Hello, I switched from my old home automation platform (ISY994i) about three months ago and after a pretty intense several weeks of learning, my home automation system is running really well.
However, I finally took some time to start snooping around in the Home Assistant web interface and I’ve discovered that when I open the “Z-Wave JS” link on the side panel, none of the pages (Control Panel, Smart Start, … Network Graph) shows any of my Z-Wave devices.
The busy indicator on the Network Graph page simply spins endlessly.
After doing some reading I’m confused and don’t know if I have the correct Z-Wave software installed. Can someone take a look at my screen-shots and give me some guidance?
You should not be running both the Z-Wave JS and the Z-Wave JS UI add-ons. Pick one, and disable the other (by either uninstalling it completely or at least stopping it and turning off “Start on boot”.) My preference is to use Z-Wave JS UI.
Yes, the overlapping naming is very confusing. There are historical and other reasons for this, but still…
Zwave JS - the ZWave JS driver and builtin ZWave provider for HA.
ZWaveJS Server - Addon - basically the same driver in a self contained server
ZWaveJSUI (formerly Zwavejs2mqtt, renamed to avoid confusion with people thinking it required MQTT) - addon is a beefed up (has all the tools and graphs and - all that stuff you mentioned) to maintain a ZWave network. As @PecosKidd mentioned you generally won’t run all three at once.
They’re all different implementations of the very same ZWaveJS driver and you don’t get anything more or less at the ZWave level for using one over the other. Instead they’re all provided for deployment flexibility. Say you needed a standalone Pi running ZWaveJS inan outbuilding… For instance. Or maybe you want better management tools because you have a complex deployment… (see next)
It sounds like you’re using the built-in ZWaveJS. (because nothing in ZWaveJSUI - that’s the actual link you see on the sidebar) and as you noted JS_UI has a lot of cool tools that are very helpful managing a ZWave network. If you want to switch there’s a great guide to switching to ZWaveJSUI authored by freshcoast. And if you follow it step by step its a pretty easy transition.
After reading them, I am wondering how most users establish a properly configured Home Assistant with Z-Wave JS UI installed BEFORE they start adding their Z-Wave devices. I wish I had known and understood the ramifications of adding my Z-Wave devices to Home Assistant without first having the correct (better) Z-Wave implementation installed first.
@NathanCu Thank you for the guidance. I managed to make the transition and now all of my Z-Wave devices are showing up in the Z-Wave JS UI! I’m super stoked to have this working. The Z-Wave JS UI provides a lot more info than I had before and to a geek like myself this is awesome.
One more question: Since I added all of my Z-Wave devices using the old Z-Wave add-on it appears that all of my device names and locations are still present in the Home Assistant dashboard interface but the Z-Wave JS UI only identifies a device by its ID number. I see that there is a place to apply device names and locations in the Z-Wave JS UI but those places are currently empty. Is there a way to push all of my device names and locations down into the Z-Wave JS UI? Or does this have to be done manually? Can I apply the same device names and locations in both the Home Assistant interface and the Z-Wave JS UI interface or will that cause a conflict?
I think I read somewhere on this forum that if you name a device in the Z-Wave JS UI it will be picked up by the Home Assistant interface but not the other way around (as evidenced by my current situation.)
Recommended. Also recommended to do it now. It won’t affect your naming in HA. But. A little secret. If you ever have a situation wherry the device needs to be completely re-interrogated there’s a slim chance that it takes out the device and resets everything about a device… It doesn’t happen very often. But when it does it’s Infuriating. If you name the device in JSUI during join (or right now manually) to the name and location it has (or should have) in HA - if it blips and comes back - it will inherit the device name!/ location you set and and get the same old name back in HA. - meaning ha won’t really notice. :). Neat trick.
Thanks so much for the help! I’ve got everything working and all the devices have names and locations. That was the last big hurdle in finishing up my Home Assistant system. I’m sure that there will be more tweaks in the future but for now it is looking and running good.
