I am an Indigo convert that has a lot of Insteon switches and 3 z-wave devices. I’m struggling to get about 75% of it working under Home Assistant. The switches are all old and so I purchased a * Zooz 800 Series Z-Wave Long Range S2 Stick (ZST39 LR) from Amazon to replace my Aeotech 7 stick which doesnt seem to be working.
Knowing most of my switches are old and likely need replacing, what recommendations are there for replacing Insteon switches ? I’ve struggled to get the one Zooz switch I have working but I’m hoping that replacing the interface with the Zooz stick will solve the problem.
Be aware that WiFi is a shared medium and if you have only the combo (modem/router/AP) from your ISP it can be a challenge to have a good working, stable, WiFi network.
Adding more devices to WiFi can have a serious negative effect.
Excellent point! I replaced my ISP provided modem/router/wifi long ago with a Netgate/pfSense router/firewall. And I have a very robust network based on Unifi.
I decided to use only wifi with Home Assistant to simplify maintenance and management. No additional dongles, protocols, repeaters, integrations, etc. So far, it’s been working well for 4 plus years.
Yeah, I guess the real decision is which network/protocol to buy into, today.
I started writing a whole long thing about different networks and protocols, but I think you just need to do your own research here, as each of us will have different criteria for price, openness/freedom, etc. I will highlight a couple I think are relevant though.
Personally I believe strongly in protocols, not platforms and I am also cheap so I like Zigbee. There is a wide variety of devices, typically inexpensive, been around long enough to be stable, forms a mesh network, and it’s an actual IEEE protocol. IMHO Zigbee seems to have the momentum and market share these days, which is an important consideration I think when making this kind of choice.
You will hear a lot of hype about Matter/Thread but I don’t think it’s really ‘there’ quite yet. So personally, I don’t buy into it (literally or figuratively). At least not yet.
Some people also like Z-Wave, and/or Wi-Fi based devices, but you do your own homework there. Z-Wave seem to be quite a bit more expensive (at least where I am), but some people swear by them. I have some Wi-Fi devices, they work totally fine but I always heard the same thing about network congestion which was why I got into Zigbee (which is a separate mesh network from Wi-Fi). But I was having debate with someone about this the other day and I am not even sure any more how legitimate this ‘network congestion’ argument against Wi-Fi really is any more (they claim to be running 50+ ESPHome devices on a crappy old ISP router).
This also depends on what you need/use your 2.4Ghz WiFi network for and if you use 5Ghz as well for non IOT stuff.
Another downside of WiFi devices is power usage and security can be a thing
With zigbee, you get that mesh technology advantage and the fact that these devices don’t sit on your main communication channel.
Being completely separated from you WiFi/modem-router-AP network can have other advantages as well in case of changing network/WiFi structure.
There is a wide variety of devices, typically inexpensive, been around long enough to be stable, forms a mesh network, and it’s an actual IEEE protocol. IMHO Zigbee seems to have the momentum and market share these days, which is an important consideration I think when making this kind of choice.