Absolutely agree. Workable ZWave support is absolutely vital in my setup. As much as I love HA, this is a make or break thing I just can’t afford to lose functionality on.
I feel that in terms of RF networks, HA has really been shifting heavily towards the tinker-and-DIY-with-cheap-stuff-from-Ali side of the spectrum. ESPs running on wifi, cheap Zigbee stuff from China. There’s nothing wrong with that per-se and being a free open source platform it makes sense to support this approach.
But I think that the devs tend to forget that HA also appeals to a different type of user. Of course HA is not a commercial product, etc, etc, but with the current very low priority approach to things like ZWave, they’ll progressively lose this crowd.
I tend to be testing technologies and try to have stability while making big changes. With a history of Commercial (zipabox, fibaro hc2 and zipatile) but also opensource (Openhab, Home assistant).
And in home assistant alone using z-wave 1.4, ozw 1.6 (with qt or z2m) and now finally moved to zj2m (shortcut for zwavejs2mqtt). I want to add my experience showed from both ozw and openhab z-wave driver, maintained software limits to small amount of people tend to have long lasting issues which are slowly or almost never been solved.
I’ve been for months on OZW. I never found logical the structure of qt-ozw as it gave me some more work to “guess” mqtt topics! but this is personal preference.
What strikes me mostly is the issues I found with S0 and OZW, which I never found on any other driver.
Encryption with newer devices (Doorbell 6) is broken! you cannot even fully include a device
similar to previous, Association 1 or 0, when supports multiple associations also breaks, giving you a Double notifications for the same event.
I cannot accept the answer: it is always a device firmware issue. After months of having issues which I believed where device related. I moved to another driver. Which magically took away all these issues.
Looking at the PRs of ozw, It scares me to even use it these days, Yes it is a stall project or almost stall!
If users are silent with problems, or use alternatives. Does not mean problems do not exist. Maybe most of people are like me. try to fix it and find a workable solution. As not many probably complain?
@petro adding to other users issues. I have 40+ devices, I have a lot of small issues here and there with ozw
Problems:
mentioned above encryption
random miss on devices next to controller
OZW cache, becomes huge and makes the whole driver slow!
exist in two different z-wave controllers. always with same software involved
Is it my setup? a powerful intel NUC backed by a fully up to date kubernetes cluster with clustered mqtt in two “datacenters” and local locations.
So I agree with @paulstronaut an addon is needed as an alternative choice. With this stall ozw option, I would say supported by HA will help people switch on their own choice.
I think this topic raises several important issues and I’d like to thank the OP for bringing it up.
I’d also like to make sure that we remember that @Fishwaldo is not an employee of Nabu Casa and is an actual volunteer doing this work in his free time. Nabu Casa has taken that work and is selling it to their users, while deflecting the blame for any problems back on the volunteer who is doing all the hard work for them.
Keep in mind that none of this is @Fishwaldo’s doing, the decision of how to handle ZWave lies with Nabu Casa alone, and they have proven time and again that they aren’t interested in any outside input (exhibit A: this entire thread ^^^) . They will deflect responsibility when it suits them and collect your money each month all the same. Unless some of that money is being sent to the source projects they’re pulling from, 100% of this issue (and others like it) can be traced directly back to decisions being made by the Nabu Casa corporation.
If it isn’t working right, that isn’t @Fishwaldo’s problem to solve.
So I guess I should chime in with whats going on my side:
What Happened: Unfortunately, a Lot:
I had a power spike that killed all my PC’s/Servers/Laptops at home back in July. It took me a good 3 months with COVID slowdowns and so forth to rebuild/purchase a new server/laptop etc.
I have a real time Job managing a large team in Asia Pacific - And I got promoted in October where I am now also managing Europe side of the business (I’m based in Asia so the timezones is not kind to me)
But these are minor compared to the real reason I’m not so active anymore. Unfortunately its the wider OZW community. Not just the HA community, but a large number of users here. I do this in my own time, its a passion and it was enjoyable. But Please scroll this thread - Only a few people here actually understand what its like to volunteer to maintain a project that is used by >100000 users (if anybody is questioning the stats - I can infer the number of users of OZW 1.6 based on the DNS queries to check the latest revision of config files).
It has been a very toxic enviroment for me to work in - I approached this eagerly as I knew the old integration was stale and had lots of short comings. But the “demands” by some users. The criticisms of the project, my work, how fast I work, how good my code is, why we don’t support xyz device, why we don’t support S2, why this, why that. My discord was flooded with PM’s till I turned it off, my email I’m still getting rude or demanding messages every week.
All along - I’ve asked for help - none has forth come. I’m sick of users making demands upon me when i’m doing this in my own free time and for my own itch.
Is OZW Dead - No. I’ll tinker with it, i’ll make changes as time allows, but it will be at my own pace, to scratch my own itches now. if people step up and offer to help maintain the code, or vet through config files (like Nechry does on Github) and they show they have some knowledge about Z-Wave in general and at least adhere to some sense of backwards/forwards compatibility - I’ll happily add them as maintainers - But in the 10+ years i’ve worked on that, most people will last at most 6 months and then also disappear).
Sorry for those that have supported me one way or another. For everybody else that is critical of my work or OZW - all I have to say to you is “Show me the code or STFU” - Sorry to be blunt - But thats how much this community has tarnished my view of OSS work.
Sadly, this is the inevitable result of the issues I outlined above. Nabu Casa has setup a system whereby they get paid off the backs of volunteer work, the volunteers are left holding the bag to support the code, and eventually the bullshit that comes with that overrides any benefits they may have gotten from contributing to the project.
@Fishwaldo I’d like to personally thank you for all the effort you’ve put forward to this point, it has benefited us all and you’ve asked nothing in return. I, and I’m sure several others, sincerely appreciate it. I also 100% understand why nobody in their right mind would continue working on the project for all the reasons you’ve mentioned. We, the users of Home Assistant owe you much, you’ve done so much up to this point and you don’t owe anybody anything. Glad to hear things in “real life” are going well and I hope that continues.
Meanwhile… Nabu Casa collects another month’s rent and nothing will have changed.
I’d like to add - I have nothing against @balloob or the Nabu Casa team at all - I started this full well knowing that I wasn’t going to get paid for it (Correction - They do donate via the Github Sponsors system) and I know they were paying (or intended to pay) people to work on the HA side of the integration.
Also - There are some people here that I acknowledge have tried to help me - kpine and so forth (sorry if I can’t remember all your names) - So despite my post its not all bad.
Its just maybe the minority are more vocal than the majority and makes it a very unpleasant experience for me.
Thanks for your work man. There are a lot of people using it and they should be grateful for everything you’ve done for them. I don’t like seeing this entitlement of users using free software and often block people on the facebook hass group that approach things thinking that they are owed something from people who spend their free time making things for others.
I do also agree with OP to some extent that this shouldn’t be pushed as the “new standard” until we are sure that it’s actually good enough for that. I think that announcement was very premature, and I for one have a working Zwave network already and had zero interest in messing with something that was working. I’m glad I made that decision not to try moving to the new zwave implementation and I think anyone who doesn’t actively want to beta test this, should make this same decision.
When it really becomes the new standard and is finished, I will start to plan a migration, but it’s too mission critical for me to play with personally. For me, at least, it allows me to avoid frustration and the demands that come with using beta software that may not work for me. I think if more people decided this way, it would lessen the burden on you, and may make the environment less toxic for you so that you can start to enjoy it again…
I do agree that the hass team should probably make a clear statement that the existing zwave integration is still the official one and will be until some undefined time in the future when something better is available and working as well or better than what we have as the built in standard today.
First of all, I’m glad that you are alright, and congratulations on your promotion! I too would like to personally thank you for all of your years of hard work. None of my comments above were meant to criticize you for stepping back and I hope that came through. I understand the demands and certainly understand that you’re a volunteer. My concern was simply with the seeming focus by the HA project on one single project to the rejection of others. And what I, at least, consider to be the premature pressure placed on the qt-openzwave project by HA pushing people towards it as the new path.
I’m sorry that you were treated poorly by the community and I hope that this can be improved. I only started using HA over the summer and I’ve certainly found the members of this project, and at times the maintainers, to be much more Type A than in other communities.
Justin, thanks for all the work you’ve done. We really appreciate it. Sorry to hear that the community has been this awful. Sadly within open source communities there can be a lot of entitlement that can bring out the worst in people
For the future of Z-Wave: we’ll have to see how to go from here. The Z-Wave integration devs are making an overview of the possible options. This will be published to the architecture repository when ready.
@Fishwaldo Thank you for taking the time to provide some clarity.
Everything you write makes sense. And I’m happy to note that your ‘personal issues’ were at least in part positive issues (congrats on the promotion).
I for one will not pretend to understand what it means to volunteer on a beta that already has >100.000 users (not counting that often 1 such user in reality often is a whole household of users), and I can only guess how many hundreds of thousands more are waiting to migrate towards it when it is stable.
Nevertheless I do understand that you owe us nothing and we owe you a lot (not in the least gratitude and respect). I think most of the people posting in the thread are of that position as well, but the world is a big place and I can unfortunately imagine that a sizeable group has not treated you properly!
I hope some competent people take up your offer to be helped.
Meanwhile for me personally, my few months of experience with Home Assistant have been amazing and I’d love to use it permanently. Good Z-wave support is an essential element for that as that is what most of my devices use (and because it is critical I have waited with the z-wave part until I fully grasped and was comfortable with Home Assistant). Based on your feedback, I will carefully test the current native z-wave integration to see whether it suits my needs despite being out of date. In case it doesn’t, I’ll postpone a decision on whether to move to Home Assistant until some unknown future date when there is a stable z-wave solution for Home Assistant.
Given the popularity of Home Assistant and the many z-wave users (which in my view also for the foreseeable future has very compelling advantages over alternatives such as wifi and zigbee), I have faith this will come, and I’m very happy to read the above post of @balloob that they are looking at options!
I understand. But what you and many people in this thread don’t understand is: HA has no issues with alternatives. @paulstronaut is demanding that HA develops the other addon when it doesn’t even develop qt-openzwave. It’s ridiculous to expect that. No one is stopping anyone from creating any other zwave options.
I made no demands in this entire thread. I asked questions about what could be done to clarify who is responsible for what. How we can ensure we’re not tied to a single person being available for critical issues, etc.
You sure about that? This post that rudely shut down is basically demanding that @frenck takes the helm of the addon. And you’re using it to fuel the fire in this thread. How about editing the post and removing that portion then if that’s not your intentions?
Even if I’m not an admin, I would politely suggest to not continue the back and forth of who said what and in which tone or with which intentions. These discussions don’t contribute to the purpose of the topic, which is bringing some clarity on the future of z-wave in home assistant. I think this thread has already helped in that respect, in that it has become evident that such a reflection is necessary and the Z-Wave integration devs are looking at it. I thank them wholeheartedly in advance.
Home assistanat/Nabu Casa should support OZW integration and Justin(a lot of people use zwave, and so can HA more growe to get better) with developers, and we will support HA and developers. Some new ozw donation/subscription to get things rolling?
@Fishwaldo thanks for your work on the project! I know precisely what you mean by your statements, having developed numerous open source project for hundreds or thousands of users (not as many as you support on this, but enough) and it can be extremely frustrating to deal with folks who feel they are entitled to your free time and who criticize your work. It’s no wonder you have stepped back, I have stepped back from many of my own projects that became publicly toxic.
Folks don’t really grasp the “I’m doing this for the good of the community and owe you nothing” concept. Like I stated in my post above, if someone doesn’t like something then they need to roll up their sleeves and figuring out the code to fix the problem they have.
I’m disheartened to hear your work on this project is greatly reduced, as Z-Wave is a critical part of my home automation and if nobody else picks up the mantle to assist and push it forward then I fear that, in time, Z-Wave won’t work well. For the time being all of my Z-Wave devices work as anticipated and I have no complaints, but without maintenance that could all change.
My contribution to HA is going to revolve more around the HomeKit improvements I would like to see, as I have a lot of experience in that department having developed the HomeKit integration for my last software community, so I don’t know if I’ll ever dive into the Z-Wave project or not but am certainly open to entertaining the option. Sadly, I don’t fully grasp the development environment of HASS just yet so cutting my teeth on HomeKit will be a first step since it’s familiar territory.
Again, thank you for your contribution, many of us appreciate it and have no problems, I am certainly in that category.
