Depends on what options you run in the GUI for zwavejs2mqtt. If you turn off the mqtt communication, it’s like running zwavejs2mqtt (websockets).
Thanks. I was (kind of) confused by the use of the term
instead of just ZwaveJS2MQTT container
The addon is just a container with specific settings for hassos.
Which is more stable and more likely to be the final system. I’m trying to migrate an indigo system to HA and am finding zwave to be rather intractable and scary.
Any of the Zwave JS ones have the best outlook at the moment.
What is the advantage of using zwavejs2mqtt with websockets vs mqtt? Isn’t mqtt a very lightweight protocol vs a full tcp communication to pass the info?
I’ve migrated this week-end form OpenZWave 1.4 to ZWaveJS2MQTT.
I have first tested through websockets, it worked but I had disconnexions, I don’t exactly what but I didn’t have any statut update from ZWave entities in HA, every few hours I had to restart either ZWaveJS2MQTT or HA.
I then activated the MQTT Gateway and disables websockets. And everything has been working fine since.
I guess an advantage of using websockets is that it will be easier to move to the official ZWaveJS addon when it will be a little bit more mature. Websocket are maybe the same in both addons ? and so HA entities created with ZWaveJS2MQTT will be directly usable by ZWaveJS ?
Using MQTT currently, I might have again a few hours of work to rename all my entities in HA when I will switch to ZWaveJS I guess. 
Yes, I can see your point from the user space perspective. But from the developer’s point of view, why choose websockets over mqtt in ZwaveJS? I thought it was a brilliant MVC implementation using mqtt. Is the change to websockets related to HA topology (you get smother/ more complete integration into HA).
I guess (juste a guess again) that websockets are embedded in ZWaveJS addon and do not require another external addon for a MQTT broker.
Using MQTT forces the user to use MQTT discovery in HA which is limited. And for specific devices, it requires more work for a user if MQTT discovery does not support the device. Where as websockets (Long term), everything will transfer via discovery without any work. Also, you don’t have the MQTT middle man and it’ll require less setup and use less resources.
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Should zwavejs in the start topic also have (Websockets) behind it?
Not really. Since zwavejs in and of itself can only communicate over websockets.
zwavejs2mqtt has both mqtt and websockets functionality.
So you confirm its websocket…
yes…(10 char min)
I think MQTT uses TCP, which would actually make TCP-only a “lighter” solution…
You know that’s a good point! I agree… I thought it was UDP. If it’s TCP there isn’t much of a savings. And the benefits within HA is worth the weight.