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.
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.
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…
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.
Yes, I’ve been running the Razberry 7 Pros (2 of them at different locations) for more than a year now. I moved them to the TubesZB network adapter as soon it became available (early January this year). It works great. Much easier / more reliable than my Raspberry pi solution with socat / ser2net I was using earlier.
I’m almost certain that the tubez zwave device uses either the zooz ZAC93 or raspberry pro gpio controllers. Which also means they are using ser2net.
I use the ZAC93 connected to an esp32 with ethernet, basically the same thing minus active Poe (I use non active Poe to power the esp32).
This product is a kit, it contains a pre-flashed Olimex ESP32-PoE with ESPHome firmware to use as a TCP serial port, a 3d printer enclosure and Raspberry Pi GPIO to Olimex UEXT adapter, which allows the the Z-Wave modules made for the Pi’s gpio pins to work with the ESP32-PoE
So it’s using the same setup I am, esphome with a ser2net setup.
It uses esphome-stream-server instead of ser2net or socat. Z-Wave JS is able to directly connect to the socket over the network. Your setup is likely similar, but this gets you a clean install with a case and no wires.
Ser2net is just serial over TCP, same as the custom stream when you get down to the nitty gritty. When I say ser2net I mean serial over TCP/UDP (UDP would be crazy though, lol).
My esp ser2net setup uses the 0xan (oxan?) serial stream external component. Basically just a c program that takes the serial data and sends it over a TCP pipe.
If granted, I wonder how this will impact Z-Wave devices. This frequency band overlaps Z-Wave frequencies in North America.
This has me a little worried. I’m in the process of building a new home and my plan had been to go with Z-Wave throughout for switches as I did with my current house. Realistically it would probably be many years before it would impact me but it’s still making me rethink.
Z-Wave is far from the only technology impacted though and there seems to be significant opposition. I’ll need to add my voice to the comments.
I have multiple aeotec recessed door sensors. three of them are on doors which are opened multiple times throughout the day (office, door to basement, master bedroom). The batteries for me last 4-5 months. This wasn’t always the case before I expanded my zwave network with more devices that act as routers (mainly enbrighten zwave outlets). Currently all of the door sensors are less than 10 feet away from multiple z wave devices that act as routers. Prior to this battery life was maybe 6 weeks. I would suggest adding in some mains powered devices closer to these doors.
