How set up Z-Wave USB Stick with HA on Synology NAS Docker, DSM 7.1

Installation
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#1

Hi.
I’m confused! I’ve just installed Home Assistant on my Synology NAS in Docker as per Alternative - Home Assistant, following the Synology NAS section.
Toward the end, this advises “To use a Z-Wave USB stick … See this page for configuring Terminal access to your Synology NAS”, then use SSH to set 2 parameters, and etc…

Then there’s a Note “If you want to use a USB Bluetooth adapter or Z-Wave USB Stick with Home Assistant on Synology Docker these instructions do not correctly configure the container to access the USB devices. To configure these devices on your Synology Docker Home Assistant you can follow the instructions provided here by Phil Hawthorne.” which seem to be for DSM 5 and 6, NOT DSM 7.x. That immediately suggests the above official instructions are very outdated (~5 years old)!

Then again there are multiple topics on the Community forum that seem to suggest very different procedures to setup Z-Wave and connect the USB stick to HA, some a bit old, others 2021’ish.

Some/all? of these guidelines might be outdated as Synology is now on DSM 7.1 and HA keeps improving.

So please will someone point me to the best current setup procedure for
a) Getting HA to use Z-Wave. E.g. do I need to install zwavejs2mqtt in another Docker container, or what?
b) Linking it reliably to a Aeotec Z-Wave Gen5 USB stick on Synology NAS with HA in a Docker container?

Or do Z-wave and USB sticks just not work RELIABLY under Synology DSM 7.x and HA on Docker?
I see a lot of posts saying DSM updates gave Z-Wave USB stick problems.

Many thanks, Ian

#2

Hello. Is anyone please able to point me in the right direction on this?

#3

Bump. Same Boat here.

#4

Do a search on the forums, this has been discussed a few different times. Zwave on Synology DSM 7? The bottom line is DSM 7 removed the drivers necessary to allow DSM to recognize the Zwave USB stick. Some people have luck with installing drivers for the stick which are compiled for the architecture of their Synology CPU from a third party. Others have luck just issuing 3 “modprob” commands via terminal/SSH and the stick shows up. If you use docker, you have to make sure DSM recognizes and correctly identifies the stick first. If you use an alternative install method such as a virtual machine running in VMM on DSM, then all you need to do is make sure DSM can see the stick and pass it to the guest OS running in the virtual machine. The virtual machine is then responsible for handling the drivers to get the stick talking. Then there are others like me who have not upgraded to DSM 7 and are still running DSM 6.2.4 because of this.

#5

Hi @squirtbrnr . That’s a nice, concise summary of the situation and what I’d already found.
Yes, I’d done the searches - multiple times - and found many topics around this (as my post said). Most were either quite old or for VM not Docker &/or contained “This worked for me” / “but not for me” suggestions. Also they assume a fair understanding of Linux and sysadmin at a level I don’t [yet] have.
I was hoping to find a [semi-]official and clear process guide to lower the risk. HA’s official pages seem quite out of date on this.

I have found Synology: How to Add USB Support on DSM 7 – Marius Hosting which is very recently updated and very clearly written. But I’m a bit hesitant to add and use his Community tools to my Synology NAS as that would end any Warranty I might have and possibly any hardware support if I needed it.
Looks like I’ll have to trial a few of the suggestions and just see what works… Fingers crossed!!

I have put a FEATURE REQUEST into Synology ( Feature Inquiry | Synology Inc. )
a) to add [optional/switchable] support for USB sticks back in, and
b) to work with Home Assistant to make it an [officially] supported Package.
I’d urge other interested HA + Synology users to do the same. Maybe Synology will listen!

Best regards, Ian

#6

So Synology took a very hard stance against third party device support. It went deeper than just USB devices. They even have warnings that pop up in DSM if you put an unsupported hard drive in their unit. And some features become unavailable if an unsupported hard drive is inserted. Their stance is shifting towards a more small/medium business focus where companies buy whole packages and support contracts, not your average user who pieces together their own server. It’s no different than Dell or HP Business services. Additionally, they cannot possibly begin to test every single device and every single combination. Therefore they take the position of maintaining a small list of approved devices. My point is, I highly doubt any amount of feature requests will get them to change their mind.

As far as the community packages and warranty support. Yes, Synology will complain and blame anything that is not approved by them as the cause of any issue you may experience. However, you can easily remove the package if you do require support before contacting them. I can count on 1 hand the number of times I contacted support in the last 6 years. A few times were for a browser issue/compatibility, but the last time was for hardware replacement under the C2000 Atom bug. That was 4 years ago. Each time they initially blamed a third party package, but under the promise to uninstall the third party package, they did provide support. I can’t say that’s how they operate now though.

If you want to do unsupported stuff on your Synology, that’s up to you and you assume the risks. But that also means you will have to search and follow guides to find out what works and what doesn’t based on your hardware. However, if you are hesitant even at installing a community package or enabling SSH support in DSM, then installing HA, Zwave, or advance configurations on DSM may not be for you.

#7

Did you find the answer? Otherwise I can help :slight_smile: