New to HA - Problems with discovering Z-Wave

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

Hey Everyone,

I am in the process of migrating from SmartThings to Home Assistant. I am a SysAdmin / Linux Admin by trade, so this has been a lot of fun but surprisingly difficult (which makes it more fun).

Anyways, I installed Home Assistant on a Win 10 laptop running VMWare Workstaion Pro, and used the VMDK disk to create the HA Virtual Machine. I passed through a Nortek USB stick (the one with both Zwave and Zigbee).

Everything is working well except for discoverying Z-Wave devices. I can include them easy enough, but the interview to discover capabilities takes forever, or doesn’t even finish. I am using the OpenZWave addon for Z-Wave integration, which I understand is in Beta but is in progress to replace the built in functionality.

Any advice for me to get including/discovering Z-Wave devices more reliably?

-Tom

2

Working on one right now that is quite stuck. I included it without issue, but it’s stuck at “Query Stage: ProtocolInfo”.

I tried click the “refresh node” button a few times, and followed the suggestion to wake the device up (because it’s battery powered) to no avail. Also tried restarting core. It’s been a few hours at this point.

3

Is it a secure node?, if so this worked for me, Unable to link schlage camelot leave lock to home assistant via open zwave addon

4

It’s not a secure node - it’s this little guy.
https://byjasco.com/ge-z-wave-smart-motion-sensor

I’m going to try adding it by calling the service directly anyways.

Edit - Didn’t seem to help doing it that way. I restarted the VM and the node moved to “Query Stage: Probe” but nothing else.

5

I don’t think that is the case anymore. From what I’ve read they are already baking in ZWaveJS instead of either of those and have made significant progress already in just the couple of weeks since that was informally announced.

6

So what would be the wisest thing to do at this time? MOST of my devices are Zigbee, which is working fine with the HUSBZB-1. Re-adding what I have on Z-Wave thus far wouldn’t be the end of the world. Almost each and every one has been a PITA thus far.

7

If it were me and I was starting from scratch right now… I would wait for ZWaveJS personally. Unless they bake in a migration for it then, for me, the migration of 200+ devices by hand will suck. For you, if you have only a handful, maybe you go for it to play with the system since any manual work after the switch-over to JS would be minimal.

8

Hmm, I’d wager if there was a migration path, it would probably be from the official implementation now, rather then the beta OZW. Maybe I should back up and use the official zwave integration.

9

That’s what I use and it works just fine. I know for some folks it doesn’t, one example being a couple of automated blinds controllers, but in my Z-Wave network I have no issues (other than it doesn’t multi-cast and JS will - but beta doesn’t either so I have no reason to switch).

10

I’m guessing I’ll need to exclude from the openzwave integrate, and include from the other once done. Going to give it a shot.

11

Yea, I don’t think they can be run in parallel. I have zero experience with the beta other than what I have read on the forums, and there has been a lot of discussion on this general topic lately.

12

So, uh, oddly enough, I just went through excluding my devices and uninstalling openzwave… and now I see Zwave JS in the official addon store. Going to do some more reading here…

13

It is still WIP. I understand the initial testing has gone well, but you cannot install it from the add-on store yet, it has a lot of certification steps to complete, I’m sure.

14

Yeah so I read. Excited to see if there will be a migration option, but for now pushing forward with the ‘old’ zwave integration. It’s working much better! Devices are getting added much much faster. Looks like my Inovelli lightswich isn’t fully compatible, but I’m sure I can get it working.