Hi, many people are struggling with OpenZWave, especially when it comes to support of newer devices. I was just made aware of SiLab’s own Z-Ware, which as far as I can understand, is an alternative. Can this be an opportunity to simplify and improve Z-Wave support?
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Somebody on the Discord channel had set up their system using Z/IP and MQTT. That decouples Z-Wave from Home Assistant, which means that when you restart Home Assistant you don’t have to restart the whole mesh.
Given that the rate of development for OpenZWave appears to have slowed significantly, either of these have the potential to be a good long term option. though I’ll admit to a slight preference for the Z/IP approach.
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Hmm… my buddy is a VP at Silicon labs…maybe I should bug him about some of this.
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Please 
Pragmatically, with the arrival of S2, and the 700 series arriving next year, it doesn’t look like OZW will support any of that any time soon. That concerns me, as it means that newer devices may not be supported, or have very limited support. Whether Home Assistant can gain direct Z/IP or Z-Ware support, or indirect through MQTT, I think either it needs something like that, or for OZW to be reinvigorated. I don’t see the last of those happening 
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Actually he’s CTO. I’ll chat with him the next time I see him, but he’s Italian and we’re usually drinking so I generally can’t understand 80% of what he’s saying.
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Seems to make quite some sense. Once you decouple via MQTT (or whatever) exchanging the Z-Wave implementation becomes easier.
Lars
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I have no first-hand experience with either Z-Ware or Z/IP, but there’s a good summary at drzwave.blog:
The SerialAPI is the interface most gateway developers have used in the past but this is a very low-level interface. There are many nuances of handling sleeping devices and the complexities of the encrypted security encapsulation when using such a low-level interface. This is where Z/IP comes in which handles nearly all of these lower level details for you. Z/IP is planned to be the only supported interface in the near future and certification costs will be significantly higher if it is not used. ZWare adds another layer on top of the Z/IP which provides much easier C++ objects relieving the developer from having to learn the details of each Z-Wave command class.
Yeah, I was poking around in the repo to see if I could find out why my keypad was not supported, and saw that a lot of the source code isn’t updated the past few years.
I suspect licensing might be an issue - the Z/IP page says “Royalty free for holders of the Z-Wave Controller Developers kit”.
You’re correct on that front. To get that developers kit you have to pay $2000 and sign an NDA.
The general idea of decoupling holds, but it might be better to go with something open like Mozillas WebThings spec than is something proprietary.
Of course that is a ton of code to write.
I’m seriously considering it though, once I finish the cooker component. Already started prototyping a little. I hate OZW
any news here? Like the ide of having a z-wave(Z-ware) )hub that is made by z-wave to communicate with Home assistant. That sounds like a stable solution:)
Something has changed recently Silicon Labs Releases Z-Wave Public SDK, Raspberry Pi 3 Image - CNX Software I think this might be a good starting point
Would zwave over IP mean I could stick a raspberry pi in a remote yet network connected location and have connectivity?
That would be great!
I realize this hasn’t seen much conversation but just curious if there is any progress on this or if we are stuck using ozw. Seems like with the quickly approaching 1.0 release that this is lower on the priority list which I understand but was curious if there was a branch out there somewhere that was attempting to move away from ozw.