I have some Zwave+ in wall dimmers (a GE 14294 and a HomeSeer HS-WD 100+) as well as some Lutron Caseta dimmers. I use an Aeotec Gen5 Z-stick for zwave.
Now, I love the idea of z-wave. Open standard, many vendors, self-healing mesh. Caseta is everything I dislike - proprietary, needs internet connection (at least for pairing, haven’t checked if I can cut it off from the internet for regular use), may phone home for no reason, more expensive, limited ability to extend range.
But the Caseta works much better. Aside from having nice features like high end and low end trim adjustment (useful for dimming LEDS) it seems to have much better feedback to HA.
When I click off in a Caseta switch in HA, the lights instantly go off and the switch icon changes to “off” right away. But when I click a zwave switch off, the lights do turn off immediately, but the icon doesn’t update well. It flips back to “on”. Sometimes it’s there for a few seconds and then goes to “off,” but sometimes it stays in the “on” mode even though the lights are off. Clicking it again, flips it to the “off” state.
This looks like a failure of the switch to send a status update confirming that it really is off. That’s very annoying - it means I can’t rely on the icons to be sure what state the lights are in.
Is there a fix for this? Is it an issue with the specific brands/models? With this zwave hub? An HA setting? Or just inherent?
I’m about to buy a whole lot more smart dimmers and switches, and would really like to standardize as much as possible. So is there a way to make the zwave behave?
You can tune it to solve most issues; but not all.
The challenges is that even though zwave is a open platform it really is not. Sigma charges vendors a hefty tax to be zwave certified. The open source implementation, OpenZwave, was reverse engineered to avoid such licensing.
So in concept it’s open; it’s like Apple being open – open means you’ve paid the appropriate licenses they allow you to pay to access the functionality they wish to allow you access.
I am a heavy Zwave user and actually looking to move to Lutron to escape the zwave hell that ecosystem is in.
For your problem search the “refresh” option for zwave light devices. It can make the GE function well; the HS-WD 100+ should already be fine as it has instant status updates.
Very interested in which way you decided to go. I originally had some Z-Wave switches. Some GE Switches that were not Z-Wave plus. Heard good things about Lutron and so as I was trying to figure things out I bought a couple, but I can’t get it it to work with Home Assistant. I am also a bigger fan of the paddle style switch for turning on and off, and the Caseta buttons are a little more difficult to use. The price tag of Lutron and the fact that I may now have to get a the pro hub since the bdg2 hub that I have is known to quit working as Lutron makes changes, has me thinking that Z-Wave though possibly troublesome is just simpler to use. Trying to decide whether to go back to Z-Wave or ride out the Lutron and hope the pro hub makes it work. If I buy the pro hub I’ll consider myself in too deep money wise to go back to Z-Wave.
I went with Caseta. They work great and I’ve had nothing but problems with zwave devices (I have several Aeotect smart plugs that I’ve basically stopped using entirely, as they would spontaneously lose connection from time to time).
The one downside of Caseta for me (aside from cost) is that they require some cloud access. Almost all of the rest of my system is local-only. Now Caseta is better than many, since it seems it only needs cloud for setting up a new device, not for regular operations, but still.
At this point, I’m committed to the Caseta ecosystem - I’ve gotten about half the house converted and my family has gotten used to them, they’d revolt if I tried to change to another type of switch again - but if I were starting out from scratch again, I’d probably use WiFi switches flashed with Tasmota or ESPHome, and skip Caseta altogether.
Though I don’t know if there’s one that would work with the one wacky 2-way switch that caused me to try Caseta in the first place.
Not sure which hub I have, but with the pro hub, can you pair devices via telnet? Do you have a link to the instructions somewhere?
Right now, I only use the Caseta app (via the cloud, afaik) to pair new devices to the hub, but after that use HA, via the Caseta component to connect everything else. The component is aimed at the IP of the hub, so it looks like it’s working purely local. I once disconnected the hub from internet access and everything seemed to work fine, but I’ve not done extensive testing on it.
With the PRO hub it has built in telnet access. There is a custom component that utilizes this to communicate with that pro hub to control the devices locally; and get instant status updates. No cloud needed.
You use the Lutron app to add devices and manage the devices but once done all those are usable inside HA.
It works very very well; and the best of both worlds actually.
More anecdata… I’m a Caseta user and I tend to use Caseta for everything they support (lights and soon to be blinds) since it is so fast and reliable. For other stuff I’ve been using Z-Wave but also have similar issues with updates and loops. The Z-Wave products I have (Monoprice/Hank, Kwikset and Peanut) are tolerably reliable but definitely a step-down from Caseta. I am experimenting with bringing ZigBee in for smart-bulbs and initial results are promising.
I"m building a new house and my home automation team (yes, I’m not technical and will not be doing the work myself) is hammering me to NOT go with z-wave products, but rather Lutron, mostly because we have about 50 devices/switches that will need to be installed… the cost of that alone is going to kill me… but he also suggested, going with standard switches and scale as we go.
Keep in mind the 50 device limit of Caseta. The custom component also supports Ra2 Select that uses the more expensive RadioRa 2 components but it supports up to 100 devices. The Caseta switches cannot be ported over to Ra2 Select after hitting the 50 cap as they are not compatible.
