Z-Wave 700 support by HA

Hi all,

I would like to benefit from the new features of the Z-Wave 700 standard that I read about, like a longer range, less power consumption (10 year coin cell operation), S2 Security, SmartStart easy installation, and so on.

Z-Wave 700 devices start to appear on the market now, so I am planning to start purchasing them. As soon as a (Aeotec) Z-Wave 700 USB stick will be available, I will reach out to that one, as well. In fact, Aeotec support put me on a notice list.

My question is: is the new Z-Wave 700 standard supported by Home Assistant? Or will it be supported in the near future? By ā€˜supportedā€™ I donā€™t mean ā€˜backwards compatibleā€™, but full Z-Wave 700 support, so that we can benefit from all new features.

Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,
Leonard

The answer is that it depends largely on when OpenZWave supports it, since thatā€™s what underpins the Z-Wave support.

Now, many of the features (range, reduced power consumption) donā€™t need software support, ā€œjustā€ to have all the devices that build the mesh to be 700 series. You can track the progress over on the OZW Github.

None of the features you listed are part of the z-wave 700 standard. They are part of the z-wave 500 SDK 6.81 (just requires a firmware update) and are not yet supported by openzwave. As far as I know only HomeSeer and Z-way support all these features at the moment. A member has requested native integration of HA with Z-way in the feature request section.
Zwave 700 makes use of a faster CPU but uses the same protocol. I have played with a uzb7 for the past 6 months. Unless indeed your entire network is made of z-wave 700 devices, you will not see much benefit if any.

I would also strongly advocate to avoid Aeotec for a zwave stick. On the 500 series (gen5) they have not been upgrading their firmwares and are stuck at 4.05. I have one of these too and regret buying it. Almost anything else is cheaper and better supported. They are paying for trying to be too cute with their implementation of zwave.

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@rafale77 and @Tinkerer

I found this page:

It seems that the Aeotec Z-Stick Gen 5+ support SDK 6.81:
ā€œZ-Stick Gen5+
RPi4 compatible: Yes, works without USB adapter.
Firmware Version: V1.02
SmartStart: Yes
SDK Version: V6.81.06ā€

Any news if Home Assistant / openzwave supports this now??

Thatā€™s not 700 series - so yes :wink:

That is the version that fixes the known incompatibility with the Pi4 (and possibly other systems).

Thank you. That is good news, right?

Since I have no Pi4 and HA yet, I am considering purchasing a Pi4 and this Aeotec Z-Stick Gen 5+.
Do you expect that this would work together well and that we would also benefit from S2 Security and SmartStart?

Well, OpenZWave needs to support those first, and I donā€™t know what the state of that is. Thereā€™s probably information on that somewhere in their Git.

Yeah! Maybe I will be looking for their firmware update. Oh wait!
Iā€™ve been running 6.82.01 for the past 4 months.

It kind of supports my point. Itā€™s good that they finally have 1 update in 6 years but itā€™s not cutting it.

Edit: I just checked and it looks like there is no firmware update available so it is a new specification for new updated productsā€¦

Message from Aeotec helpdesk:
Z-Stick Gen5+ is now available, you can find it here: https://popp.to/products/z-stick-gen5-plus-zw090

Just remember, itā€™s not 700 series, which is what this forum topic is about :wink:

I think it is actually a new stick: Gen5 vs Gen5+. Supporting my point: Avoid at all cost. These sticks should have the same hardware. The generic sticks and the UZB/Razberry are firmware upgradable. It looks like the aeotec is not and yeah, they are not 700 series either.

Okay, thanks. So you recommend the UZB or Razberry z-wave stick and do the firmware upgrade myself. Which one of the 2 would you recommend if I prefer to spend as little time possible on updating and other technical stuff before I can use it in a RPi4 with HA?

Practically any generic stick: i.e the homeseer smartstick is a relabelled Silicon Labs stick but there are many othersā€¦ all are upgradable. Just not the aeotec.

You can even get a stick directly from silabs:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/silicon-labs/ACC-UZB3-U-STA/703-1128-ND/6111632

by the way this is the 700 series version which I also own and donā€™t recommend due to the stack:
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/silicon-labs/SLUSB001A/336-5899-ND/9867108

For this type of things, the less propriatary the better. Especially when there is basically no advantage to the proprietary stick besides being cuteā€¦ too cute in the aeotec case.

Thank you, rafale77. That helps. I only donā€™t get why you do not recommend the 700 series version ā€˜due to the stackā€™. Could you elaborate a bit on that?

Currently the stack included in the 700 series doesnā€™t have static/bridge support which is what all the 500 series used. It require a very different approach to addressing the API and is therefore not compatible with most of the available controllers. Silabs announced development for these stacks but I honestly have not followed up much for quite some time due to the limited of benefit for the controller to transition to 700. The biggest benefit will come from the device nodes. (range/power consumption and latency)

Great, thanks!