I use ZWave, Zigbee, WiFi, cable and web on my HA. A little bit of all i might say. During my adventures with Home Automation Protocols for the last 4 years, my experience so far is that almost none of them are stable or trustworthy at all… Ok i know that new protocols for home automation are emerging everday, but still no install and forget kind of thing…
I keep a HA journal for the last couple of months; whenever i have a problem, i keep a note… I see that if i am not here to maintain the whole system, it will simply crumble. Let’s say if i sell the house with this system, i am pretty sure the new owner cannot use it or will stop using it after 1 week.
ZWave keeps losing connections to nodes, every once in a while i have dead nodes (even they are mains powered and when i remove and add it works for another 1 month), zigbee again loses connections, pressing a button doesn’t necessarily means this light will go on, WiFi keeps losing connections etc. etc. Yes i can hear that most of you will say mine is rock stable for XX months, i made very sure that the range of all protocols are perfect; but still having these problems. As a result, wireless protocols sucks. Web related HA entities are, as you can guess, depending on the web page stability; my openweather i.e. sometimes works, sometimes not…
Cable connections are more stable compared to wireless protocols but the problem is there are many places in the house where i cannot simple lay out new cables… The most stable component in my HA installation is an alarm system from 1990s (all cable sensors) and its IP module connection to HA.
I miss the golden days of buy, install and it works pretty well lifetime. I hate checking out if my zigbee light really is off or zwave shutter is really closed when i go to bed, as it was programmed in the HA automation. I woke up in the morning just to find my balcony light was on whole morning since it lost its connection and missed the automation command.
Anyhow, my whole home automation adventure turned into making the system more stable instead of adding new automation components and elements. Just wanted to share…
I wish you all healthy days…