Zwave isn’t going anywhere here for a long time…there is a reason Matter has struggled to take hold…the main market for smart products in the world is dominated by cheap consumer wifi gear and cheap zwave for hobbyists & alarm companies. Zigbee is niche here and Matter has a very uphill fight against big corps that have little real interest in changing from what already is available in mass quantities.
I expect Zwave gear will be easily available on Amazon here for another decade
Good point re battery cost
Many older Z-Wave 300 and 500 series devices does not unless they use a larger lithium battery like example CR123/CR123A (which many security system devices uses), but newer generation of Z-Wave 700 and 800 devices have signifigantly better battery life than most newer Zigbee 3.0 devices I have.
It is also important to remember that both Z-Wave and Zigbee depends heavily on mesh networking technology thus battery-operated devices on a mesh network that does not have many mains-powered repeaters/routers will drain out the battery much quicker if they need to keep resending messages because of poor reception to and from the closest mains-powered repeater/router.
So always be sure to add many mains-powered repeaters/routers close to battery-powered devices to keep their batteries from draining faster than nessesary due to them having to resend messages.
Not in the consumer space. In the US, Zigbee dwarfs Z-Wave in device count, device types, retail availability and consumer purchases. It’s not even close. If someone told me Zigbee is 100x larger than Z-Wave I’d only argue that number seems low.
Two widely available brands that alone dwarf Z-Wave as a whole:
IKEA - all zigbee
Philips - all zigbee
Then you have import products. Tuya zigbee devices from 1001 brands, Aqara Xiaomi Opple, 1 million brands no one has ever heard of, etc. All zigbee. When you see something listed on Amazon, if it’s not WiFi it’s Zigbee. At Home Depot? Again, Zigbee if not WiFi.
No consumers outside of hardcore automation fans (like us) use Z-Wave at all. People using Apple Home, Google stuff, Amazon Alexa? They’re all using WiFi and Zigbee devices.
Z-Wave is so irrelevant in the consumer space in the US and Canada that if every product was taken off the market tomorrow, not a single “normy” consumer would even know. And those people are responsible for millions of purchases.
The combination of zero licensing fees and the ability to break standards at will is just too tempting for tuya.
“Uwe leads the development of the Home Assistant Z-Wave stick that we’re working on”. Wish granted:
I understand it as most Zigbee fees are includes in the price of the chips, but the “Zigbee” brand and intellectual poroperty of the specifications is owned by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formelly Zigbee Alliance, and if a manufacturer wants to market a product/device as Zigbee compatible using the Zigbee brand in order to sell it for profit then they need to certify the product and that still cost some money (even if some Zigbee devices are based on Zigbee radio modules that have been pre-certified).
And then they also need to get products/devices compliance tested and certified by various government authority agents / regulatory bodies, like the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) in the United States and European Commission (EC/CE) in the EU, to make sure it complies with electronics safety and radio rules before resellers can legally make their electronic device available to the public.
Some companies, and especially many Chinese companies, are infamous for ignoring all of that.
there is some very interesting reading on DrZwave web site detailing the substantial effort required to certify z-wave devices, as the antenna impedance matching is done in hardware on all 500, 700, devices. There are two chip type available in 800 series, and one of them is "software defined"as I understand it so that the device can be produced for all regions and frequencies. I would love to see a “Z-Wave-Home” project like ESP-Home that uses those 800 series devices and a web based IDE to open up the DIY z-wave market. Maybe Nabu Casa could also consider a z-wave device thet is similar to the SM Light Ethernet Zigbee form factor for connection over Ethernet to HA for a Z-wave controller. I can dream, Right
If you port ESPHome to Silicon Labs’s “EFR32 platform” then you are probably half-way there 
While just adding support for Silabs EFR32 Wireless Gecko (32-bit MCUs) to ESPHome without considering Z-Wave or even other types of wireless support on the EFR32 platform would be A LOT of work! It is way over my head, though I do believe that such ports would be technically possible on paper, as ESPHome, which originally only supported ESP8266 before ESP32 support was added, was previously also ported to at least Raspberry Pi’s RP2040 platform (RPi Pico) about two years ago, and an independent developer is currently working on porting ESPHome to Nordic Semiconductor’s nrf52 (and nrf53) platform. Maybe such an effort is less impossible since Silicon Labs recently partnered with Nabu Casa to support Open Source development + Home Assistant and ESPHome developers’s announcement of the Open Home Foundation, but then you run into the problem that the current libraries and SDK for Z-Wave might not be compatible for use with ESPHome’s free and open-source licenses? If you are interested in researching/investigating this possibility then you should be aware that Silicon Labs Gecko SDK (GSDK) is on GitHub and that siliconlabsefm32 platform is available on PlatformIO, (but I do not think there is support for Silabs Gecko SDK in PlatformIO’s siliconlabsefm32 platform?).
I therefore believe that it is more likely that we will see Zigbee (and Thread) support in ESPHome sooner than we will see Z-Wave support, especially since ESPHome already supports the ESP32 platform (espressif32) and Espressif has recently released an ESP Zigbee SDK + four ESP32 SoCs with IEEE 802.15.4 radios (for Zigbee and Thread support); first ESP-H2 and ESP32-C6 then very recently also ESP-H4 and ESP32-C5.
FYI, if you are interested in helping out with the Zigbee support development effort for ESPHome then you should know a couple of other independent developers are already experimenting with YAML support for that ESP Zigbee SDK in ESPHome, check out this development discussion here → New level for Zigbee in ESPHome · Issue #28 · luar123/esphome_zb_sensor · GitHub (and the end-users feature request discussion here → Zigbee/Thread support on the new upcoming ESP32-H2 variant? · Issue #1397 · esphome/feature-requests · GitHub).
Hey @balloob
It’s great that you are building tighter connections with the zwave world.
Could you PLEASE put this new relationship to the test and put PRESSURE on SilLabs to fix this flammin’ “Controller Status Changed to Jammed” bug ASAP? It’s killing our zwave-based smart homes and the progress on fixing it seems to be very slow.
Cheers,
Geoff.
100% Agree!!! Seems to me Z-Wave firmware quality control has gone into a death spiral over the last 6 months.
Nabu Casa people: is your new product going to have the same VID:PID as your Sky Connect, which again is the exact same as the VID:PID of Zooz Z-Wave products, Sonoff Zigbee sticks, etc?
Im Happy to read that z-wave will continue to be worked on. I really hope it will get better.
But the real thing is, z-wave will die rapidly if SiliconLabs doesnt fix their firmware on the 700/800 controllers.
You cant expect people to keep investing in z-wave devices that cost much more than other types (i.e. zigbee) when reliabilty has been inexistant since the 700 series was released.
Lets be realistic, the 700 series controllers never worked reliably since they were released. First the infamous “dead nodes” issue and now the “jammed controller” issue.
Cant even turn on 4 lights at the same time or the controller will jam. This is a basic task a premium priced automation protocol should be able to do easily without the users having to implement multiple walkarounds to compensate the firmware flaws, or even downgrade to older gen controllers to avoid these issues.
How can we still have trust in z-wave when the chip manufacturer/sdk provider is unable to fix their own firmware and unable to keep the community updated? We dont even know if they are trying to fix anything and it looks like the support of gen 700 has been dropped in 7.22.0. Is this at least being discussed in these z-wave alliance summits? Asked some manufacturers the same question and no one answered, looks like no one have the balls to put pressure on SiliconLabs. Is the Alliance controlled by SiliconLabs?
This should be the first thing up in the list if the alliance members doesnt want z-wave to die. No one will keep buying z-wave if the reliabilty isn’t there.
I wanted to buy 11 more Inovelli red dimmers but still waiting (since october) for SiLabs’s firmware to be fixed (dont want to throw another 1000$ in z-wave if its not fixed). So meanwhile, an excellent manufacturer isn’t having my money because of this and im sure Im not alone…
No other Z-Wave USB dongle has unique product identifier, but the SkyConnect ZBT-1 does have a unique product identifier which is enough, see:
And
When is the Nabu Casa zwave controller/coordinator going to be available?
My ZBT-1 was DoA and I need to return it. I’ve since picked up a PoE Zigbee coordinator (SLZB-06 from Smartlight) based on Ti chipset.
Now I’m hunting for a similar form-factor Z-Wave radio that doesn’t suck. Sure wish Smartlight made one with similar setup.
Z-Wave PoE Kit – TubesZB is my recommendation. You do need to buy one of the two recommended Z-Wave radios that fit inside it though.
Well - my experience with z-wave is not that good. Sticks not adhering to USB standards (AEOTEC), switches that are specced at 2000W load but simply crap out at half of the load and finally random complete network lossess that require me to clean up the z-stick tables using simplicity studio. It’s a mess and i suspect that zigbee is no better…but z-wave needs to improve if they want to keep me on board.
Fully agree - same issue here where the controlled jammed up twice at random occasions.
NextNav has petitioned the FCC to propose the use of the 902-928 MHz band, which could lead to interference with Z-Wave’s core frequency usage. [1]
NextNav does, however, seek the removal of the current requirement that it not cause unacceptable levels of interference to part 15 devices. [2]
If granted, I wonder how this will impact Z-Wave devices. This frequency band overlaps Z-Wave frequencies in North America.
