Like many here, my home automation journey has spanned nearly 30 years. I’ve progressed through X-10, SmartThings, HomeSeer, and now to Home Assistant. I’m not a big fan of the steps it takes to change platforms. Fortunately, I only had 14 Z-wave devices and a couple of Zigbee bulbs at the time. Still, excluding and re-including Z-wave devices is a pain, especially when a couple are in-wall switches at some distance from the hub, necessitating finding a way to connect the hub near them for pairing.
Despite some missteps getting HA fully running, I am glad I made the switch. I’ve been able to include IP and Abode cameras, add multiple Nest thermostats, add control of gas fireplaces, add my Weatherflow Tempest station, monitor iPhone/iPad battery status, monitor electrical power from Sense, and design dashboards that are truly functional. I’m a big fan of mushroom cards.
Everyone’s journey is unique. Hopefully a few of my learnings will lessen headaches for others. Below are a few from my recent switch to Home Assistant. Many are covered in various places by others who encountered similar challenges. Having access to generative AI, be it Perplexity Pro, ChatGPT or other is a HUGE help to understand installation steps, troubleshoot and generate yaml code.
I replaced my HomeSeer Zee with an Odroid M1 16G eMMC/256G NVMe, Zooz 800 LR Z-wave and Sonoff Zigbee dongle from AmeriDroid. I really like this hub. Note, as a bundle, when it arrived from AmeriDroid there were no instructions and the eMMC card was in a separate bag. I assumed I needed to image it with HAOS, but couldn’t read it on any of my microcard readers. Finally I just plugged it in and powered up. It was preloaded with HAOS (hence not readable via a Mac or PC).
Z-wave JS vs Z-wave JS UI Add-ons: Based on other reviews, my intent was to use Z-wave JS UI. A day or so after getting everything going, I discovered I had both Z-wave JS and Z-wave JS UI but HA was using the non-UI version. After some trial and error, after removing all of the Z-wave components to start over, the 2 keys steps to get it right for me were to:
- when configuring the Z-wave JS UI Add-on, in Settings > Home Assistant, leave the Server Host address blank
- when installing the Z-wave integration, there isn’t a separate version for the Z-wave JS UI. Rather, during installation, uncheck the “Use the Z-Wave JS Supervisor add-on”. If this is checked, it will revert to the non-UI Add-on.
Google Nest integration: Like anything involving Google Cloud Console, it is a bit complex to setup and easy to miss something. The HA documentation is pretty good, but I still missed something. After getting the integration installed, I saw my thermostats and their sensors. But they updated infrequently and variably, such that I couldn’t rely on any of the data displayed. I finally came across a YouTube video by “mostlychris” that helped me find the issue. In my case, while I had created a Pub/sub folder on the Google end, it was disabled and I hadn’t given it the appropriate Pub/sub Subscriber permissions (not an owner) that need to be set for a New Principal with the email [email protected], not my account email. This is covered (but deep inside) the HA Nest integration documentation. I still use the separate Nest app for scheduling, but at least I can quickly view room temps and humidity within HA.
Abode cameras: After installing the Abode integration, I found that the WebRTC Camera integration from HACS did the trick to get a reliable stream in my dashboard.
Weatherflow – Tempest: Between the Integrations page and HACS, there are at least 3 Weatherflow integrations. I finally found that Weatherflow Forecast from HACS is the best. It pulls in my station data and provides forecast detail.
A few thoughts on Z-wave Long Range: With the new HA system, I decided to expand my network to a detached garage where I have a home office. I never managed to add my new Zooz Zen17 800LR relay in long range mode. Even if I had, given that long range uses a star or hub/spoke design (I hadn’t seen that before starting), the relay wouldn’t have meshed with older non-LR devices I also wanted to use in the office. At least in mesh mode, this relay needs a strong signal or it frequently reports as ‘dead’. I added a Zooz ZAC38 extender at an outlet in the house closest to the garage. Although less often, I was still seeing the relay as ‘dead’ at intervals. Same outcome moving the extender into the garage. I finally moved the hub to the garage office with the extender in the house to mesh devices there. So far, this seems to have done the trick. My Zigbee devices in the house are also connecting and meshing each other.
Signal strength is an area that doesn’t fully make sense to me. I’ve read you want to be in the -70 to -80 dBm range. From the hub to my Z-wave relay is 15 feet with no obstructions. It reads -83 dBm. Most of the z-wave devices in my network are in the -90 to -100 dBm range. The extender is 75 feet away, separated by a window on one end and wall on the other, and reads -95 dBm. While it seems the signals should be stronger than showing, everything is currently working, so I won’t worry too much about it.