How to test the OZW Beta without fully switching over

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102

one more issue, i found that sometimes the devices don’t respond. I have a light that 1 out of 5 times doesnt turn on or off. I check OZWadmin and the user value changes as i click the switch in HA, so whhat could be the problem. It is a wall switch 14294 In-Wall Smart Dimmer

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I have the same issue with some of my Fibaro switches/dimmers. Worked flawlessly with the old Zwave-integration. With ozw beta, they sometimes don’t do as they are told. Annoying, but it does not happen often enough for me to cosider switching back.

My hope is that Fishwaldo will be back soon, so we can get some tracktion on ozw again.

104

i finally switched from 1.4 to qt-openzwave, and now some of my sensors from the lock (access control, power management, etc) are showing unavailable / disabled. how can i resolve this?

also i want to restart my HA container to reload a template sensor that i have in my configuration.yaml file, but the warning to not restart before switching back has me worried about restarting. i don’t have a zwave section in my config file.

105

You don’t have to do that anymore, go to Server Controls → Reload Template Entities

You can enable the disabled entities.

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106

is it possible to use this same guide to try out zwavejs2mqtt, since that seems to be the direction we’re headed now?

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107

zwavejs2mqtt utilizes mqtt for transport, the new system removes that and uses websockets instead.
This causes less hiccups with retained messages.

To answer your question, yes you can try firing up zwave2mqtt if you like, same rules apply, don’t restart HA until you’re ready.

108

alright, in that case no point messing with it i guess…i’ll just stick with 1.6 or go back to 1.4 until the new system is ready.

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Does js use mqtt? And what do you mean with “new” system then?

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Zwavejs is a project that communicates to the ZWave stick and has an API to access it.
Zwavejs2Mqtt is a project that uses ZWavejs and wraps it to communicate over MQTT.

There is (in development) a project that will use ZWavejs and communicate with HA over websockets, using the native HA API to talk instead of MQTT.

Both projects will use the same ZWavejs server backend.

(This is my understanding, if I’m incorrect please let me know)

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111

This is accurate.

112

Wheres information about the zwavejs over api one for home assitant? I am in favor of that one (like esphome uses that same api?)

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https://github.com/home-assistant/architecture/issues/483

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Very much still in development. I believe it’s this one, which was created 6 days ago.

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115

There’s also this:

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Hmmm for me it is hard to understand how this all fits together.

I get:

  1. Openzwave beta addon - integration openzwave beta (does it use mqtt under the hood or even work without mosquitto? I believe it should be installed)
  2. Zwave2mqtt, the name is clear is uses openzwave and mqtt. But what integration? Mqtt?
  3. zwavejs2mqtt, name is clear, it uses mqtt, but what integration? Mqtt?
  4. zwavejsapi (is it called that way) uses the api like esphome? What integration?

See how I got confused as a very enthusiastic user?

117

Yes it uses mqtt under the hood.

Both MQTT

zwave-js-server, it’s using websockets and it’ll have a separate integration.

118

There is no integration for it yet. HOWEVER one was just merged less than 24 hours ago, so by HA version 2021.2 it will likely be included. Once it exists, it will be detected and auto-added by itself.

There’s also no easy to install HA addon for it yet, but I expect that will be developed and released around the same time as the integration is (as a Beta at least).

As for your other questions (2 & 3) Zwave2mqtt supports MQTT discovery, so if you have MQTT set up in HA, and autodiscovery enabled, the devices/entities will get discovered automatically.
For zwavejs2mqtt, I do not believe it supports HA autodiscovery over MQTT, so you would have to manually add each device (this is a guess though, since the integration doesn’t mention it. I haven’t tried it myself).

119

So reading this very high level and basic descriptions gives me the hope that the current Beta OZW (which I use) gets a decent successor in form of ZwaveJsApi? Then the topic of this (or maybe a new topic) should be “how to migrate from”?

Really hopefull this!

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Likely a new thread.

121

let’s say i think i’m ready at this point to stick with 1.6 (ozw). what do i do at that point? just delete the 1.4 integration and i’m good to go?

if i do that, how much of a PITA will it be to switch back if i ever decide i want to do that?