This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2024/05/08/zwave-is-not-dead
9 Likes
So, Iāll be the first reacting. Shortly and strongly 
Indeed Z-wave is not dead at my home and as long, as I will be able to manage it, I will care for it.
From any protocol, I use here, Z-wave has proven to be most stable, most reliable, most privacy respecting and has the most possibilities.
I 
Z-wave and I really wish, the community will never completely abandon it in change for cheap unreliable rubbish.
Tell me, what can I, as a user do to support it, and I will do it
Iām very happy to hear, the top of HA community is not done with Z-waveā¦ 
23 Likes
I concur. My extensive Zwave network (60 devices) is more stable than my Zigbee network (14 devices).
At some time in the future Iād like to explore Lutron.
4 Likes
āIn the end, I wrapped up my talk pushing the Alliance to open up more: we all want Z-Wave to succeedā
So, what response did you feel or get from the Alliance, do they want to open up more?
4 Likes
I prefer z-wave because of the stability. Which is mainly because itās not on the 2.4ghz band and itās a well over thought protocol.
The only disbenefit is the pretty limited amount of devices possible which will soon be met in several households.
Glad to hear itās not dead 
3 Likes
Different members came up to me to said that they agree. The general alliance stance is that they want to be more open, however they want to move slowly and careful. They only recently changed to be an SDO which already brought a lot of change. But donāt worry, I will keep poking
18 Likes
It was our pleasure to have Paulus and the gang from HA at our summit. As the Chair of the Z-Wave Alliance I am excited about the opportunities that HA and the Foundation represent. We look forward to broadening our relationship and support for the users of HA. We believe in open standards and we are working hard to continue the process to open more of the Z-Wave protocol.
29 Likes
Iāve always agreed with this. But, the only devices I have problems with on my network are all Z-Wave from Zooz.
Bad firmware bugs that go unfixed, the most egregious cause in-gang light switches to crash and become unresponsive to physical input. This happens to one or more switches on a regular basis and seems to be triggered by (but not limited to) power fluctuations like brown-outs or really fast power loss and recovery. Unfortunately this happens at least once a month where I live. The only way to bring these devices back online is to cut power at the breaker and then restore after 5-10 seconds.
Given that vendors making even these most basic of Z-Wave devices are disappearing, while the alliance says theyāre still pushing forward, the practical implications are that the standard may as well be dead.
When I replace these switches, do I go for newer Zooz models? Search for some other vendor that isnāt Jasc? Or swap them out for Zigbee alternatives?
Iām strongly invested in ZigBee and havenāt used Z-Wave (not actively avoiding it, just keep defaulting to ZigBee).
That said, Z-Wave working over half a mile away means some project ideas I had that I thought were DOA due to their distance for ZigBee are now back on the tableā¦
3 Likes
Iām looking forward to the official HA Z-Wave stick. I have 59 Z-wave devices still connected to Smarthings and have just been lazy holding out for a first party stick to connect to HA. Iāve been happy with my SkyConnect since migrating all my zigbee over from ST. Itās been far more stable!
4 Likes
In some world, thereās someone who has time to research this stuff.
I am 95% Z-wave (including GE/Jasco early stuff from like 2017). I have lost 1 device in that whole time, and I live in an area with 3-4 incidents a year of trees of power lines causing brownouts, plus usually one 2-3 day blackout a year.
To only lose one device in all that time is soooo opposite of your experienceā¦I would love to see someone analyze aspects of the electrical systems, etc to see where the vulnerability really is on this stuff. Is it the devices themselves, or grounding, or relative voltage variation coming from the PoCo, or just dumb luck?
3 Likes
All of this indeed sounds like awesome news! Hoping this will make Z-Wave JS community grow bigger!
Uwe leads the development of the Home Assistant Z-Wave stick that weāre working on
I would suggest that Nabu Casa include a long (and shielded) USB 2.0 extension cable in the Z-Wave Controller USB dongle package with very clear instructions that users should use it to help place it further away from sources of EMI (electromagnetic interference) if they want to get the best possible user-experience out-of-the-box!
And of course, donāt forget to add a unique USB product ID to CP210x for automatic USB discovery to make the getting started user-experience even easier for beginners which can attract more people! 
It was by the way also cool to hear that Silicon Labs (who makes the Z-Wave chip it will use) has also partnered with Nabu Casa to support this effort as that shoud hopefully make this the easiest way you can start using Z-Wave devices in Home Assistant:
5 Likes
Yes, I have the same experience
2 Likes
Definitely agree with it. All my main concern about all the other protocols is the usage of the 2.4GHz. SubGHz solutions has not just fewer āinterferencesā, but has longer distance, stronger āwall handlingā capability, etc. Gore example, from this aspect is totally understandable why Somfy also uses subGHz solution for is IO product lineup.
I manner had any problem with my Z-Wave devices, while I had lot with my ZigBee background.
But to be honest it is not me, as a proper reference, as I have only ~10-10 devices from each āsideāā¦ (Plus the mentioned Somfy - IO shutters, and 2 WiFi plug/socket which were just some early experimental thingies)
The only downside of the subGHz solution is the bandwidthā¦ but for usual home automated devices (lamps, switches, locks, valves, etc. this could be not problem, as they usually do not want to see 4K movies on their network)
1 Like
I have a mix of Z-Wave and ZigBee with no strong preference for either, it usually comes down to the other features of the device. And both have been reliable here. I am not in a 2.4 GHz saturated environment, so I havenāt had issues related to that. And Matter is still a wait and see for me as of now. And I have no need or any urgency to jump into that.
What is VERY intriguing to me is Z-Wave Long Range. It looks like it can fill a role for more distant items beyond the range of standard Z-Wave or ZigBee. As of now I have given up any hope that the LoRa based YoLink system will ever be usable in a truly cloud free way. They have totally dropped the ball on that, and have done nothing but make vague promises for over 2 years now. So my next longer range project will take a close look at Z-Wave Long Range.
4 Likes
Iām struggling with our Zooz devices, too. Most of the time, I can just reset the device (via the breaker), and itāll come back up and work without issue for a long time.
But it doesnāt seem like the physical switch should ever fail. Iāve had issues with both toggle and dimmer switches.
Iāve also struggled hard with their devices and even slightly higher loads. For example, they sell a really neat 5-plug extension cord, where each socket is independently controllable. But it canāt support anything useful. My printer draws too much, the 3D printer is way too much, etc. Iām not sure what the product is intended for, because itās limited to very light loads, and I donāt know when youād ever want to remotely control 5 light loads from the same area.
I donāt understand why everything non-dimmable isnāt using an air-gapped relay. If it was, then youād be limited to the normal in-wall amperage.
Iāve always been a big fan of Zooz (56 of my 65 Z-Wave devices are Zooz!), but Iām not sure they are going to hold up for the long term. They do have good support, at least.
1 Like
Very happy to see continued investment in ZWave. Its been very reliable for me
2 Likes
Iāve had good experiences with Inovelli and Leviton.
I love z-wave. If it werenāt there 15 years ago I would not have statted with domotica at that time. Wanted to have automatic blind switches only, and at that time I bought zwave.me wall switches (some of them still work today!)
Then I discovered they could be controlled remote and the domotica story beganā¦
Vera Micasaverde was my 1st zwave controller with many addons.
Then 4 or 5 years I wanted to integrate more devices and vera was not fit for it anymoreā¦ thus Vera was integrated in Homeassistant (so I dicovered HA ).
Slowly migrated from Vera to OpenZwave and ran 1 year dual. OpenZwave was high touch and lots of rebootsā¦
And then finally Z-WAVE JS
It has never been so steady ever since I stated using Z-WAVE JS
Having over 80 devices of all kind of brands, ages, battery/mains.
I love it!
Edit: my Z2M network with 37 devices isnāt as stable as my zwave is. Frequently philips hue white & color dropvif the nework and power cycle is the only way to being them back.
And obviously itās always dangerous to say āthese things out loudā lets hope it now remains stableš¤
3 Likes
I have many Z-wave and Zigbee devices linked to Home Asssistant and I can say with confidence z-wave is way more reliable for me than Zigbee. This might be related to the crowded zigbee frequencies in our densely populated area.
For me an important Z-wave feature is the ability to create associations, as well as be able to connect these same devices to Home Assistant. If Home Assistant is down, I can still control my devices wirelessly.
The fact that this is implemented in such a way that all brands handle this perfectly is great. Also the fact that you can easily edit and inspect associations is great. Similar concepts for Zigbee have always proved to be way less universal and hard to get right.
I have but few Matter devices. The technology is still in its infancy, so that is hard to compare. But to have Thread using the same frequencies as Zigbee is not a good thing for me.
2 Likes