ZWave - HA Blue versus Yellow

Hardware
1

I’ve been looking at sensors that can be used with HA for room occupancy and measuring light levels. I’m also considering switching a few Globe smart plugs to a different brand. I’m starting to realize that zwave is the direction I should be heading.

I currently run HA on an HA Blue. I’m contemplating between the addition of a zwave stick on the HA Blue or purchasing the new HA Yellow, which has zwave built in.

The cheapest way to achieve zwave capability is by adding a zwave stick to HA Blue. Cheaper is not necessarily better. Keeping costs down is appealing but is this route the best longer term solution?

The HA Yellow seems to be a well designed piece of hardware. I’m intrigued by its design and capabilities. Spending the extra money on one may be a better long term solution. Problem is, I’m having trouble rationalizing the expense.

What benefits do you see in moving from HA Blue to an HA Yellow?

2

I think the move is personal choice but then again I am a cheap b@$(ard and have to constantly remind myself that it’s the total cost that is important.

Have you considered moving to HA using a virtual machine? The load is light and provides flexibility. An old 64 bit machine even with celeron processors and 4gb of ram will work fine. There is literally no expense other than the time you put into the project and the z-wave dongle and extension cable. If you buy a dongle then you should also buy an extension cable to prevent interference. If you decide this is not working for you the initial cost is minimal and you can switch.

Also, I have moved to shelly room sensors (wifi) and I can say they work well and click your two boxes motion sensors and luminosity. The battery life is incredible and they are rechargeable. I currently have 5. No problems - they just work and there are many tuning tweaks in the firmware.

I like z-wave for one thing - N way switches. They give a lot of flexibility based on how the N-way is wired and you can adapt easily. Shelly 1 has a very strict wiring requirement or it won’t work.

Hope you find this useful.

3

From what I understand the HA Yellow has built in Zigbee, not Z-Wave. You have to buy a third party Z-Wave USB dongle or Z-Wave GPIO-devise.

I use the HA Blue with a Aeotec Z-Stick and its a power-combo : D

1 Like
4

I started tinkering with HA on an old i7 linux laptop using docker.

Now it is sitting very happily under my router direct wired into the lan port.

5

A reread of specifications for HA Yellow revealed you’re correct! Thanks for pointing out my error.

With HA Yellow specifications clarified, I’ll likely add the same. I see a note on the Z-Wave Integration page indicating the 700 Series Z-Wave device has a bug. Any idea when this may be corrected? I’d prefer to purchase a later version and could wait for the 700 Series to be fixed prior to purchasing.

1 Like
6

I moved HA from a VM to HA Blue to overcome limitations imposed by the VM (QNAP NAS). I thought of purchasing an old PC to run VM’s on but decided against.

I have Shelly’s installed in a couple of places. I’m happy with their operation. I’d like to move away from wi-fi as the number of devices I’m considering could out-strip the range of IP addresses available on wi-fi. I’ll consider giving Shelly room sensors a try if I don’t find a conservative solution for ZWave.

7

They finally posted that, excellent!

Its a long term bug. If I were building now or really in the next few months at the very least - plan on using a 500. If they fix it you can always migrate. (ZWaveJS/JS2MQTT supports migration of your ZWave network between sticks, even 500>700)

8

Good to know, thanks.

9

This is sidebar, but could you help elaborate a bit on what the limitations are?

10

My Aeotec Z-Stick came with firmware: 7.11.

Here is the link to update the firmware to 7.15. Have not jet done the upgrade myself

As a side note, Googling HA Blue vs. RPI 4:
Hardkernel claims that the ODROID-N2 Plus is **roughly twice as fast as** the Raspberry Pi 4

11

Good to have the link, unfortunately that firmware doesnt fix the ‘dropping’ issue.

12

Sure!

  • HA Upgrades were not easy to perform
  • QNAP folder structure made it hard to locate HA folders -
  • Many QNAP updates require reboots. This means HA has to be shutdown - no control over devices during this time.
  • HA performance degraded when QNAP processor was heavily taxed - virus scans, large backups

There’s probably a few other issues but it’s been over two years since I moved to an independent device for HA so I’ve forgotten some of them.

13

Haven’t read this in detail but maybe 7.16 has solved it:

Did an update to Firmware: 7.16, - at least did not brick my dongle.

14

No, the issue is not solved yet.

15

FYI: SilikonLabs are coming with a z-Wave 800 during 2022.