I´ve started with Home Assistant about 3 weeks ago, starting with Hass.IO where I had to deal a lot with the docker/container concept. I finally managed it to administrate but I do prefer a “real” linux. So I downloaded Hassbian 1.31 and also update to HA 0.59.1 yesterday.
The first impression so far is good, sometimes a bit confusing but it becomes clearer with every step. Before that I used domoticz - some things were better there, some worse. All in all I think I´ll stick to HA now.
Since I run some Z-Wave devices I am also using the built-in Z-Wave manager. Although it is pretty comfortable to configure everything in one GUI I am not really happy with it:
If I make changes, e.g. node associations or parameter it is not updating it´s screen. Even after logoff/logon still the old settings are shown in the GUI.
the OZW log part is difficult to read, everytime I´ve to choose the lines which I would like to see, otherwise the whole (long) log is appearing
all in all it seems like a good development to integrate it in HA but it seems more basic (until now)…
So I would like to use OZWCP in parallel. However I found a lot of howto to activate/install it but they are not Hassbian specific or for older versions. Is it correct that OZWCP was part of hassbian-config? If I am right, it can be only installed by compile it from the original github repository (https://github.com/OpenZWave/open-zwave-control-panel) directly. Or are there any other maybe easier methods?
Has somebody already done this and can give me some hints and tips how to install?
You have to restart HA for changes like Z-Wave node names to appear in the UI. Given that you would have to shut down HA to use OZWCP, there’s no gain to be had there.
As for the log, you are right, dumping the entire thing into a web page is not great. I just run tail -f OZW_Log.txt in an ssh session and watch the log scroll by as things happen.
There is a Debian stretch package for OZWCP but it’s an older version if I’m not mistaken. I think you’ll have to compile OZWCP to get a recent one. Home Assistant downloads and compiles the OZW libraries on install/upgrade automatically.
But my advice is to just live with the HA Z-Wave UI.
Ok, got that now with the restart and yes, the values are updated then as expected. tail -f is always the method I already used before, not only for the OZW_log but also for the ha log itself it´s the best way to discover issues.
In the meantime I managed to get OZWCP (by using a docker container) installed just to find out that was not what I was looking for ;-). When I started with zwave I first used the zway software. I also managed to install that now as a docker container - but it didn´t really work, it discovered my devices by node ids but I am not able to change names, values, etc… (zway exclusive access to my zwave uart module).
I think, I´ll live with the HA Z-Wave UI. Currently I am still doing a lot of changes and new devices are added. I am sure, when everything is running fine that will be enough for further administration…