Z-Wave reborn - Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2

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Thanks. How inexpensive are we talking for these USB over Ethernet extenders ? It seems the ones on Amazon starts around $40, which is a significant fraction of the ZWA2’s own cost. Do you have any recommended models / links ?

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No but found useful info here

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Thanks. That thread is from about a year before the ZWA2 was released, I believe it started around the time that LR support was first added to Z-Wave JS. The devices only need to be paired again if moving them from Z-Wave mesh (non-LR) to LR, or vice-versa. There is no requirement to pair devices again when switching the controller, but not the connection method, as far as I know.

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I didn’t realize the zooz was LR.
Sorry Bout that

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They usually cost less than $10, just search using the keywords ”usb rj45 extension”. They should all work as they are just dumb pass-through adapters and have no electronics so do not cost a lot. Cheap chinese manufacturers make them and anyone will do. See search example:

I have some different kinds and all work. I know some of the ones I bought myself looks like this and work great as long as use a good quality Ethernet cable with them:

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https://www.amazon.com/s?k=usb+rj45+extension&crid=3QWN07FNTICC&sprefix=usb+rj45+extension

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Thank you very much. I ordered a pair.

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Want highlight how smooth and effective it was moving from Zooz 800 USB to TubeSZ POE with Zooz GPIO. Done today, had to upgrade the firmware on GPIO controller, then NVM restore went straight.

Now HAOS runs in a proxmox node and can be moved to other nodes with no hardware dependencies. Happy day :sunglasses:

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I switched my ZAC93 to a ZWA-2 on a HA Yellow using an NVM backup / restore; the swap was super easy with zero issue.

I have a large house with 3 floors and multiple interior brick walls, a single ZW mesh with 100+ powered devices, and dedicated repeaters. The ZWA-2 is a significant improvement over the ZAC93, but some of the far nodes are 4-5 hops when the routes are examined.

I’m not interesting in splitting my ZW mesh and using a ZW over IP solution; I’m pretty certain my entire network would have much shorter routes with a repeater using an optimized antenna like the ZWA-2.

Ideally, an out-of-the-box ZWA-2 could be plugged into a USB power supply and added to the network as a repeater node, but I’d be open to flashing the ZWA-2 to function as a repeater only.

Any thoughts on using the ZWA-2 as a dedicated repeater?

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Connect ZWA-2 anywhere: Use Z-Wave over Wi-Fi or PoE
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I think that it is a great idea! Suggest that you or someone submit a new issue with title ”Option to build Z-Wave Repeater firmware for ZWA-2” as a feature request to Nabu Casa’s silabs-firmware-builder on GitHub:

I believe that building such a firmware image built there would be the first step to make that happen as it would allow people experiment with less risk of bricking it using an official firmware image.

Note that the readme has not been updated to reflect the fact that their Silicon Labs firmware builder there is in fact also used to build Z-Wave Controller (i.e. Z-Wave NCP) firmware for the ZWA-2 adapter, however it does, so in theory it only needs a new manifest file with correct configuration to build a Z-Wave Reapter firmware for ZWA-2:

But such a Z-Wave Repeater configuration for the ZWA2 adapter will need to be much more advanced since it needs to be able to be used as a stand-alone device and also need way to reverse the process by flashing the original Z-Wave NCP firmware in an easy way.

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Done:

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Thank you for this tip! This was exactly what was wrong with my migration yesterday. I lost comm with all 86 of my Z-Wave devices. Thanks again!

The migration is not for the faint-of-heart by any stretch. The documentation is a little rough and maybe more specific details would help. Took probably 3 hours total including an hour of troubleshooting. If you have both the Z-Wave JS and Z-Wave JS UI installed, I’d recommend uninstalling Z-Wave JS. This should be at the top of the checklist. Also, updated the firmware using the ZWA-2 Toolbox on GitHub.

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FYI, just a heads-up is that it looks like the upcoming ESPHome 2025.10 release (Beta 1 available soon) will contain a new experimental initial ”zwave proxy” component and an matching API implementation which will enable support for setting up a ESPHome-based device as an Z-Wave Proxy (if it is connected to a Silicon Labs Z-Wave radio via serial/UART) and with that you will then be able to connect to it remotly from Home Assistant, (i.e. this Z-Wave Proxy feature will allow you to use ESPHome as a remote Z-Wave Controller bridge connected anyone on your local LAN-network as a Serial-over-IP function via Ethernet or Wi-Fi).

This new zwave_proxy component will allow remote proxying of Z-Wave data frames (serial messages) between a Z-Wave Modem SoC and Z-Wave JS (or more specifically the Z-Wave JS integration in Home Assistant) via ESPHome’s API (aioesphomeapi), similar to how Bluetooth Proxies already works in ESPHome today. So loads of respect to ESPHome developers for this implementation as did not think this kind of sensitive and near to real-time Serial-over-IP method could be achived in a stable enough way (as Silabs serial communication protocol was not designed to handle the kind of packat loss or delays this approch need to work around), so let us hope it will mature to become production ready some day, even over an unstable WiFi connection.

Presumably all this will mean that they probably will release an optional ESPHome firmware for the ESP32 chip in Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 to allow remote connection to it. But I assume that the same Z-Wave Proxy component and API could also be used to create a new type of Z-Wave USB-adapter proxy configuration where you could for example connect your Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2 via USB to a Ethernet/PoE device cased on ESPHome for wired solution in a remote location.

PS: As for what kind of new ESPHome-based products you could make with this check out this related ideas about making ESPHome-based universal USB-to-Ethernet Bridge, as in a USB to Serial-over-IP PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) proxy appliance compatible with standard Z-Wave and Zigbee USB radio dongles:

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Due to running HA on a virtual server cluster that has failover capabilities to another physical server, I am very interested in a Z-Wave hub that I don’t have to physically connect to a server/workstation, but can attach via Ethernet or WiFi bridge to HA. That would be the perfect solution for me if such a product exists.

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Did you read this? → Connect ZWA-2 anywhere: Use Z-Wave over Wi-Fi or PoE - Home Assistant

And more in the replies here → Connect ZWA-2 anywhere: Use Z-Wave over Wi-Fi or PoE

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Thanks! That project looks very promising! That is exactly the hardware setup that would be ideal for my particular config - or anyone that needs a network based option.

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Holy crap! Got my ZWA-2 this week from CloudFree (2-Day shipping for $5) and the migration from my Aeotec Z-Stick 5+ (already at latest FW) took only minutes and went flawlessly. The instructions were clear and easy to follow. I immediately upgraded the ZWA-2 FW and it went fine as well. My network map in ZW JS UI is SO MUCH BETTER, with lots of green lines, some yellow, and only 3 red. With the Aeotec, I had red lines all over the place. I’ve got tons of devices, both in-wall/powered and battery, going through many walls and floors. I did find that Rebuild Routes created some illogical routes, so there were a few cases where I created preferred routes (which I had not done before).

Giant kudos to Nabu Casa and everyone who made this happen, engineering the device, and making it plug-n-play! Well done. For $69, this is a no brainer upgrade and now I can take advantage of my newer 700 and LR devices that were being wasted.

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I finally got around to installing these USB - Ethernet extenders last week, after a the end of a long home construction project. I used a CAT6 Ethernet cable that’s about 25ft. Things unfortunately did not improve with my Z-wave signal problems. I also noticed that the Z-Wave JS UI add-on failed to initialize the controller on startup on two occasions - once after an OS reboot for patch tuesday, and another time after I restored an HAOS backup. A manual restart of the add-on fixed it. I have never seen this behavior before when the ZWA-2 and ZST39 were connected via a regular (but shorter) USB 2.0 extension cord. Since it did not help, I reverted to the regular USB extension, and have not seen the problem again.

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@Hedda
This solution does not address the query that started all the USB over IP/Ethernet discussion which is somewhat lost in the mess now.
HA HA on ProxMox. A dumb USB extender of any kind does not provide the ability to switch VM’s on ProxMox without switching the phyiscal cable still.
However, this could be a totally moot point now official beta firmware to support either an external module running serial (USB) to IP or an inbuilt firmware to do it over WiFi now exists.

Apologies if I missed any additional threads. The discussion has run off on tangents that are different to the original question and I have been skipping some of the tangents.

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It is true that using a solution based on a very long USB-extension-cable does not solve the scenario of someone running Home Assistant OS on a virtual machine in a high-availability virtualizatiom cluster. I never said it did, my suggestion was not aimed at those few users but instead the majority that are more likley to run run Home Assistant on a single computer. And understand that if that is your setup at home is a high-availability cluster then you are probably smart enough to understand that such setups are in a very small minority of users.

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Hands down the best Nabu Casa hardware yet / My experience after 1 month

Just wanted to drop my feedback after using the ZWA-2 for over a month.

In terms of design, finish, and overall quality, this is hands down the best hardware Nabu Casa has released so far. It feels like a truly mature product.

But the real game-changer is the radio performance. My ZWA-2 is located on level 3, while a significant number of my Z-Wave modules are installed down on level 1. Despite the distance and walls, the signal is flawless.

To give you some context: my previous hub, the Fibaro HC Lite, was physically located closer to these modules, yet the network was notoriously unstable. I constantly battled with “dead nodes” and devices dropping off.

Since the switch? Zero issues. Not a single dropped packet or sleeping module problem in over a month. It has been absolutely rock solid.

Migrating all my modules from the Fibaro to the ZWA-2 was genuinely satisfying - finally saying goodbye to the HC Lite ended a frustrating chapter. This is the reliability I should have had from day one.

Thank you, team. This stability (and this design!) was exactly what I needed.

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