

61

Just can’t get it to work at all. Or rather, I did get one node working, but all lost after a reboot. Had to remove z-wave from config.yaml and delete the files from the config directory to get the Z-stick to come up again. Now I have the z-stick, but I cannot get the sensors to join.

Can’t say I have confidence in it.

62

I’ll see how I go once my NUC is ready to take over from the RPi in a few weeks (I’m about to move house so its been put off a little). I’ll post back here with the results

1 Like
63

If it struggles on reboot, have you checked that it binds correctly? Sometimes it changes from for example TTYACM0 to TTYACM1. Then HA goes bonkers.
You can circumvent the problem with UDEV. Check Here!

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64

Uh,… basically you’re saying you went the opposite route and you’re happy with it… Maybe I should borrow a VERA first and see how it goes. I find OZW being a struggle when it comes to secure connections

65

Yes, OZW and the Aeotec have been good for me. I have 2 locks using secure connections working fine.

66

Thanks for that, I’ll give it a try.

67

I moved my HASS instance with Aeotec Z-Stick from RPi3 (running Hassbian) to NUC (running HA in Docker container). The Z-Stick was plug and play, worked correctly right away.

68

I would like to know If I could use HomeAssistant with the Samsung Mesh routers (which act as a hub as well)? I would use Samsung purely as a hub and home assistant for the automations (as others have described). Would it work? Even offline? Thanks