My point is: What’s the problem with having a community supported addon? You’ve clearly made it a point to say “that’s not good enough” and I want to know why. It works for zigbee. Why not zwave? I’m trying to have a discussion here but it seems like you’ve already made your mind: “I want HA to manage this addon”.
Home Assistant is already saying they’re “managing” an add-on as purporting it as the (soon-to-be) “official” way.
Maybe that’s what should be dropped?
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Why? What’s the point? As I said before… this addon works well for the majority of its users.
Where are you getting the numbers about “majority of its users”. Are there open stats where we can see how many people are running it? How many have tried and gave up because of an issue? How many are still running it with issues?
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I spend enough time on here to know what people use. Just because it doesn’t work for you doesn’t mean it’s a total failure and dead product.
N=1 anecdotal evidence is pretty weak. Again, the point of this thread was to try to gain more community insight. Clearly that’s not going to happen with the way you dismiss the issue.
Thank you for all of the hard work supporting others. I know it’s your time and energy and you’ve helped many people, but this thread sucks.
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How does this suck? Just because I’m not bending to your will does not mean zwave is dead. Please answer this question:
What is the problem with the community managing the zwavejs2mqtt addon?
There’s no problem with that! I’ve said it a few times: Why does HA support an official way to do it that so many people are having issues with? That has been pretty stagnant? It’s not dead, but the perception is that it will be – and that’s a big issue.
Why does HA need an official add-on for something that you’re saying the community should manage on its own anyway?
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Because your comments are pure speculation on the openzwave addon. That’s why.
Speculation because no one will give us straight answers. “it’s fine”, “it’s being worked on”
I’m going to sit back and let others enter into this discussion now since there are at least 4 people typing thoughtful responses. Maybe we all can do the same
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I am a new user to HA but I must admit you do not appear to be open to a meaningful discussion on this subject.
The problem is, as a new user, all I have seen is that OpenZwave is being pushed by HA in Youtube & posts as the “official” way forward and hence something I would likely follow, dismissing other Zwave initiatives.
If HA are happy with having multiple different Zwave implementations then can they say so?
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The guy with the answer to that question is having personal issues and taking a break. You’ll have to wait (like I’ve said umpteen times) until he returns. The phrase “be patient” can only be said so many times.
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I think that any discussion is moot without knowing fishwaldo’s plans and his timeline. Maybe he’s back January 1 and this is moot. Maybe he’s stopping development and it is moot the other way. Maybe he will be back late 2021 and a decision needs to be made whether to wait.
@petro could you please reach out and see if you can find out his thoughts? He has not been very communicative about his plans. While he has no obligation to be, for sure, that makes things difficult. People have been “patient” since July. Waiting until he returns only works if he (a) does so, and (b) his return is not so far out that it is impractical to wait.
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It is the path forward. This discussion is trying to imply that it’s not based purely on speculation. This is how conspiracy theories start.
I’m glad someone brought up this topic. I don’t really want to get into a this-vs-that discussion, but just offer my own subjective experience. I’ve been on the old ZWave integration since I came to HA, it works OK but as we all know, lots of newer devices and device features are not supported due to OZW 1.4. I tried the new beta integration earlier this year with disastrous results. Devices went missing, random hangs, events that would not fire. OK, it’s a beta, let’s give it some time to mature. Since this is a production system that I rely on in my day to day life, I need something that works. So I went back to the old integration. A couple of weeks ago I reattempted the switch - without much success. I did not have much time to look into the issues, but the symptoms seemed familiar - devices not appearing or reacting, crashes. So I went back to OZW 1.4.
I think the maintainers should definitely look into zwavejs2mqtt, which looks a lot more active and mature than anything we have on core HA right now.
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There should not be a “bus factor of 1” – we should not beholden to a single person.
We all wish the maintainer well. We all want them to be in a place where they are safe, well, and happy.
My point earlier: projects need more core maintainers so that if something happens, we aren’t all left wondering and waiting.
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The tone of the moderator in this thread is disappointing at best. I use this plug in and find it unreliable. As others have stated it will just stop working, mainly due to some issue with mqtt showing the driver is not not available. Then there were issues with the way it handled dimmer values. I am currently in the process of moving all my zwave devices to Hubitat for stability.
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one of the authors of the OZW integration here. Not gonna lie, I wish zwave-js existed back when we started on the new integration. I would have been much more inclined to use it, mostly because I know nothing about C++, but can work with Javascript/TypeScript.
But it didn’t exist back then, and the only options were qt-openzwave or the original zwave2mqtt. We went with qt-openzwave since Fishwaldo was willing to work with us on the MQTT implementation and since it was part of the core openzwave project, we figured support would be better (zwave2mqtt at the time required a separate node binding, plus the zwave2mqtt software, both which are maintained by third parties if I remember correctly).
That said, it’s definitely concerning (to me atleast) that Fishwaldo has been out of commission for so long and there hasn’t really been anyone else stepping up to develop the open-zwave aside from some small bugfix PRs or config file updates. However, at the same time zwave-js is still fairly new and new projects always look shiny and active… until they aren’t anymore.
As of right now the developers that have worked on the OpenZWave integration don’t have plans to switch it over to zwave-js. However, nothing prevents others from contributing a zwave-js integration and making a zwave-js addon. There’s 3 different ways to get Zigbee devices in HA, so no reason that OpenZWave has to be the only way to get Z-Wave devices in.
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Exactly. Be patient and await his return.
With respect, I actually work to debunk conspiracy theories in my real job. They start by speculation, sure, but to a much greater degree by a lack of transparency and communication.
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