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 itās an option.
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I love Zwave! I use it nearly exclusively in my home. Itās incredibly reliable, especially thanks to Zwave JS. Iām so glad to hear the future continues to look bright for Zwave.
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Iāve been using ZWave for oh probably a decade nowā¦ before HA came alongā¦ Iām 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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Huge shout out to the Zwave JS team! I have been using zwave for over 10 years.
Back then I would spend hours a week managing and troubleshooting issues.
Fast forward to today, I havenāt visited my ZwaveJS UI for a few months as everything is working so well!
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for availability of light bulbs. Combining smart switches and bulbs with varying protocols is a mess for usability. Unavailability of zwave bulbs in varying form factors has killed my continued adoption of smart switches, since I donāt want to try and build out a zigbee mesh.
I currently have 25 Z-Wave devices and my Z-Wave network is rock solid and super fast, definitely my most reliable equipment. Iām glad the technology isnāt going away anytime soon.
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Iāve never seen a Zooz zwave device that worked well to be honest. I just threw one away the other day that has always been a pain and will never purchase the brand again.
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I have about an even mix of zwave & zigbee and I have pretty much zero problems with zwave. I have more issues with battery powered zigbee devices dropping off the network occassionally. And then I need to do a re-inclusion on them to get them back running. But even that isnāt a lot.
But zigbee is definitely less stable than zwave. And that includes Zooz devices, too. the ones I have have never given me any issues at all.
Uwe leads the development of the Home Assistant Z-Wave stick that weāre working on
Where can I learn more about this? Is there any timeline discussed?
I was just considering replacing my Aeotec 5 with a ZST39, but maybe Iāll hold off.
Would the Home Assistant Z-Wave stick still depend on the closed-source Z-Wave Controller SDK from SILabs? It would be awesome to have a solution that lets the community contribute to fixing long-running issues like Controller reporting "Jammed" and then "Ready", operations hang Ā· zwave-js/node-zwave-js Ā· Discussion #6512 Ā· GitHub
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My smart home is based on z-wave and ESPHome. Big fan of z-wave but here in Europe manufacturers have all but stopped introducing new z-wave devices (except for shelly who have bought Qubino and have been introducing replacements of the Qubino devices under their own name).
I honestly have no clue whether there will be new z-wave devices here in Europe? Did the alliance discuss new products being released (and not only in the US)?
Long range devices would be so cool to be able to do some projects in my garden and even my parentās house nearby.
And with the higher transmission power here in Europe the potential seems greatā¦
So far Matter devices Iāve seen are unconvincing as many of the configuration parameters of e.g. a Matter lock can only be set using their proprietary app, while only basic things like open/close can be done over Matter. So when the company goes bankrupt then the lock loses much of it s functionality. Not sure whether itās due to using WiFi as the protocol and whether it will be better with thread protocol devices. With z-wave all parameters can be configured without the need for a proprietary app.
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Yes it would, as itās currently the only SDK. Itās part of the Alliance and itās one of the things we want them to open source.
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No timeline but at least 4 months. Prototype is performing well though 
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At some point Zooz will have to take Home assistant seriously. I have a firmware issue with them and they immediately blamed HA. I proved to them it was not HA and in fact their firmware, didnāt get a response after that.
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I started with Z-Wave with much enthusiasm, but have moved to Zigbee. I was an early adopter and paid a premium for pretty average devices. OZW was a struggle with every update. ZWaveJS improved support, but it couldnāt address the firmware bugs, poor battery life and little to no documentation.
Z-Wave maybe technically superior, but is losing market share due to price. Equivalent Zigbee devices are 1/3 the price and thereās a bigger range of devices on the market. Community knowledge and developer support is superior too, which is a reflection of the strong adoption.
ATM Z-Wave is just too closed. Manufactures arenāt interesting in support/compatibility outside their range. Sure itās getting better, but way too slowly.
It feels like the Z-Wave alliance is repeating the mistakes of Sony and Betamax, destined to be a niche market.
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Having both z-wave and zigbee in use, I prefer z-wave for a number of reasons:
- stability
- configurability of the devices
- ability to analyze and recover a non or poorly working network (through pinging, re-scanning routes, updating device information, etc)
- self-healing of the mesh network
Negative experiences are there as well though with z-wave:
- limited band width (a single ill-behaving device can deafen the entire network),
- limited number of device ids per network, combined with not being able to re-use no longer used device ids,
- vendors not willing to provide firmware updates unless youāre using their coordinator (thatās you Fibaro)
Loving Z-Wave myself, so really glad with this statement. Go Home Assistant.
Only gripe I have with the devices, is the ludicrous number of wrong entities that are created, and we have to disable. Over and over again.
Other than that, I havent had a single serious issue since moving to the core Zwave-js Addon-on/Integration setup in my Aeotec stick.
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