New z-wave SDK. Is anybody working on replacing openzwave?

The existence of the OpenZwave project has been a great asset for Home Assistant. But it also has its problems. I think it’s fairly well documented now that performance and reliability is much better using alternatives like Vera controllers that probably use a licensed API to run the zwave network. That’s understandable, OpenZWave was a reverse engineering project done with volunteer effort.

But there is something very promising happening with the Z-wave protocol: there has been the release of a new public SDK. https://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/software/z-wave/controller-sdk

My question is: is anybody working on implementing Home Assistant z-wave functionality using the SDK, rather than going through OpenZwave? It’s a big project, but I think it could pay big dividends if successful.

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Wouldn’t it make more sense to start moving the openzwave implementation to reflect the SDK, instead of creating a whole new project?

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It was mentioned in the “big plans” for HomeAssistant post/blog from the founder, Paulus.

I don’t know if anyone is working on it actively but I think it’s on the list of “big important stuff to tackle” but where it falls on that long list not sure.

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That’s possible. It might be a little too easy to unintentionally inherit OZW’s issues to take that path, too.

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This is true, but there is so much knowledge built into that code base, as well as a number of contributing developers experienced with zwave, would be a pity to lose that.

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There’s an issue on the home-assistant/architecture Github Project which is currently being used by the devs to discuss potential ideas. If you’re interested in how things are progressing, the best way to keep informed is to subscribe to that issue. To keep the issue clean though, i’d suggest not commenting unless you have something significant to add to the discussion - look but don’t touch :slight_smile:.

Thanks for the pointer. Doesn’t look like there’s much to discuss yet.