I’m a total N00b to the HA ecosystem – but I’ve been engaged in Home Automation activities for quite some time. I’ve been using a SmartThings v1 hub since - I dunno - whenever they came out (can’t remember if I got a ‘kickstarter’ edition or not). At any rate, it was the early days, and looking for, copying, and rarely writing custom device handlers in the SmartThings IDE (I didn’t find Groovy so groovy) felt like blazing trails.
Fast forward to today, and I am utterly discouraged and dismayed at the state of SmartThings, following the Samsung acquisition – even with their shiny new REST API So when my v1 hub was announced as “End-of-Life” – I started looking for better alternatives. And, as you all know full well: Home Assistant is it!
I’m currently running Home Assistant as a container on a Balena Fin, with the Nortek HUSBZB-1 Zigbee/ZWave dongle. I’ve got a fleet of rougly 35 devices, ranging from indoor lights, switches, dimmers, outlets, yard lights, holiday lights – the usual stuff. Plus systems like SONOS, Alexa, Harmony Hub, etc – so there’s plenty of ‘plumbing’ to be done and maintained in order to achieve full WAF on the migration.
I much appreciate the vibrant community here, and look forward to being a part of it.
Now then – off to post my first question, about “missing” entities on a ZWave LED Light bulb.
@Prodigyplace Thanks for your question – it’s definitely a relevant and insightful one. The image I initially installed on my Balena Fin was a late-2020 edition, where the ‘Z-Wave’ integration was the one available by default - so I started with that. After upgrading my HA install, and doing some reading - I followed the story of the OpenZWave and ZWave JS integrations - with the obvious go-forward answer being the latter. I hadn’t gotten around to migrating - but since I’m running an integration that’s now reported as “Deprecated” and having troubles – seems like a great time to take the plunge. I’ll do some reading in the docs and the forums - and post a new thread in the appropriate spot if I have any trouble.
Since you are running Home Assistant as a container, I recommend you also install zwavejs2mqtt as a container. You can then use its home Assistant websockets to interface with the zwavejs plugin in HA.
Outstanding – thanks for the #ProTip! I’m starting to encounter more and more things (Lack of a Supervisor ‘module’ (?) / panel, a strange inability to see other devices on my home network – that are putting me “outside the sweet spot” of mainstream. I’ve installed another, ‘vanilla’ install, using HomeAssistantOS on a RPi4 – and have found quite a difference. As much as I’m enjoying the Balena ecosystem for some of it’s advantages and capabilities – I may just move my (Production) HA setup to a more ‘default’ setup.
Thanks - AGAIN - for the tip. I’m familiar with MQTT, and interestingly - somehow, in upgrading my HA container on the Balena Fin, somehow ‘broke’ the MQTT-based integration between HA and some environmental monitoring from the Balena Sense, per this project:
If nothing else, the ‘out-of-the-box’ Lovelace dashboard on the stock install looks great - where the one on my Balena setup is currently pretty broken (editing configuration.yaml is also on my learning-curve list of “Things to do” :))
The preferred way to integrate Z-Wave is NOT through MQTT. I use zwavejs2mqtt as a control panel & use its websockets based Hone Assistant communication. i have mqtt turned off on it.
Excellent – thanks for the clarification, @Prodigyplace ! About to dive into the upgrade to ZWave-js – and as noted, will post a thread elsewhere if I encounter any troubles. Sure appreciate the engagement and great feedback / #ProTips!
So when my v1 hub was announced as “End-of-Life” – I started looking for better alternatives. And, as you all know full well: Home Assistant is it!
