With the latest changes to home-assistent should we still use open-zwave-control-panel to setup the zwave devices?
You can use the panel. I use the Z wave options directly in Home Assistant to add or make changes to Zwave. It’s much easier, in my opinion.
I would say, totally unnecessary.
I’ve not found a reason to use it since the new zwave panel in HA was added. I use that for all my adds/removes/renames and it works very well.
I’d say no longer needed…
There are going to be per device options that aren’t currently available via the ZWave panel so I think that saying it’s unnecessary or no longer needed may be a little premature.
While you can set some of those options if you know the hex codes, OZWCP will expose them in a much friendlier manner.
There is enough exposed within HA Zwave panel and Developer tools that you won’t need to use it. I doubt that there will be many that can’t get by without. If there is something you can’t get to, worry about it at that time. Even if there are things that absolutely require hex codes they aren’t difficult and there are lots of examples or people to help. IMO forget it. Don’t add the complexity. Keep it simple
I’ve already seen options presented in a clear state inside HA in the Zwave panel. It is dependent on supported devices that have proper feature definitions. For example all my GE switches allow me to set all the parameters.
Which is fine if you have a simple setup. Not all of us here do.
I just took another look and you are correct; I hadn’t looked at it since it was introduced.
So we all in agreement then. Not necessary.
I’ll let you know.
Let OZWCP die quietly and quickly
Unless something changed in .47, I think it’s still needed for pairing troublesome devices. Having the list there on the page so I can scroll down to it and watch as devices are discovered is beneficial to me. Yes I could do that through the HA interface by pulling down the pull down repeatedly. I just think the list box is more friendly. What I would really like to see with the HA interface and with ozwcp is the log switched so that the newer events show at the top and push down old events. The reason is that the log is so long and updates so quickly, it’s difficult to get to the bottom of it to watch for an event that you just triggered.
If you are watching for some event to happen just SSH in and run something like
tail -f |grep Node043 OZW_Log.txt
to just see what happens with a particular entity. Or filter on whatever you are hoping to see.
Yes there are various ways to do it. However some of our users aren’t as savy at the command prompt as others. It would be beneficial I think to be able to see the most recent activity first, with older events down further. If not that, then have a way to limit the number of lines shown. I have over 50 zwave devices so my log runs by fairly quickly.
I don’t know how a less sophisticated user is going to benefit from OZWCP. The logs flying past are just annoying. Tail is a simple solution, watching the bottom of the file scroll up rather than trying to scroll to the bottom of a page. I would love to see tail integrated into the HA log pages. There are Python implementations of tail. I use a very simple script to capture the last so many seconds of the the HA log and OZW log to a file. It would be possible to add something like that to HA.
That’s the beauty of open source. You use what you want. Others use what they want. Nothing has to die.
The Zwave panel was introduced only 30 days ago and has undergone major changes since. Once things stabilize and no more breaking changes are introduced, then I’ll rely on it exclusively.
I don’t disagree with use what you want. If OZWCP works and you are comfortable using it, great. For a new person coming to HA, why complicate their life with something that isn’t likely to help them get up and going. It will complicate the installation, the updates, and use. Having to shut down HA, switch to the correct directory, change user, launch OZWCP, bring up the web interface, oh what was that port number, what was my zwave stick id, did I remember to save, shut down OZWCP, start HA. That isn’t easy for a new user.
Using the HA zwave panel since HA is still running, I have the benefit of being able to capture both the HA log and the OZW log and comparing what HA said and what OZW said.
The zwave panel may only be 30 days old, but zwave has been fully integrated into the Developer Tools section for maybe 6 months. I haven’t used OZWCP to do anything since it was first added. I have added and modified settings that I had trouble with in OZCP. The zwave panel just makes it so easy to add, remove change zwave devices. And much much much easier for a new user than OZWCP. I just don’t think we should be encouraging new users to install OZWCP. If someone found a situation where they couldn’t accomplish the same thing in the HA zwave panel that might be the time to think about it. Since this platform is on an amazing tear I doubt that need will ever come. Anything that can be needed will already be added.
I agree everyone can use what they like. I would like to be able to just use HA, but right now, I need OZWCP when I run into problem devices. The other thing that is frustrating with HA, is that it seems like I’m constantly restarting HA every time I add a new device. Every change it seems requires a restart. It would be nice if we could get HA to clear and reload all the zwave devices like we do with the groups. Those are the kind of things that are frustrating me and that I can do easier in OZWCP.
Same problem exists, except you need to stop HA to run OZWCP so you are still restarting it. But I agree if HA could “hot update” zwave as devices are added, renamed, or removed that would be very convenient.
And if when you do an ADD device in HA if it could simply pop up something like “Added new nodeXX” it would save having to scan the node list manually.
But we are really close – much closer than 30 days ago