My Z-wave network has been quite unreliable in the past, just like you describe. Until I disabled ModemManager from the Ubuntu host system.
Sorry did not read it clearly.
0 issues with zwave and even better performance with the new ozw integration.
No problem. 
Just making sure no one buys it thinking its a zwave repeater.
I have a RPi 3B+ with a RaZberry 2 Z-Wave controller, a Fibaro and an Aeon Labs power socket, a Fibaro button and a Philio temperature and humidity sensor. It is just a small network, but it has been rock solid for months now.
I did have some instability to start with. It seemed to be due to too much distance / brickwork between the controller and the power socket in question. That is my theory because I resolved it by adding the second power socket at an intermediate location and also re-siting my controller more centrally.
The hub is under powered but it’s a SmartThings clone and it’s all local. If you just use it as a z-wave bridge in conjunction with this custom component it’s very fast.
Disclaimer: it might need occasional reboots. I’ve automated that too lol.
I’m using an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen 5, Aeotec muliti-sensors and some DHS dimmers and switches. I don’t rate the DHS gear all that much simply due to a lack of adjustable parameters (but they are about 6 years old) but none of my equipment has been a problem. The new Aeotec stuff is rock solid.
I’ve been using zwave in HA since I started using it 3 years ago with an Aeotec controller.
I had a couple of issues with Aeotec micro-switches way back then but after sending those back for refund everything else I’ve gotten from Aeotec and also other zwave manufacturers has been great.
I’ve got 10 mains powered nodes and 13 battery powered nodes and I can’t remember the last time I had any issues with any of them.
I’ve actually had the opposite experience. I had many wi-fi switches in my setup which were very unreliable and had better luck switching to z-wave/zigbee. The controller I use is made by Nortek and is a dual z-wave/zigbee device. I like the zigbee integration better but use both types of devices and have replaced a lot of wi-if devices with them.
If I’m not mistaken, each z-wave device acts as a repeater as that is part of the protocol. You may be having issues if you have things competing in the frequency range. I believe that was my problem with wi-if and why z-wave works better for me as there is less interference in that range. You can look up the range as it differs by country and see if you have things in your area that would conflict.
I had issues with Zwave in the past and posted my issues here. Some were HA related, but most of my issues were just Zwave being Zwave and some nodes being battery powered and others mains powered. Once I centralized my Aeotec stick, my comms issues calmed down, but I still had the occasional issue with GE/Jasco dimmers.
Now I still use Zwave for door sensors, motion sensors, 7 outlet plugs, and my door lock, but I have since started adding Lutron Caseta switches with the Lutron Pro Hub. I did my research regarding the Lutron integration (both the built in and the custom component with local control) before going to Lutron. The two other big reasons driving my transition to Lutron were that I have 8 Lutron Triathlon shades with pico remotes and I wanted native HomeKit support. I’m very happy with Lutron, but Zwave has improved and stabilized since I started using it, so I still use both.
I have experienced lots of issues with aeon labs z-wave sensors in the past. Usually, the problem arises from poor reception on a sensor. Also, if the aeon stick gets disconnected, or the home assistant system is not shutdown properly then it will not come back up properly. I recently installed an aeon z-wave range extender which fixed the poor reception problems. Been fairly stable since. I hold my breath every time i reboot.
I am using Z-Wave since over 6 years. Right now with 96 devices (56 battery powered) With different Gateway and since 3 month Home Assistant again.
No issues at all.
Would always use Z-Wave again. I also have Zigbee (60 devices) and Enocean (10 devices)
I have retrofit my entire house with ZWave Plus switches, dimmers, and sensors. So far 70 nodes, and it’s working.
In my opinion, the weak link for Z-Wave is not the hardware, it’s OpenZWave 
. I hope that with Z-Wave itself going open source, a better option for Home Assistant emerges.
Knowing what I know now, I wish I had just gone with WiFi flashable ESP-based for at least the hardwired stuff. ESPHome is awesome. WiFi offers more hardware/style options, lower cost overall, and you don’t have to fuss with a separate wireless tech stack. The only downsides for me would have been battery-powered devices/sensors and the eventual? obsolescence of 2.4GHz. (WiFi network congestion not an issue with my Ubiquity setup.)
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Noob here. I’ve managed to stumble through installation and setup of all my wifi integrations and get them working pretty reliably. Being rather proud of my accomplishments and thinking z-wave was the better technology, I eagerly jumped in to stage 2. Boy what a shocker. I’ve yet to get a single device to work for more than a day or two, and am beginning to wonder if z-wave is simply some sort of elaborate practical joke created for the sole purpose of frustrating me.
My experience with Z-wave started with an Aeotec USB stick and Aeotec window/door sensors (7 of them), two Aeotec multisensors, two Aeotec sirens, a couple of other Z-wave sensors. And I had 3 Z-wave mains powered repeaters which means a total of 6 mains powered Z-wave devices to maintain a good mesh.
It sucked! It was always unreliable. I never had to re-pair sensors. They remained paired but every time HA was restarted some sensors would not work until they had been “massaged” by clicking the pairing button or opening/closing the windows many times. Sometimes they would work the next day.
But then the next day I would change something else in HA and restart we started all over.
HA and Z-wave has been nothing but bad experience.
The overall problem was that I wanted this to be part of an alarm system. But I could never trust that opening a window or a door would trigger an alarm.
So I removed all my Z-wave sensors and added a Conbee II stick, installed with deconz, and I bought a lot of Awara zigbee sensors from Xiaomi. They are rock solid. I have them on all windows and some doors. On my two main doors I replaced the Z-wave by a home made ESP8266 solution which also acts as NFC reader and with LEDs showing status of all windows and doors.
At the same site I moved my zigbee based lights from Philips Hue to Deconz so that the entire house is one single Zigbee mesh network.
I did keep the Aeotec stick and I kept the two sirens and the two multisensors. It seems these two mains powered sirens are rock solid and each sit near the multisensors at the front and back of the house and act as repeaters. Those 4 remaining devices always connect and always work when I look at them or test them. So maybe it is the Aeotec window/door sensors that are crap.
On my Zigbee network I can say that also there I had a few problems. Both with Philips Hue and Deconz. I found out at the end that 6 or 7 Osram smart plugs were often part of the problem when the mesh broke. It became better when I repaired them with an Osram hub and software upgraded them. But they never got really good. I then replaced all of them by Philips Hue smart plugs.
Same with Philips 4 button remotes. They often failed to work at first keypress but after software upgrading them (by pairing them temporarily with a Philips Hue hub) it is very rare that they do not work at first press.
So for both Z-wave and Zigbee one thing is for sure. Some devices are better than others. And there are firmware problems with many of them. So try and identify which are failing. It may not be the one that disconnects but the one that act as router.
And remember to connect the sticks (Z-wave as well as Zigbee) on a 1 meter USB extension cable to get the radio receiver inside the stick away from the computer. There is so much RF noise emitted from any computer when you are 10 cms from the box. Bad radio reception will always cause problems for any radio based mesh network
Running flawlesly here (12 devices - all mains connected). Have you included the devices securely or insecurely ? Have you looked at the routing graph to see if all devices go via 1 node for example. Is everything Zwave plus ?
I am thinking of going back to using my finger for lights and guessing the temperature. HA is beautiful and so is every other device I throw at it. With venv the world is my oyster…until it comes to z-wave. I face another z-wave disaster due to my own inexperience with docker. And I don’t think I had a backup plan in place for the XML files, that’s all on me. Tonight I’m sad and looking for some other solution because I face having to remove/include everything again. Until today I was still going through the process of fixing the network from the last time I made a mess. I’ve never had to rebuild my Hue network ever and it’s so easily integrated into HA. Z-wave is a nightmare because renaming the nodes in the source changes how HA sees the devices. Then I have to double-check every automation. Even with find and replace it’s tedious. I have a Vera device that I can use in place but it has it’s own host of problems.
That’s what made me stop trying with HA Z-Wave options.
Hubitat works great as long as you don’t do automation with the hub.
Just link it with the custom component and it’s the perfect bridge.
I’m going to look at this today. Do you know if this is ‘better’ than the Vera? I didn’t like the Vera interface and it’s z-wave system seemed slower.
So back when I used SmartThings everybody said that Vera was “old” and didn’t support many devices.
Now I know they’ve done some stuff lately but I honestly haven’t given them a shot.
IF and this is a big IF Home Assistant nails Z-Wave and there’s none of this dead node business that ruined two of my weekends anymore I will switch to HA Z-Wave to get rid of as many things as possible but I’m not holding my breath.
Hubitat is local, it’s very fast if you’re just using the custom component with HA.
There is an issue with it needing to be rebooted.
It’s nowhere near as bad if you don’t have any automations in Hubitat, mine are all in HA so back when I was curious I didn’t have to reboot it for weeks.
Now I just have a script in HA that reboots it once a week for me.