I started a few months ago and have posted multiple requests for help that have not been walls of text. I have received a few responses, but nothing that would justify your claim of “most likely.” For a larger sample size, when I have searched for other threads describing similar problems before posting, most end in an unanswered, reasonable request for help.
I’m not as angry as the OP, but for me HA hasn’t come close to living up to the hype. I’ve been switching devices slowly and deliberately from ST to HA, but I’m still left with two Z-wave devices that have to stay on ST for the foreseeable future.
One of my two devices staying on ST is the Aeotec DSB09104 Home Energy Meter. I appended a reply to an unanswered one here:
It’s been there for 7 days. Meanwhile, Aeotec support walked me through switching ST drivers so that I could change parameters to fit my simple needs. They responded 3 times in 3 days. Their help made much more sense than the thread cited above.
I suggest less exaggeration about how helpful the community is and more help.
Yes I get it. I have fought zwave for years and was ready to move on. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that I had invested a lot of time and money into zwave devices in my home. I have about 63 zwave nodes, 45 Zigbee and a dozen or so WiFi.
I am finally enjoying a rock solid home Assistant experience. I am going to list the key items that helped me with zwave below. They may not be applicable to everyone, but maybe someone will benefit.
Tried different dongles finally settled on the Zooz ZST39 800 unit.
Got the latest firmware, 1.50. Finally solved some issues for me.
Junked my S0 zwave door locks they were very slow and chatty. Replaced with newer s2 models.
Read a lot online, made sure to use usb extensions for the dongles.
Some of the zwave power monitoring plugs were very chatty and the parameters needed to be adjusted. Chatty devices can mess up a zwave mesh quickly.
Got 2 Zooz 800 range extenders with s2 security. Forced the alarm keypad and locks to route through the range extenders.
Now I’m almost too bored, nothing to tweak. This is what “smart home” should be. My wife has calmed down and no longer yells at me about lights/alarms etc.
You asked a pointed question to a random person in a random dead topic. You will always get better support creating a new topic in the correct category. FYI
Also, keep in mind that topic was created in 2017. ZwaveJS didn’t exist then. That whole thread is largely related to OpenZwave which died out sometime around 2021.
I see people replying to all your posts aside from the recommendations one and the one you created 15 minutes ago (and it looks like freshcoast is going to reply to your 15 minute old post). I think you’re over exaggerating here a bit.
True or false, petro? As a rule, requests for help are “most likely” to receive help.
My own sizable sample, directed only my my own efforts to get this working, most coming from searches and only a minority from my own posts, says not even close to most.
That’s another old post… Let me explain how the forums work:
When you create a topic, it appears in the feed but it shows up as something without any replies. People who help regularly gravitate towards those posts because those posts do not have solutions.
When you reply to an existing topic, it also appears in the feed, however it shows a large list of people that have already replied. Helpers typically avoid those posts because they already have an answer.
When you reply to an existing post, only the person you reply to gets notified or the thread owner gets notified. No one else. So you are basically replying in a vacuum.
It hasn’t worked that way for me; I don’t see a difference. But let’s be empirical. I will start new topics with a couple of the unanswered replies I’ve appended. You should refrain from responding, of course…
You have made a total of 4 topics, and 3 of your topics have replies (people trying to help). What can you mean “It hasn’t worked that way for me”. That’s an 75% reply rate, where your cherry picked posts on existing topics are 0 for 2.
To be clear: this is me helping you (too), even if you don’t perceive it that way.
I REALLY understand that it can be frustrating when you try to automate stuff in your place, spend some money and time, and it doesn’t work as you would like to.
As you can see from my profile: I have started with HA with ZERO knowledge about home automation and I have also had some moments where I was really pissed because it didn’t go as expected.
You can also see that I have created quite some topics to get help and this wonderful community has helped me to get to a level that I’m really pleased with.
Let me tell you a secret: maybe, in real life I’m a really stunning, sexy, good looking woman, no strings attached, wealthy, … but these guys over here don’t know this.
I have the same tools as you do, but maybe I use them differently…
You have created some topics where you ask for opinions.
Do have a clue how many times this happens when someone asks an opinion?
From your reading time, I might conclude that you haven’t yet taken the time to get to know HA well enough or how this forum works.
You could debate that by replying that you read a lot while not logged in.
Still, the way you created your topics/posts might be improved and for clarity: I’m not a pro either!
Lastly: HA can be a steep learning curve and you know why?
Because it can almost do everything that you can imagine AND with the devices that play nice.
Is it really such a surprise that the company who built the product and you paid them for it, has more expertise on said product than the HA community? Most of us providing support for Z-Wave here don’t even own half the devices that we help with. These Aeotec energy meters are also notoriously difficult to configure and have firmware problems.
Meanwhile, it seems you got a solution from Aeotec. Why not contribute the solution back to the community? What configuration changes did you make to fix it? Maybe it can help improve the HA solution.
I see pointing out the hype as helping me far more.
I’m not the OP, Nick. I started out with ST six years ago, had things in a good place with a few issues, and was lured to change by the idea of local control. I’m not “really pissed” like the OP, merely pointing out that the HA hype is very different from my experience.
You might. I don’t see any need for debate, that’s simply true.
I’ve ascended that curve for 9 integrations and ~80 devices already. My point is that for 2 of my most important devices, I’m not seeing a path other than leaving them on ST (with a steep curve on ST for one of those), so I get where the OP was coming from and don’t find the reflexive defensiveness of some here to be convincing.
Not at all. The context was replying to @michaelBH’s cursing of Aeotec and agreeing with @sparkydave.
Because the solution was for ST, not for HA, so not much of a contribution IMO. My issue is being unable to change desired parameters in HA, not about my not knowing which parameters to change. But I started a new topic, as suggested. Shall I post it there?
Please keep in mind that if I manage to get vastly improved help by pointing out the lack of help, that’s great. But it’s not going to change my experience to date.
Not sure why you’re illustrating with a Zooz switch. I have had no problems with those.
I have no problem getting to the parameters page. It’s 6 pages long for my energy meter. See sample below.
Something else needs to happen. I can make changes to the numerical values stick only if I hit the button on the meter after each one. That’s why I posted a reply in the only thread that covered that in depth.
The problem is that I’m trying to change some of the switches, but those changes won’t stick, whether I press the meter button afterward or not.
It’s just as arcane in a very different way with ST, but it worked.
You seem to be chiming in and criticizing the lack of help, remember: the topic is titled “So Ready to Walk Away”.
Odd that so many topics get answered solved!
Yeah, it’s always the others who are responsible for our doings…
A little less?
By going with the flow you might make more online HA friends to help you but you don’t have to take my word on it; just consider the advice of the mod.
first, the forums aren’t a help desk. The forums are “staffed” by just regular users who like to learn from others and offer help when and where they can. If you don’t get a reply in the forum it’s not HA’s fault. Neither is the forums fault. Nor is it especially other volunteer users fault.
Next to help you answer your own question…
if you go to the main HA forum page at the top you’ll see a list of tabs. one of those will be “Latest”.
Click it.
in that list that pops up you can see every topic posted.
in that list of topics you can see how may replies each topic has gotten. I’d like you to compare how many of those posts have a 0 next to them compared to those that have > 0 after them. the more than 0 greatly outnumber the 0.
so yes, ‘requests for help are “most likely” to receive help’ is very true.
It depends on the topic and the helping users knowledge whether that help will be successful or not.
But at least people try to help.
And in the rare instance that no one replies maybe it’s because, as has been pointed out, no one has any experience with the thing you are asking. I’m not going to reply to something if I have no clue about the question.
And in that same “Latest” list above you can even see how many people opened it to read it. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a topic that had 0 replies and 0 reads. Maybe it could happen if the topic was just so ridiculous or poorly worded but it’s definitely not the norm.
Or the question is asked in a way that’s hard to figure out what’s being asked. I especially hate questions that require me to read a wall of text that I have to parse thru just to get to the heart of the question.
I don’t have time to read that much especially if I try to read all the new posts in my feed. If a question looks like it’s interesting or something I might be able to answer I’ll open it and read it.
If I open it up and I’m greeted with the aforementioned wall of text in the first post I just move on.
@michaelBH August 2023 and not very far into it? Patience is a virtue. Alot of kind people gave you alot of answers but I saw no replies from you. Did you see my longer post and take it to heart? Are you coming back to try any of the suggestions, or just ghosting us?
I’m saying that based on my experience, the needle is somewhere in between, but well away from the OP’s.
A lot less, even more less today after getting amazing help from @freshcoast on my two largest issues. However, I’m still on the fence as to whether the time and expense have been worth it. Time will tell.
For all I know, my chiming in here may have produced far more help in the last 3 days than going with the flow would have. That being said, I don’t conflate correlation with causation.
No, that would not measure what you are claiming it measures.
