So I have been putzing around with HA since about August of 2023. When “they” forewarn you that HA is not for the technologically weak, they are not joking. I have been doing IT since about 1998. I have never been afraid to walk into any territory, but HA and especially the absolutely hellish BS “nightware” of AEOTEC Z-stick traversty, and waiting eons for the much anticipated firmware, I am absolutely ready to walk away completely. To say that I have wasted countless hours is an understatement. After bricking the horrendous Z-Stick 7 trying to apply the most recent firmware, I decided to walk away forever from anything with the Aeotec moniker on it. (But not before buying a new z-stick and returning the bricked one - FU AEOTEC) and then listing the new Z-stick to at least recover *something" if not wasted time and money, So I bought a Zooz and now I am ready to completely walk away from HA. Just getting the device integration setup is not working because I am getting an error on the ws://localhost:3000 url setting. Even though I removed all references to z-wave, Aeotec devices, z-wave JS and Z-wave JS UI, I feel like its still somehow referencing something from the ill-fated attempt of integrating Aeotec’s crapstack. If I sound pissed, I am. The only upside to any of this, is that I am not very far into the Home Assistant side of my journey. I am much further into the process of installing z-wave light switches and have been using said switches without the benefit of automation. I have been patient and put intense concerted effort into until I hit a wall and then walk away until I can build up enough reserves to tackle it again. I have done this about 4 times. In the meantime, I did buy the Aeotec (yeah I know) Smart Hub (now managed through Smart Things (blech). I was able to immediately add all of the UltraPro switches I installed in a matter of minutes, where I have spent cumulative weeks f**king around in Home Assistant and dealing with the terrible, class-action-lawsuit-inducing-mess of the Z-Stick 7. I suppose since I have not really done any real work setting up HA, I could just hose it and start from scratch one last time just to get the Zooz 800 controller setup. I have combed the knowledge bases, scoured reddit, and there is never any simple answer like, do this, then this, then this to get back to square one. It usually involves nested links that lead to literal pages of documentation. I may be ready to just give up. When I added the Zooz 800 Stick today (ZST39 to be exact), I was at least able to set up the Z-wave JS UI add-on and I can see said device, but I can’t really add the integration under devices because the ws://localhost:3000 URL is not valid. What am I doing wrong? I would HAPPILY pay someone who can do a remote screenshare and help me solve all of this once and for all. I really, really, really want to move forward with a kick-ass home automation scenario, but not at the expense of my sanity. Between phillips hue, Alexa, TP-Link Kasa bulbs, Tapo smart plugs, I have had the home automation for some time. I thought z-wave was the promised-land of connected control, but it really feels more like the smoke and mirrors of my old advertising agency days. I thought the Home Assistant would be that next level, but instead it feels more like the days when I spent hours on Windows 98 issues which eventually led me to moving to a Mac and never looking back. Please restore my hope that this is really cool stuff. It’s waning.
This is very difficult to read, can you format it better?
LOL. your response about perfectly sums up exactly the subject of my post.
If you want help, show some effort.
Throw it away and get something else.
I really have no idea what you are saying in that message, other than z wave bad, this device sucks, My world is ending as a result, I think.
You do realize that none of those radio USB sticks will work properly if they are stuck in a computer right next to each other, right. Is it on a 1 or 2 meter USB extension away from the computer it’s plugged into and away from any other RF source?
Sorry, but without a blank line every now and then your post is just a big wall of text, which is nearly impossible to read and comprehend. People need some breaks to process the information, and you’re not offering that.
Pressing the enter/return key a couple of times will greatly improve the readability of your post, and with it also the willingness of other users of this forum to help. Without it, most people will not even start reading it, and probably all people who give it a try won’t reach the end.
edit:
Whoops replied on the wrong post, this was for @michaelBH
Hi, You give a lage amount of things you are frustrated about, but very little info on your setup. For instance, Are you using HAOS or another installation. If it is HAOS or supervised, are you using the zwavejs addon, the zwavejs-ui addon or both? Because on HAOS, my url looks different.
Ps. you seem to have one hour reading time on the forum, this is your first post and you did not ask any questions here before this. Maybe by asking sooner we could have saved you some frustration?
Meanwhile I’ve had ZERO issues with Aeotec gear and plan on getting more. My Z-Stick 5 has been perfect for about 7 years now…
Hi Michael, welcome to the forum!
I have no clue how good the response is on reddit but instead of waiting so long before signing up here to vent, you could have asked earlier for help by a simple, brief, to the point, post with your situation which would have saved you a lot of frustration. (and most likely received help, as you can see now)
Yes, HA has a quite steep learning curve and if you approach it ‘the wrong’ way you might not get to see what a wonderful piece of work it is…
For me the same. never had serious issue’s and if i have them then it is my own fault.
To play devils advocate here, there has been glaring issues in the 700 and 800 series sticks for most major companies which did not affect the 500 series (z-stick 5).
This supports my idea to sign up here and ask for help so they would have known this 1y ago and would have saved a lot of energy…
What’s the actual error message?
What Addon are you using. There’s 2 options:
- Zwave JS (
ws://localhost:3000) - Zwave JS UI (
ws://a0d7b954-zwavejs2mqtt:3000)
Typically if you go route 1, you don’t need to pre-install the addon or enter any url.
I think so much of your frustration would have been avoided had you come here or Discord to ask questions and get assistance, as they are the primary support avenues for HA (they are elsewhere too but these too are quite prolific).
You mentioned scrapping HA and starting fresh, then do that. Seriously, I have a well working system and am doing the same thing because my knowledge of how to use this platform has changed significantly since I first installed it and I want to route out all of my previous work that was more of on-the-job training than it was quality stuff, now I know better and can engineer it to better suit my needs.
HA at it’s most basic isn’t difficult, even though it’s probably a bit more advanced than a first time home automation user might want to dive into in many cases. The community support here and on Discord is exemplary, there’s no reason for you to have suffered for a year.
Walking away is a mistake. Maybe it is not a valid point of view, but I have 100% stayed away from Zigbee and ZWave, rely completely on WiFi and try very hard to stay local on everything (I have a few exceptions*). To do so you need however a very strong WiFi network - unless you have very few devices, this is not feasible with any all-in-one router. I converted form that to a wired router which I then connected by ethernet to strategically place acess points, and I do not see any limit to the number of devices I can keep addng.
ZWave and Zigbee may be great for some people but I have just deided (rightly or wrongly) to just avoid the extra complication.
When I started HA - maybe because I am a glutton for punishment - I set up HA Supervised running on Debian while teaching myself Linux and Python. It deifinately was a struggle but I learned alot. This was on an RPI4 and only because I also was using the RPI for other things outside of HA at the same time. I have kept th other processes on the RPI4 and got new hardware for HA - upon which I run HAOS as a VM. I was literally AMAZED at how easy it was to move over. I got a new instance of HAOS up and running in that VM, then just did a full restore from a backup from the HA Supervised - and it worked nearly flawlessly!
*Two exceptions:
-
Room air vents for which there is no local commercially available solution: I use Flair vents in the home which are cloud based through a device they call their flair “puck” but there is an integration (cloud based ugh) that allows me to see and control all of the vents. I was unable to find a better forced air heating and cooling set of replacement vents that are local only. There are examples of home made versions which are 100% local and I may work on ccustomizing them at some time in the future, possibly when I am retired and have the time to tinker more. (Flair management is unresponsive about developing a local only solution for their vents, and at least (?!??) when the flair puck loses it’s connection to the internet the vents open.
-
Another situation I have found is there are no local-based sensors that allow you to also have alerts sent to an outside monitoring service (what I mean is the sensors are local connection to HA but also speak online to a 24/7 monitoring service). However, there is only one vendor - Yolink - that offers this kind of service with their sensors (but cloud based - ugh). The 24/7 monitoring service is called “Virtualarm”. The alerts you set up are for any Yolink device you have, you are called and then the authorities are called if you do not answer. Several slight plumbing leaks we have been notified about that I have been able to resolve quickly on my own over the years (under a sink, behind a toilet, washing machine issue). Also I have smoke detectors from them and my wife nuked a potato twice by mistake so the smoke alarms went off and therefore we could not hear our phones ringing, so the fire department was at our home literally within 5 minutes. When you log into Vitualarm and give them your yolink login, they show you a list of all of your sensors and you can adjust settings for every single one whether it is monitored all the time, only when away from the home, etc… Since Virtualarm is only $9/month I am Ok with that kind of cloud access - but I have heard on forums that Yolink no longer advertises this parnership with Virtualarm so that is ot so good…
So bottom line, reinstall HA, only add integrations one at a time and make sure each works properly. And BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP. When it works, back it up (or also use automated daily backups like I do) - adding something and then if it blows up or has problems - just restore the last good backup and BOOM you are back in a good state. It’s easy peasy with the google backup add-on. Use this approach and yo will ALWAYS have an HA up and runing with few issues.
From the other posts I see people ere saying you did not use this forum much… use this forum religiously! Don’t wait until you are too frustrated - every question you have - just make a post here. People answer very quickly and it will make your life MUCH easier.
Hope this helps.
Your problem is Zwave. It’s garbage. I too have spent countless hours on zwave devices. Get a Lutron Caseta setup. Yes it’s expensive, but believe me when I tell you it’s worth every penny and their new switches are better than anything else out there. It just works. Everytime.
Wow that’s pretty bold statement.
There are countless users who use zwave and have very little to no problems with it. Including me. if it was garbage then no one would use it.
Sure. With enough time and research he could get it going but the OP clearly doesn’t want that. You want simple and reliable, I stand by my statement.
I’m an old man just like OP. And I also struggled to get the z stick and home assistant up and running seven or eight years ago. But it’s been bulletproof since then. It is what it is effort is everything.
Simple and reliable is exactly what my Z-Wave network is.