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.
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I’ve 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 they’re 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 isn’t Jasc? Or swap them out for Zigbee alternatives?
I’m strongly invested in ZigBee and haven’t 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 table…
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I’m 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. I’ve been happy with my SkyConnect since migrating all my zigbee over from ST. It’s been far more stable!
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In some world, there’s 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 experience…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?
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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 we’re 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, don’t 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:
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Yes, I have the same experience
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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 ‘interferences’, but has longer distance, stronger ‘wall handling’ 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 ‘side’… (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 bandwidth… 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)
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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 haven’t 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.
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I’m struggling with our Zooz devices, too. Most of the time, I can just reset the device (via the breaker), and it’ll come back up and work without issue for a long time.
But it doesn’t seem like the physical switch should ever fail. I’ve had issues with both toggle and dimmer switches.
I’ve 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 can’t support anything useful. My printer draws too much, the 3D printer is way too much, etc. I’m not sure what the product is intended for, because it’s limited to very light loads, and I don’t know when you’d ever want to remotely control 5 light loads from the same area.
I don’t understand why everything non-dimmable isn’t using an air-gapped relay. If it was, then you’d be limited to the normal in-wall amperage.
I’ve always been a big fan of Zooz (56 of my 65 Z-Wave devices are Zooz!), but I’m not sure they are going to hold up for the long term. They do have good support, at least.
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Very happy to see continued investment in ZWave. Its been very reliable for me
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I’ve had good experiences with Inovelli and Leviton.
I love z-wave. If it weren’t 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 began…
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 anymore… 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 reboots…
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 isn’t 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 it’s always dangerous to say “these things out loud” lets hope it now remains stable🤞
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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.
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Please tell me the SkyConnect Z-Wave stick will support an external antenna. That would truly be awesome.
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What works for me well is an USB extension cable (aeotec stick)
Definitely agree. My Z-wave devices are rock solid stable, and I have 126 of them - I buy Z-wave when it’s an option.
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I love Zwave! I use it nearly exclusively in my home. It’s incredibly reliable, especially thanks to Zwave JS. I’m so glad to hear the future continues to look bright for Zwave.
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I’ve been using ZWave for oh probably a decade now… before HA came along… I’m still adding devices here and there. Thank you HA, ZwaveJS/ZWaveJS-UI team
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It for sure will. See the prototype in the picture with Dominic 
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