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.
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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.
Thanks, I’ll take a closer look at this. Do you have personal experience with it and one of the recommended radios?
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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.
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Good to know. I just recently moved HA to a dedicated mini N100 system and it’ll be great to get rid of the last USB-connected device.
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.
You can see the Esphome config they use here: tube_gateways/models/current/tubeszb-zw-kit/tubeszb-zw.yaml at f84351971f39c58d3ec18b301c6802eea251c546 · tube0013/tube_gateways · GitHub
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.
I am very excited to hear that zwave in home assistant will be getting even better.
Z wave is my preferred protocol for devices. I don’t think it is dead, but I am concerned about the fact that there doesn’t seem to be nearly enough new devices coming out - especially compared to zigbee/wifi. It also doesn’t help that zigbee/wifi devices are abundant. Search for smart plug on amazon and the majority of the results are zigbee/wifi. People new to HA or any smart home platform will likely go that route and likely continue to do so. I have to actively search specifically for zwave devices if I want to get something new.
My current setup is zwavejs ui and I have 56 devices, I also have 64 devices using ZHA, 2 zigbee devices on zigbee2mqtt (they werent supported in zha when they came out), and lutron caseta (49 devices). In addition I have multiple devices controlled via wifi (esphome, xiaomi air purifiers, etc). Of those protocols, wifi is the least reliable due to disconnects from the network. I only have 55 devices on my home network (mesh wifi with 4 nodes + router) and a large percentage of them are hard wired. As far as matter/thread…I don’t see it being reliable or all that useful to be honest. I think its biggest audience is going to be maybe for the average consumer who only has a few devices and won’t ever get into home automation beyond google/alexa/homekit. It’s also limited in that it relies on wifi and it doesn’t take many devices to make the average consumers wifi network overloaded. My zwave/zigbee/caseta all are reliable, near instantaneous in responsiveness, and haven’t been affected by the frequent power outages we get in my neighborhood (at least once a month). Z wave is my preferred because it is fast, reliable, and secure. I do agree that devices are somewhat more expensive than zigbee, but I think the build quality is better.
I had issues with zwave initially after I migrated what were then a small number of devices over from smartthings. I had been using an aeotec 7 series stick and had frequent dead nodes. I eventually got fed up and purchased a 5th gen aeotec stick and a zooz 800 series stick. Once I read about the issues with the 800 series, I went with the 5th gen aeotec and have never had an issue. The 800 series stick has never even been plugged in - maybe someday. Before I switched to the 5th gen stick I also expanded my zwave network with more mains powered devices. Most of these are ge/enbrighten outlets and some switches. I did this with the intent of creating a good network. So a lot of the outlets/switches I am not even using the zwave actively. A good example of this are the lights in the bathroom on my ground floor, pantry, laundry room, 3 walk-in closets. All have ge/enbrighten z wave motion activated light switches. I don’t really ever control them via z wave. I have alternated with jasco zigbee outlets as well so that my zigbee network also has a solid backbone of mains powered devices. There isn’t a room in my house that doesn’t have one or more z wave mains powered devices. Anyone with zwave reliability issues (or zigbee as well) likely needs to add more mains powered devices.
My biggest annoyance with zwave has been that some devices just don’t work (and I don’t mean due to lack of signal). GE/enbrighten/jasco is the most reliable (outlets and switches), aeotec except for one specific product, zooz not so great. And this unreliability is product specific. A good example is at christmas I use outdoor z wave plugs for lights. I had some from minoston and evalogik. Last winter I purchased 2 aeotec ones, 2 zooz zen14’s, as well as 2 zooz zen20 power strips. No issues pairing, but they started showing up as dead - sometimes resolvable with pinging, but mostly the only way to resolve the issue was to exclude, factory reset, then pair them again. And they would die sometimes after an hour or two or maybe after 2-3 days. Totally random. I finally got fed up and excluded them (aeotec/zooz plugs and the 2 zooz powerstrips). I then plugged them in to a powerstrip on the floor in the middle of my office where they had direct line of sight to the stick of maybe 10 feet. Paired them…same issue…kept dying. So they ended up being expensive paperweights. Another example is lutron’s zwave outlet. Kept doing the same thing despite being installed in a location with minimal distance to the stick and other mains powered devices - eventually replaced it with a ge/enbrighten and never had an issue. I have other products from zooz and aeotec (the majority of my sensors are aeotec) and they have never had issues.
Hopefully involvement with the zwave alliance will lead to more products and also better and more frequent firmware updates from manufacturers to resolve issues with some of their products.
Are there any news on the status of the Zwave stick Nabu Casa is working on? Looking to replace my old Aeotec Gen 5 stick but I would love to get the one from NC instead of any other. Any news when it might be coming out (in Europe) or when to expect a release? Just curious if I should wait for it or check for another one. 
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Curious about this too now that Z-Wave JS added support for Z-Wave Long Range (Z-Wave LR) in European RF Region.
Would love to get a Z-Wave 800 Series Long Range controller radio USB adapter with an external antenna for the EU frequency range.
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It would be amazing if Nabu Casa could create something like the ESPHome for zwave. Having that kind of flexibility could grow the adoption quickly.
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Do you mean offer a Silicon Labs EFR32 core platform for ESPHome using Zephyr (RTOS) codebase or similar for use on hardware like the Z-Uno (Z-Wave development board)?
I would love to see that but personally believe there is a larger usebase that would want Zigbee and/or OpenThread + Matter support in ESPHome, and unlike Z-Wave, there are ESP32 models with buiilt in Zigbee/Thread radio (and some peope are working on Zigbee and Thread support for ESPHome).
Anyway, while the use case for Z-Wave might be niche and I do not have the skills to help with that I could see that maybe being technically possible considering these referenses linked here below that show someone working on Zephyr for ESPHome (though for a different platform) and Silicon Labs working on Zephyr support for EFR32 (which in theory could include their Z-Wave radio MCU SoCs), but the main challange would probably be to first convince Silicon Labs to make a Z-Wave library that could be used with it:
z-uno is what I had in mind, but that price point isn’t. The mysensors.org project is closer and could benefit from HA adoption.