I’m using both Smartthings and a GoControl HUSBZB-1 stick with the older OpenZwave HA add-on. Unfortunately there are a few Z-Wave devices that refuse to be paired with the USB Z-Wave stick, so I couldn’t get rid of Smartthings. I tried ZwaveJS when it was first released, but it was missing too many features that I had to revert back to my old setup.
I think ZwaveJS will be good, but it will take another year of updates. SmartThings is an okay option if you want a cheap solution that has good compatibility with Z-Wave devices. Incredibly easy to integrate with Home Assistant too. Downside is cloud-only integration and I don’t see Smartthings (as a company) lasting for more than a few years. If it does, it will likely move away from Z-Wave and onto something else, like a closed ecosystem.
Check on eBay for cheap Smartthings hubs (v2 or later). Remember that the v2 hub is ethernet-only, but tends to be the cheapest. I bought mine for $30 USD or so.
Hubitat is probably a fine choice, just more expensive but at least there are no internet dependencies.
Going through these migration pains, I’ve learned that I hate Z-Wave with a passion and will never buy a Z-Wave product again. Z-Wave sounds great on paper, but there seems to be huge quality issues between products.
Yeah, but that component uses the fiblary library and is entirely dependent on it. So if Fibaro decides to change their REST API at some point, this one-man library needs to be updated or the entire HA component will break. I mean maybe I’m too pessimistic here and I’m sure the guy who manages fiblary is great and will update it if needed. But after the OZW fiasco…
Anyway, the clear advantage of the Fibaro HCL (or Hubitat) is their commercial grade zwave support. So I should probably not dismiss it right away
Your looking for that golden goose, and sadly its not there. If it was people would be posting on this topic with “take this hands down” best solution would be to have something within HA or in a container that just works but like you said yourself, efforts are great and kudo’s to them for that but from a acceptance factor its not yet there. If i look at the documentation page on zwave js on HA its pages and pages long. Compare that to fibaro, even my mom could add a device. Also why i understand the reasoning for the devs to have a lot of GUI related items, while still allowing the more techie people to also use yaml. Imagine configuring an android/iphone device with config files. But been with HA for a long time and the combination i have now is what works best, don’t even get me started on the whole zigbee stuff, thats even worse in my eyes (connectivity wise)
I’m curious if most HA Z-Wave users have a mostly fixed set of devices they want to integrate. In that case, once you “get things working” you should be in decent shape if there are no regressions introduced.
I find myself in the camp of having a fixed, installed set of devices that continuously work well with HA. Here’s the shocker: I’m still using OZW
Is the issue really around initial installation of Z-Wave devices, joining to the mesh network, and then configuring the devices?
This can be more than just one weekend investment and can be frustrating, for sure.
What is the general experience with keeping a correctly configured HA Z-Wave network running?
EDIT: I meant OpenZWave (beta), the ozwdaemon Docker container + MQTT.
I’m using a mostly fixed set and I’m still on OZW 1.4. The mesh is very stable. However I did come across a rising number of problems with some newer devices that just aren’t supported by this old integration. Things like sirens (I ended up building my own though), Fibaro’s smart implant, issues with dimmers and slow performance in general.
The thing about zwave (and home automation in general) in my place is, this is a full production system. Not a tinkering around one. It just has to work. We have a farm where we raise horses as a side occupation. We added some automations related to this activity, things like wireless electric fence monitors, control and monitoring of solar well pumps, etc. And also security, which uses zwave. Things failing would be a major inconvenience beyond the usual WAF / GFAF. I can’t just install the current flavor of the day zwave integration and hope/pray it will work. I’m looking for something reliable and future proof. Right now, there’s nothing like that on HA, sadly.
I’m going to stay on OZW 1.4 for a while. I might switch to zwavejs when/if it gets more mature in the future. Or I might switch to something like Fibaro’s HCL instead. I really don’t know. The zwave situation is very confusing at this point.
@joelp Like you, Joel, I have a stic mesh of Z-Wave devices.I run OZW beta on a standalone Pi located in a good place and integrate back to my main HA VM using mqtt. Until this morning, the Z-Wave Pi hadn’t been touched for six months apart from a couple of updates.
Something went wrong this morning and all the Z-Wave devices disappeared from HA, but rebooted the Pi cured that.
That said, I logged on here for the first time in ages to assess whether I should move to ZWavejs.
I’m in the same boat @HeyImAlex. HA is a production system in our home. It was set up over a period of about 18 months but hasn’t been touched in months.
All my devices are supported by OZW Beta and I have no expectation that I’ll be adding more. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. However, I am concerned that something will change to make OZW deprecated and then dropped, so I occasionally check in to get a warning.
To be fair, if you have a small amount of zwave devices its fine, but my issues was more when your at 60-80 devices and up. Where it became messy. Also not everything was supported either. So yes i gave up and went the easy route. Now it just works with fibaro and never looked back since. If zwave js or any other solution of zwave works for you, by all means stick to it. Essentially what you are comfortable with you should take.
I am not sure that is true (?) , at least not at all levels. But I believe the HomeSeer experience is very good with regard to Z-Wave. I think the main guy from HS eventually moved to join the Z-Wave Alliance standards group or Sigma…
