Hi all,
i have a Pi3B+ with a RaZberry ZMEERAZ2 for the test phase.
Now, i switch to a Intel NUC i5.
What is the best Way / Hardware now?
Only the UZB (ZMEEUZB) - Z-Wave USB stick?
or this: aeotec Z-Stick Gen5+ ?
I don’t know, what is the best solution.
Thanks for Help!
I’ve used the Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5 with Domoticz for 5 years without problems. I recently switched to Home Assistant, and now use an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5+ with an RPi4. Using Aeotec software, I was able to migrate my network from the old generation Z-Stick to the new one with ease.
So my experience with the Aeotec products has been good.
thanks,
do you know what the difference is UZB to aeotec Z-Stick ?
I purchased one to try during my initial evaluation of HA. It was recognised by QT OpenZWave (Beta), and appeared in the OpenZWave admin tool. It didn’t seem to always successfully include ZWave devices on testing, unless they were nearby.
That’s one clear advantage of the Aeotec Z-Stick - you can take it to a new ZWave device and include the device by manually pressing the button on the Z-Stick. Then when you plug the Z-Stick back into the USB port on your HA computer, OpenZWave will read the new information in from the Z-Stick and add the device into HA.
Yes this is precisely the reason I got the Aeotec Z-stick Gen5+ (which was delivered in my mailbox as I was writing this message 
Don’t buy the 700 series sticks (from for example ZOOZ) as they are not yet really supported well to my understanding.
ohh that´s nice. hence the internal battery
I’m in the same position as @gcoupe. 5 years on the Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5. I’ve ran both the integrated zwave and the qt-openwave container (all working great). I’ve also ran this on a PI and a Nuc, again all working great.
If I remember well the research I did when trying to find a good place to order this stick, both the GEN5 and the GEN5+ are called ZW090, so you really have to look on the website where you order whether it says GEN5+.
The C is linked to the frequency it operates on and as I live in Europe I indeed got the C version which operates on 868.4Mhz.
When I ordered the product mid-december it could only be purchased from Aeotecs own store. Here’s the link:
FYI openzwave and the integrated zwave do not work well with specific devices and that inclusion method.
I’ve always installed the device at it’s location (Unless it’s a battery based device), then included it through OpenZwave Admin (OpenZwave-beta) or through the include button on the UI for the built in version of Zwave.
I may well have been lucky in my choice of devices (Fibaro, Aeotec, Heiman and NodOn). All of these were successfully imported into HA OpenZwave directly from my Z-Stick Gen5+. I have not had to use either the OpenZwave Admin or the HA UI for inclusion.
Did you then bring the machine you are running Home Assistant on to the location of your z-wave device to include it?
In my case it’s a bit difficult to move my Synology NAS (which runs Home Assistant) to the location of the Z-wave device, so I was hoping to be able to use the battery functionality of the z-stick instead…
And if you don’t include the battery operated devices at their final location, the nodes it will be talk to are not the right ones, meaning a network heal will be necessary.
My stick is located in my server room on the first floor. My computer (where I do my work) is on the opposite side of the house on the second floor. I basically include every battery device sitting at my desk. Inclusion does not require the stick to be next to the device. The only exceptions that I have are including devices when they are hardwired. I include them in place. This requires me to click the include button on the Openzwave admin on my computer… walk to the device at it’s install location, perform inclusion method (hope it works), walk back, and click OK to the ‘device was included’ message. I haven’t moved the zwave stick in ~3 years when inclusion was added to the UI for both install methods.
All you need to include/exclude anything is a route to the controller, therefor you should be able to include anything anywhere as long as you have a strong mesh network.
EDIT:
If you include via the stick method, some settings do not apply in the openzwave configuration xml file and could lead to problems with devices. This is why you always want to include via the UI if you can.
If you HAVE to include via the stick, you should perform a ‘refreshnodeinfo’ after inclusion.
That’s a key point.
When I was using Domoticz, I had to use the button on the stick method for some ZWave devices out in the garden, rather than the UI in Domoticz. Once in the network, and the Z-stick back in the USB port, using the refresh node command ensured that everything was set up correctly.
Yes. Basically the reasoning for this is that some settings are not stored in the network on the stick. Those settings need to be stored in the ozw cache file. If you include via the stick, these settings are not placed in the cache. Refreshnodeinfo does just that.
Also, when you run refreshnodeinfo, make sure the device is awake.
It might be me doing things wrong but a couple of years ago when I was including all my devices on my current home automation controller (Zipato Zipabox) network I always had to stand very close to the controller otherwise it would not work.
I might try an even easier route of getting the Z-stick to learn all the devices from my old Zipato Zipabox based on this explanation so that I don’t have to include all devices manually. But based on what you are writing I would have to do the refreshnodeinfo afterwards (thanks for the tip).
If that doesn’t work I’ll try to follow your approach of including from a distance.
First I need to think about what integration to start testing with now. I think I will go for the native integration even if it is outdated. Chances seem to be slim that qt-openzwave will see a stable release.
@basti4k that is the old z-stick, I would go for the new one if I were you!
Not sure what issues you are running in but this has been stable for me for 8 months now.
I haven’t tried qt-Openzwave, at the moment my Z-wave devices are connected to my zipato zipabox which sends extremely basic messages to MQTT and I manually write integrations for each device to read the essential data I need.
When I write ‘stable’ I mean that it is currently in Beta and chances are that it might never come out of beta 
From that perspective it seems better for me to try out the old z-wave integration as it isn’t in Beta. And then patiently wait for the future solution.
Agreed. I got mine from Popp.to as well.