Nabu Casa joins the Z-Wave Alliance

Blog
1

TL;DR: We have joined the Z-Wave Alliance, thanks to revenue from Home Assistant Cloud subscribers, and will start the certification process for Z-Wave JS.

Z-Wave is a local smart home standard that has been around since 1999. Thanks to operating on sub-Ghz frequencies, it is able to create a reliable mesh network that can span your whole house. Its reliability also made it popular to power brands like Yale locks and Amazon Ring. The Z-Wave standard is developed by a consortium of companies under the Z-Wave Alliance.

With Home Assistant, we have integrated Z-Wave since our early days. We first relied on OpenZWave until we transitioned in 2021 to using Z-Wave JS created by Dominic Griesel. Z-Wave JS is a fully open-source implementation of the Z-Wave protocol. Combined with Home Assistant and a Z-Wave USB stick, it gives our users the best possible Z-Wave experience. Dominic is employed by Nabu Casa and can work full-time on Z-Wave JS thanks to the revenue generated from Home Assistant Cloud subscribers (thank you!).

We have thoroughly tested Z-Wave JS with the Home Assistant community. Our community is from all over the world and has access to a wide variety of Z-Wave devices from all generations. This has ensured that Z-Wave JS is able to deal with devices and their quirks all the way back to the original Z-Wave release.

However, our ambitions for Z-Wave JS are bigger than just making sure we have a rock-solid Z-Wave implementation for you. We want to make it easier for companies to develop Z-Wave controllers and grow the Z-Wave ecosystem. A bigger ecosystem is more appealing for manufacturers to make Z-Wave devices, which results in more choices for our users. And as Z-Wave works locally, it is a local choice.

Today, we are proud to announce that we have joined the Z-Wave Alliance to get Z-Wave JS officially certified. Certification shows other companies that Z-Wave JS is a full and correct implementation of the Z-Wave standard. It will allow other companies to feel confident that they can adopt Z-Wave JS to integrate Z-Wave into their products. HomeSeer, for example, has announced that it is migrating its platform to Z-Wave JS. We hope this will open up new opportunities as more companies follow our lead in the future.

The Open Home

With Home Assistant, we have a vision for the smart home that we call the Open Home. It revolves around three core values: privacy, choice, and sustainability. Anything that lives up to those values is worthy of being adopted by our community. It’s why we have previously joined the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) to take part in the development of Matter and Zigbee, and have now joined the Z-Wave Alliance.

Z-Wave aligns with these three values: your data remains local, you can combine Z-Wave devices from any manufacturer, and devices will continue to operate even if the company behind them is no longer around. It is an important standard for the Open Home.

This is why, even though Z-Wave, Zigbee, and Matter are competing standards, we have joined both the Z-Wave Alliance and the CSA and will keep supporting each standard. Not every smart home is the same. Users need to have choice and be able to pick the standard that works best for their home. And competing standards push each other to improve and innovate, ultimately leading to all standards becoming better for users.

As part of the Z-Wave Alliance, we plan on bringing our unique insights as an open source community to the table. We want to make sure that the future direction of the Z-Wave standard continues to remain true to our Open Home values. Just like we do for Zigbee and Matter within the CSA.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/02/15/nabu-casa-joins-z-wave-alliance
34 Likes
2

Great, i have been on this forum for 7 years and have seen a lot of angst over zwave and changes to it.

If it has matured to the point of getting certification, then thats a tribute to all that development.

3 Likes
3

Awesome, this is great news.

2 Likes
4

Cool! I only use Zigbee devices but Z-wave in hindsight seems like a better technology when it comes to the RF band.

5

This why it’s so important for the long-term health of open source projects to have a profitable business model. Glad that Nabu Casa is putting the $$$$$ to good use.

4 Likes
6

I use both, for different purposes. Most of my switches will be Z-Wave and my motion and temperature/humidity sensors will be Zigbee. I will still use certain Wi-Fi devices, like the ones from Shelly because they work with Home Assistant out of the box without needing custom firmware to disconnect from the Cloud.

1 Like
7

I don’t have zwave (I have zigbee), but I’ve heard the zigbee motion sensors are much faster at reporting data than the zwave ones. No idea how true that is but always found that odd.

1 Like
8

I haven’t found that to be the case in my experience. Both are pretty much instant.

9

It definitely won’t change with certification. :slight_smile: But that is also something I’ve found.

I think it can be traced to the fact that Z-Wave motion sensors have historically been used more for security, while Zigbee motion sensors had automation in mind from the beginning. Certainty of detection is more important than speed for security, and it can take a bit longer (more zones need to activate in the sensor to eliminate less likely “blips”). This likely accounts for the tradeoffs of each — which to be clear, isn’t saying either can’t play a role for either purpose, just stating the priorities.

Nothing about Z-Wave itself inherently should cause this; I’ve used some that are snappy, though they are not the norm (e.g,. the discontinued Zooz ZSE40, the hard-to-find Coolcam 700 and likely other brands using the same hardware). And there are probably some Zigbee ones that are slow (though I have yet to find one where it bothers me…).

This has been my experience regardless of security (including both S0 and S2, though at least S0 is likely slower than anything else, perhaps not enough to notice). It’s also been my experience across Z-Wave generations, though 600-series was never released and I’m never sure what manufacturers mean when they say “6th gen.” However, 700- (I guess the 6th gen technically, even though I think Aeon used this for 500?) and 800-series devices do allow theoretically faster speeds. However, this is nothing that should matter for a motion sensor in the real world.

I still suspect the different historical applications for each sensor is the main reason, this being something intrinsic to the sensor in the device itself rather than anything to do with protocol per se.

1 Like
10

This is welcome news. I have all z-wave Jasco paddle switches, fan controllers, and dimmers. Grandparents and children can use them manually without issue and they work locally from my phone.

Now let’s see if we can replace the Nest Hub Max with a screen device that can do local audio commands easily.

1 Like
11

This is great to hear. Keep up the good work.

12

Great news! I found my z-wave networks to be most reliable, and they have been stable for years. I have two z-wave networks and two zigbee networks but I have not seen any significant difference in speed between the standards in reporting data or reacting to commands.

13

There are two mode for Z-Wave, secure and non-secure. There can be a certain lag (sub 1sec, in my experience) with the secure protocol. The non-secure is instant. This is based on Z-Wave gen 6. They may have solved that problem since then.

14

I don’t have like for like devices to compare, but indeed the Z-wave devices I have seem to be quite a bit slower. Sometimes my z-wave sirens responds after a few seconds.
I use both z-wave and zigbee because I started my smart home journey with the SmartThings hub which includes both, so purchase decisions over the years never accounted for protocol and ended up with plenty of devices of each type.
If you ask me, both protocols are good, but zigbee is better.

15

Nice! Does Nabu Casa plan to make an official Home Assistant Z-Wave Controller USB dongle, or?

That is, sell a Z-Wave Controller USB radio adapter similar to Home Assistant SkyConnect USB stick?

Note! While it is true that Z-Wave 800 Series currently only has cutting-edge in Z-Wave JS, a USB dongle board hardware using the pre-certified Silicon Labs ZGM230S SiP (based on Silabs EFR32ZG23 SoC) would be the perfect long-term solution because Z-Wave 800 Series is the first Z-Wave series/generation with worldwide RF frequency chips, meaning can sell the same hardware globally and only need to make different RF region firmware images (though may have to be pre-flashed before shipping for different RF regions be CE, FCC and ISED approved?).

PS: This question is also related to the other recent news that Silicon Labs partnered with Nabu Casa:

16

If Nabu Casa does decide to do this I kinda hope it would be a all in one combo stick:

Zigbee, Thread, Z-Wave

I’ve been using a fairly old HUSBZB-1 on my various HA setups and I like that it’s just a single stick I have to deal with.

17

I hope for the oposite when it comes to radio USB dongles as it would not only make make that dongle more expensive, it would also make it less convenient to only upgrade one of the radio protoocol SoCs.

I mean, would then need to update/migrate both if a newer Z-Wave or Zigbee radio SoC is released.

However if they ever make a replacement to the Home Assistant Yellow appliance then I think it would be a good idea to include separate radios for Zigbee, Thread, and Z-Wave by default in the packaging.

18

Very awesome! I’m a huge fan of Zwave and 90% of my home automation system are Zwave products. Highly recommended and happy to see HA bringing Zwave JS to certification.

19

Great to hear. Thanks for everything you all do!

20

Are there plans for adding OTW flashing support of Z-Wave Controller in Home Assistant integration UI?

or will support maybe be added to Nabu Casa’s existing “Universal Silicon Labs Flasher” tool and the “Silicon Labs Flasher Add-on” to unify all Silabs firmware update tools under one frontend addon?

Would be awedome if would update Z-Wave controller firmware via “Silicon Labs Flasher Add-on”:

Note! OTW programming of Z-Wave Controller is today available in Z-Wave JS UI but not i HA:

https://zwave-js.github.io/node-zwave-js/#/api/controller?id=updating-the-firmware-of-the-controller-otw

PS: Ability for users to easily update the Z-Wave Controller firmware is obviously important, see:

https://zwave-js.github.io/node-zwave-js/#/troubleshooting/otw-upgrade?id=over-the-wire-otw-firmware-upgrades-of-z-wave-controllers