Today there has been an important announcement, I (Paulus, founder of Home Assistant) will be taking a seat on the Z-Wave Alliance Board of Directors, representing Nabu Casa. This is a significant piece of recognition for the work we have put into our support of open standards, and the importance of open source projects in keeping standards successful and thriving.
Being part of this board allows us to play a bigger role in shaping Z-Wave’s future. As a Standards Development Organization (SDO) the Alliance is shaped by its members, and they brought us in for our connection to our community and expertise in open source. We will be giving a voice to Home Assistant users, open source development, and Open Home Foundation values.
A tenth of households with Home Assistant are using Z-Wave today, accounting for an estimated 1.7 million Z-Wave devices. We’ve seen a growing interest in Z-Wave in the Home Assistant community. This is why we have been driving forward the development of the open source Z-Wave JS stack, while also developing our own Z-Wave connectivity hardware.
As you might be well aware, we’re very keen on open standards and are continuing to put a lot of work into supporting Zigbee, Matter, Thread, and Z-Wave. These standards are important for a number of reasons that align with our Open Home mission.
These standards enable greater choice, giving our users access to decades of smart home devices to add to their homes. These standards are locally controlled and don’t rely on the cloud, meaning when devices are connected through Home Assistant they provide privacy out-of-the-box. Finally, there are a lot of these devices already in use in our homes, along with second-hand devices ready for a new home. Keeping a standard alive, keeps these devices alive and using what already exists is always the most sustainable option.
This is not the only example of our work being recognized by these standards organizations. Recently, the Thread Group selected Nabu Casa for an Innovation Enabler Award, which is only awarded to two companies a year, and recognizes the “creative potential of [our] ideas and the use of Thread technology”.
We believe in Z-Wave and we will continually push it to align with the Open Home, so it can bring better choice, privacy, and sustainability to the home.
With ever more traffic on wireless devices, specifically around the Wi-Fi spectrum, meshed networks in other spectrums become more and more interesting again. Also anecdotally it seems to me that the Z-Wave devices are of higher quality which is important considering that they are being put in involved where they should stay for a while.
All in all this is great news coming not so long after a time when there was still a discussion if Open Z wave was the way to move forward until Z Wave JS took over and has been absolutely great.
Very cool!
Meanwhile I’m still frustrated though that in Europe there are almost no new Z-wave devices being introduced anymore.
Shelly released a couple to be able to rebrand the qubino line of Z-wave products that they took over, but that doesn’t really count…
Z-Wave is that protocol that the vendors need to pay for a membership fee (to the Z-Wave Alliance), certification fees and royalty fees, right? To me that is a weird concept of “open”.
Not a surprise zigbee is thriving.
That is not weird, maybe unfortunate. Tuya makes cheap zigbee chips to many chinese vendors, but you are not forced to buy it. It is up to you. You have plenty of zigbee options in the market. It is up to you deciding to buy a cheap not-fully-compliant device or a more expensive fully-compliant one.
And that’s exactly, why I choose Zwave. I’ve bought 80 devices until now, from various vendors, and not a single one was cheap crap, that did not work… Never needed to be aware of possible cheaters.
Yeah, those certification fee’s may be helpful to us, end users
My point is, as you plainly can’t see, it is better to have a standard that is enforced than a standard that is openly flouted in a race to the bottom. Which is more open? Clearly the former.
It’s great to see Home Assistant getting more prominence wherever it is.
Please don’t forget KNX when talking about open protocols for the home. While not open in the purest sense, KNX is at least an ISO/IEC standard. There is a price tag for the specification and there are licensing and certification fees, but this is unfortunately true for most widespread home automation protocols. KNX is arguably more open than Z-Wave.
For retrofitting a home, wireless protocols are great. For a new build or renovation, wired devices are better: more stable, more secure, don’t compete for spectrum with other devices.
Home Assistant does have great support for KNX but I feel it doesn’t get the same love from the core team as Z-Wave and Zigbee. For example, only recently has it become possible to configure devices from the UI, and that’s still only available for a small subset of device types.
Hi Andreas, you are right about the advantages of KNX.
→ 1.4%
→ 25.3%
→ 9.7%
On top of that, WiFi is most likely also a big chunk since everyone uses it anyway + devices are dirt cheap.
How many of us have the opportunity to start from scratch in a new house or renovating?
Prices for KNX devices compared to zigbee/z-wave/WiFi.
I guess there you have the reasons why KNX doesn’t get the attention that you would love to see.
Fantastic news! Paulus, your experience is going to make you a valuable contributor on the board. I am excited about the representation of Nabu Casa.
Z-Wave is by far my most reliable platform. Apart from occasionally checking batteries in battery-powered devices, I almost never look at the integration. I try to use only Z-Wave devices for the most critical or essential use cases in my smart home.
Thank you, Paulus for taking on this additional responsibility on behalf of Home Assistant users.
→ 1.4%
→ 25.3%
→ 9.7%