Zwave migration to Zwave.JS/Zwave2MQTT

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

Hi to all! This is going to be a rather long post but I have worked to keep it as brief as possible.

First I am a semi-convert from Homeseer to Home Assistant. As you will see below I want to become a complete convert. My current setup is what I would call a Hybrid. I run Homeseer V3 on a Windows laptop for just Zwave devices. I utilize the mcsMQTT plugin on Homeseer to post and subscribe to all topics on a MQTT server running on my Home Assistant instance. I run Home Assistant OS/Supervisor/Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi 4+ with 8 Gb of ram, with a 128 Gb microSDHC card and use it to control and show the status of all Z-Wave (via MQTT).

Homeseer →mcsMQTT→MQTT→Home Assistant

Home Assistant → MQTT → mcsMQTT → Homeseer

In terms of Zwave devices see the following:

Installed and controlled by Homeseer

 * Homeseer Smartstick+ (1)

 * Homeseer WD100 Dimmers (3)

 * Homeseer WS200 Switches (2)

 * Homeseer WD200 Dimmers (3)

 * Jasco 14287 Fan Controllers (2)

 * Jasco 14318 Switches (3)

 * Homeseer DS100 Door/Window Sensors (4)

 * Honeywell ZW1002 110V Outlets (1)

 * Trane XR524 Thermostate (1)

 * GoControl/Linear (Nortek) GD00Z-4 Garage Door Controller (1)

 * Schlage BE468CEN716 Dead Bolts (2)

Un-installed

 * Aeotec Z-Stick Gen 5 (not the plus version) (1)

 * Honeywell ZW1002 110V Outlets (2)

 * Aeotec Multi-Sensor 6 ZW100-A (1)

 * Aeon Labs Energy Reader (1)

 * Everspring Model SP103 Motion Detector (1)

Since moving into this home (10/2017) I have lost (2) Jasco 14318 switches and (1) Homeseer WD200 dimmer. I have replaced them with TP-Link Kasa WiFi switches/dimmer.

I want to do away with Homeseer and the Windows laptop. Lately some issues have cropped up with the mcsMQTT plugin regarding the dead bolt locks and the garage door opener and it’s reporting of status. With the door locks it just doesn’t update the MQTT server at all, they both show “locked” and control is hit and miss. With the Garage Door it sends the command to “open” reports the status of “opening” and then the status of “open”. However when closing it sends the command to “close” reports the status of “closing” but never reports the status of “closed”. I have followed the command and status updates in their respective topics via a NodeRed debug console and the missing updates never make it from mcsMQTT to the MQTT server.

My setup is that I have yaml configuration files for all of the items listed above. See the following as an example for a switch:

Outside Entry Way Light Switch

Homeseer Node: 33

Ref ID: 53 Name: Outside Entry Way Light

• platform: mqtt

name: “Outside Entry Way Light”

payload_on: “on”

payload_off: “off”

unique_id: “OutsideEntryWayLight”

state_topic: “CRUD-06/mcsMQTT/Entry_Way/Lighting/Outside_Entryway_Light”

command_topic: “CRUD-06/mcsMQTT/Entry_Way/Lighting/Outside_Entryway_Light/Control”

value_template: “{{ ‘on’ if value|int > 0 else ‘off’ }}”

optimistic: false

So I hope you have a pretty good idea of what I have been doing and have setup. Now to my questions:

1. With my equipment is Zwave.JS ready for my production system

I am confused about Zwave2MQTT, Zwave.JS, and their relationship.

2. As I understand it I could use Zwave2MQTT by itself and it would replace my setup with Homeseer, i.e. Zwave2MQTT runs as a seperate server, posts and subscribes to a seperate MQTT server, and Home Assistant would interact with the MQTT server as it does now. I would probably have to change the command and status topics to match that of Zwave2MQTT.

3. Or I can run Zwave.JS on my Home Assistant instance as an integration with no MQTT involvement what so ever.

4. Or I can run both Zwave.JS and Zwave2MQTT together utilizing MQTT topics or not. (The reason for running with Zwave2MQTT would be for it’s management interface and if using MQTT topics to utilize NodeRed for automations (which I don’t currently do.)

5. Prior to Zwave.JS being announced and moving my Home Assistant install from a Raspberry Pi3 to the current Raspberry Pi4 I purchased the Aeotec Z-stick Gen 5. As I understand it this Z-wave stick is not compatible with the Raspberry Pi4, you have to buy the “+” version. If I have to purchase a new Z-Stick I was thinking about going with the Go Control HUSBZB-1 combo Zigbee/Zwave stick. I do have a Phillips Hue Hub and I am thinking I could simplify even more by using the one stick to control both my Phillips Hue lights and all my Zwave equipment. Do you forsee any problems doing this?

6. I want to minimize my home automation downtime if I move ahead with this. What would be the best way to migrate from one to the other? Please be as detailed as you can.

7. When including new Zwave devices with the Homeseer Smartstick+ and Homeseer I found that you had to be practically right next to the new device for inclusion to be successful. Would this be the case with the GoControl HUSBZB-1 plugged into my Raspberry Pi4?

Well that about wraps it up. Looking forward to any responses and advice.

Regards

Chuck

[AllHailJ (J Gent)]

I too converted from HomeSeer to Home Assistant. I did not go the MQTT route. I first started with Open z-wave and then when zwave js was integrated I moved directly to that. I use the homeseer z-stick (sigma design) and it functions without issue. I have 89 devices that are a combination of homeseer, jasco, aoetech, gocontrol, fibaro.

I am running a supermirco server with Ubuntu 20.04 and HA installed on a VM. I ran the VM because I have an IT100 tied to my alarm system to get exterior door and window status. I tied this into ubuntu with and used a program from github to talk to HA via the envisalink integration. My thermostats and my irrigation controller (the one built for Homeseer directly) I could not get to work. I replaced with ecobee 3 lite and rainmachine - both wifi and directly integrated into HA. This is the best thing I ever did! Both pieces of kit work flawlessly.

I will assume that you can get your system loaded and running on the pi. I would recommend supervised if you can get it. I took the approach one room at a time. I had an extra stick and used that for HA. I ran both in parallel while I did this. I setup the stick on HA and got it ready to add nodes. I also installed the HA app on my android phone. I then would use the mobile app from HS to remove a node. I would then add the node on the HA app through my phone. I started closest to my stick so I could build the mesh as I went out. Below is my simple flow chart

1. Find nearest node to stick
2. Remove from HomeSeer
3. Add to Home Assistant
4. Change the name to a recognizable name adding rooms and re-configuring all the entity names.
5. Add any critical automations for the device.
6. Go back to step 1.

This took me about 8 hours to complete. Spend the time making the names and areas comprehensible as it will save you a lot of time later. Think about how you want to group lights and switches.

I will not pretend that HA is easy. It is powerful and very well supported. The documentation is good. After almost a year I feel like I am no longer incompetent and overwhelmed with syntax, structure, yaml and organization.

There are some add-ons that I will strongly recommend.
Terminal & ssh
Samba
Check Home Assistant configuration
AppDaemon4
Log Viewer

The Forum members and moderators are super smart and helpful. They are also quite direct. Do not take their responses to be offensive. They will ask you to follow the rules of formatting etc because they can’t help you without it. YAML is very space dependent and the formatting allows them to see what is going on.

I will also point you to shelly devices. If these were available when I started with home automation I would have far fewer z-wave devices. I would also make sure that your router can static map ip addresses. This will make your life much easier. I would also consider joining nabu casa to get access on your mobile devices anywhere. The $5 per month is so fair and such a great way to give back to the community.

I will say you may lose some features of the z-wave switches. I still haven’t figured out how to get double and triple tap working.

If you want to speak directly to me send me a PM and I will respond back.

HA is an awesome system and it is getting better all the time. It will take work, you will be frustrated at times but it is worth it.

Hope this helps.

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

@AllHailJ Thanks for your response. I already have HA up and running (for over a year now) first on an RPI3 and now on the RPI4. It is a “Supervised” install with Hass OS.

I do have Terminal & SSH and Samba add-ons. In addtion I have NodeRed, MQTT, Backup to Google Drive, and File Editor.

The forum and its members have been more than helpful in the past, just like you .

I am disappointed that your experience with the double and triple tap scene features of the Homeseer switches is not good. I use that feature now on several of my switches. Additionally I like to program the LED’s of the switches for different states of the switch.

I do run some Shelly. I have (4) PM1’s integrated into 4 separate circuits in my garage. I use my garage as a wood shop. One circuit has my dust collector plugged into in and the default state is “Off”. The (3) other circuits have one duplex outlet controlled by its corresponding PM1 with a default state of “On”. I have automations setup that when any of the 3 PM1’s detects power > 10 watts it changes the dust collector PM1 to “On”. When the power falls below 10 watts it then waits 3 seconds and changes the dust collector PM1 to “Off”. I never have to manually turn my dust collector on or off. See the attached pic.

The blue plastic box houses the PM1. The adjacent metal box houses the duplex outlets. The white outlet is not “switched”. The brown outlet is switched with the PM1. I kept this same configuration for all (4) circuits and their corresponding outlets.

Regarding your process - Basically you keep both running. You removed 1 node from Homeseer then set it up in Home Assistant. In my case I would have to remove the node from Homeseer, then comment out that same device in my yaml configuration file, then add the device in Home Assistant via the Zwave.JS integration, Change the name, (already have rooms), re-configure entity names, then edit my automations, then edit my lovelace dashboards. All of that per device. Lots of work, but I am retired so I have plenty of time to devout to it. I just don’t want the wife constantly telling me that this or that doesn’t work

Hopefully some one on the forum has experience with the HUSBZB-1 combo stick and can comment as to how well it works both for Zwave and Zigbee (Phillips Hue).

Again thanks for your post and the benefit of your experience.

Chuck

[finity]

I use the HUSBZB-1 stick for both zwave and zigbee. But…I only use it for a very small zwave test network. However I’ve been running my full zigbee network on it for years now.

So it works fine for what I use it for.

My main zwave network is running on an Aeotech Gen-5 stick and it works great as well.

As far as I understand things (if nothing has recently changed) the Gen-5 stick will work on a RPi4 as long as you run it on a powered USB hub. So there shouldn’t be any reason to buy a new stick unless you are going to be running zigbee stuff.

And as far switching to zwavejs from your current setup…

If the controller is recognized in zwavejs (either thru zwavejs add-on or thru the zwavejs2matt add-on or even the zwavejs2matt standalone docker container) then there should be no reason you need to move your zwave devices from your existing controller to put them on a different controller.

If zwavejs(x) sees the controller it should also see all the devices already paired to it.

The only thing that may be necessary is to manually wake up sleeping battery devices so they can complete the interview process.

And there is no absolute need to use the MQTT portion of zwavejs2mqtt either. You can run it directly thru the websocket server just like the zwavejs add-on.

Either way you run the zwavejs server (add-on, mqtt add-on or standalone mqtt container), you will still need to integrate it into HA using the Zwavejs integration. Make sure that if you install zwavejs via some version of zwavejs2mqtt that you tell the integration to not uninstall the regular zwavejs add-on during configuration.

You also can’t run zwave2mqtt and zwavejs/zwavejs2mqtt at the same time if they will access the same controller. The controller can only communicate with one server at a time.

However you can connect as many HA zwavejs integrations to the same server as you want (I have 2 HA instances running zwavejs integrations connected to the same zwavejs2mqtt server).

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

@finity thanks for your reply. I will read it over a second time to make sure I understand.
Chuck

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

First @finity and @AllHailJ thanks for your responses. I got started today and in about 4 hours got about 1/2 my devices converted. Going to stop today and pickup where I left off tomorrow.

First I used just the zwave.js add-on from the store. Second I used a new (that I had) Aeotec Z-stick Gen 5 (not the plus version). I plugged the stick into a USB 2.0 powered hub that then plugs into a USB 2.0 port on my RPI4. I had to try to install the zwave.js add-on twice before it would recognize the Aiotec Stick.

Because I have been using Homeseer (another HA solution similar to Home Assistant) for Z-Wave and then utilized MQTT to get the commands and status values between the two, I followed the following routine.

Then start the process all over. I have completed a thermostat, a dead bolt lock, a fan control switch, a binary light switch, a dimmer switch, and door/window sensor. All seem to be working fine with two exceptions.

In my lovelace display the current temp seems to be stuck in centigrade rather than fahrenheit. See the attached pics.

I have one Jasco switch that from Lovelace button card responds correctly except when I operate the switch manually. If I click on the phone on or off the switch responds correctly and it’s status is updated correctly. However if I turn the light on or off manually via the switch the status is not updated in the Lovelace display.

I have included and configured 11 nodes so far and these are my only two issues.

I look forward to completing this tomorrow.

Chuck

[finity]

@crudolphy

However if I turn the light on or off manually via the switch the status is not updated in the Lovelace display.

I believe there are zwave node configuration settings that need to be changed for that.

I had the same problem with my Aeotech micro switches in the old original zwave integration and I needed to set the “notification status” node parameter to “hail” instead of (I think it was) “basic”.

I’m not sure if there is an equivalent setting for the Jasco switches tho.

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

@finity

Doesn’t look like this Jasco Switch 14318 has that parameter. I have two parameters.
1.) #3 - either do not light the LED light or Only light the LED light when the switch is on.
2.) #4 - Invert the paddle where the top would be off and bottom would be on as opposed to the opposite.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Chuck

[mwav3 (Tim)]

Older non zwave plus jasco switches do not send the zwave “basic” report when they are operated manually. There is a proprietary software in the switch that allowed status updates on some hubs that made arrangementswith Jasco for licensing, like Smartthings, but because they don’t serve this basic report on many hubs, like hubitat, or on anything open-source like zwavejs, the only way to get status updates is to configure polling. There was a lot of discussion around this on hubitat and many who switched from Smartthings were upset to learn they lost instant status.

Device status not updated when switch is physically toggled

There’s some threads on here too

https://community.home-assistant.io/search?q=Jasco%20zwave%20status%20polling

Looks like you only have a small handful so polling shouldn’t bog the zwave network down too much. I wouldn’t go more often then 10 seconds. The longer the better depending on how quick you need the status to change. If you just want status correct in the app, 30 seconds or a minute might be ok. If the switch triggers an automation you’d probably want the more often 10 seconds.

Here’s documentation on how to setup polling

Z-Wave JS

[AllHailJ (J Gent)]

Glad things are converting well for you.

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

Well, I finished the conversion yesterday and got my automations and lovelace dashboards completely straightened out this morning.

A couple of things to note for those trying this in the future. If you have zwave devices setup and are controlling them via an MQTT integration and are not going to use MQTT moving forward (this is what I had and I had manually created all my MQTT yaml configurations) you need to remember to either comment out or delete those from your configuration file/files.

Because I was running this in parallel with Homeseer and you can’t have two controllers (zwave stick) with the same device, I would remove a node from Homeseer then add the node in Zwave.JS/Home Assistant. For the last couple of devices they were too far away from the controller to remove the nodes in Homeseer. So I just shut Homeseer down and went to add them to Home Assistant. They wouldn’t include until I excluded them first (even though they have never been included in this particular controller).

Everything seems to be reacting/controlling just fine now. I am happy with the results. With that said I have 3 issues left.

1.) I have (3) Jasco switches that won’t update the UI when they are manually operated at the switch. They update correctly when controlled by Home Assistant both in the UI and with automations. I was told that it was because they were probably older “classic” zwave devices and not zwave plus. If you look them up they are zwave plus and according to the Homeseer implementation they provide instant status updates. They don’t in Home Assistant. I had to setup polling which isn’t very instant I have emailed Jasco support but have not received a response. At some point in the future I will probably change these to TP-Link Kasa WiFi switches.

2.) I have a Trane XR524 Thermostat. Everything seems to be working as it should with one exception. In the UI it reports the current temperature in Centigrade rather than Fahrenheit even though all other figures displayed are correct and in Fahrenheit. If anyone has a suggestion on how to fix this I am all ears. You can see a pic of what I am speaking about in one of my previous posts in this topic.

3.) I have several Homeseer brand WS-100, WS-200, and WD-200 switches and dimmers. They report to Zwave.JS that they are “scene capable”. Yet there is no entity created to control. In Homeseer it created a separate device (entity) and you had I think 6 combinations. 1 tap up turns the switch on, 2 taps up and 3 taps up could each trigger automations. 1 tap down turns the switch off, 2 taps down and 3 taps down each could also trigger automations. This was a really useful feature. I hope the developers are working on a way to make this available in Zwave.JS. I will miss it until they do.

So the steps I followed after I had ZWave.JS installed are:

1. Open both Homeseer and Home Assistant in separage browser windows.

2. In Homeseer find the device your going to move (I worked nearest to controller to farthest from controller) and exclude the node from Homeseer.

3. In Home Assistant go to your configuration file and comment out the device’s configuration. Save the file.

4. Go to Configuration, Server Controls, and re-load “manually created MQTT yaml”.

5. Go to Configuration, Entities, filter on MQTT, and delete the entities you just commented out. If you want the new entities to be the same name as the old entities then make note of them before you delete them.

6. Go to Configuration, Integrations, Zwave JS and click configure. Then click add node and decide whether it will be “secure” or not and click start. Go to the device and do as the mfg suggests to put it in inclusion mode.

7. If it completes without error in the dialog click view device and then close.

8. On the device page rename the device at the top of the page, I let it rename all the entities. Even after it renames the entities you may want to edit the entity names.

If you kept your entity names the same as they were before then your lovelace dashboards, your automations, and your scripts/scenes should be fine. If not you will need to edit them all for it to display and work correctly.

I was beginning to run into issues with Homeseer not updating the MQTT topics correctly. So this excercise is well worth it. The additional benefit is that I don’t have to keep 2 separate systems updated and Homeseer costs money and Home Assistant does not. Homeseer is designed to run in Windows and not as a service, so you had Windows issues to deal with also. I like my Home Assistant on my RP4.

If anyone has any questions regarding the new Zwave.JS implementation it is pretty good. I am sure as time goes on it will get even better. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend someone install and use this for Zwave devices in Home Assistant.

Regards and thanks to all who responded to this post and provided input, I greatly appreciate it.

[mwav3 (Tim)]

Good, glad you got it working

@crudolphy

They wouldn’t include until I excluded them first (even though they have never been included in this particular controller).

A switch will never include to a new network unless it is excluded from the old one or factory reset. There’s another quirky thing about zwave with excludion. If you activate “exclusion” on any zwave controller, and then exclude at the device, the device will exclude from whatever network it was in previously even if it never had any prior relationship to the new controller. I guess they do this in the event your old controller dies so you have a way to still exclude switches without factory resetting them, but it seems odd to many.

@crudolphy

In the UI it reports the current temperature in Centigrade rather than Fahrenheit

You should be able to create an entry in your config.yaml to override this - Setup basic information - Home Assistant

@crudolphy

I have several Homeseer brand WS-100, WS-200, and WD-200 switches and dimmers. They report to Zwave.JS that they are “scene capable”. Yet there is no entity created to control.

Scenes from Zwave devices don’t actually create new entities in Home Assistant. They fire “events” on the zwave_js_value_notification when they are activated. So you can listen to these events in developer tools, then create automations when these events happen to use the double, triple taps, etc. I actually use Node red for this - if you’re interested I can post the flows. Here’s more info in the documentation on it:

Z-Wave

@crudolphy

I was told that it was because they were probably older “classic” zwave devices and not zwave plus. If you look them up they are zwave plus

Yeah I posted that above. A couple other things could be going on here:

1- Jasco was notorious about reusing model numbers for different switches. Its possible they had a 14318 switch that was not zwave plus, then released a zwave plus switch and just reused the model number. Its very confusing, but their support hopefully can confirm for you.
2- It is a zwave plus switch, but the configuration being associated to the switch in zwavejs2mqtt is the wrong one. I used to work on device handlers in Smartthings for these switches and because of the way Jasco messes around with the model numbers it makes it very hard for software to identify exactly what kind of switch you have and match it to a configuration. If that’s the case there’s a way to override the configuration and use a “custom one”, but I’m not quite sure how to. There’s documentation on it in the zwavejs2mqtt website. https://zwave-js.github.io/zwavejs2mqtt/#/development/intro?id=testing-custom-devices-config

You could also try and listen to the zwave_js_value_notification event and see if anything happens when you click that Jasco switch on that even, and then do an automation to trigger a poll/refresh of the switch when the event is fired for faster updating.

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

First @mwav3 Tim, thanks for your help and explanations. 1 problem solved, 2 to go.

1.) On the Jasco 14318 Switch, trying to override the configuration with a “custom one” is way beyond my skills. I did however operate the switch while in Developer Tools listening to the zwave_js_value_notification event. Nothing posts when I turn the switch on or off manually at the switch.

2.) On the Homeseer switches and their use of the “Central Scene” command class. Listening to the zwave_js_value_notification event posted data I was able to utilize this to create an automation on a double click that worked correctly So now I can recreate what I had setup in Homeseer. I also have some new ideas for this feature. Many thanks.

3.) Regarding the Thermostat. I have a custom config setup in my configuration file, just things like lat, long, time zone etc. I already had the line

unit_system: imperial

and I added the line

temperature_unit: F
to no avail.

What is interesting is that in the json that is sent from the thermostat to Home Assistant it has the line

current_temperature: 23

When you convert that to Fahrenheit it comes to 73.4

When including this device it created another entity that is

sensor.thermostat_air_temperature

and its state is 73.4

I am wondering how I might get the standard lovelace thermostat card or another to use this value instead of other. If I was able to do that I don’t think it would affect the operation as they should stay in sync, just one in C and the other in F.

Got any ideas?

Again thanks for your help!!!
Chuck

[mwav3 (Tim)]

One last thing to try for the GE switch. Is node 1, which is the zstick, showing in the “lifeline” association group? That’s how it sends status to the hub and may not have been configured properly when it was included. It should be automatic, but sometimes it doesn’t. Go to the device, then groups. If not there, you can add it manually

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

@mwav3 Tim, your screen shot appears to possibly be the zwavejs2mqtt control panel. I did not install zwavejs2mqtt. I installed the official zwavejs add-on only.

Can I now (after I have already installed zwavejs) add the zwavejs2mqtt add-on without messing up my zwave setup?

Just as an aside still haven’t heard back from Jasco Customer Service.

Regards,

Chuck

[mwav3 (Tim)]

Yes it is zwavejs2mqtt. The zwavejs interface does not yet have all the features, like setting associations, force removing nodes, and healing individual nodes that are available in the zwavejs2mqtt control panel. They are getting there with each new release, but you still cannot fully manage your zwave network through the zwavejs interface in Home Assistant.

We had a recent discussion about switching on this thread - it looks possible but you have to find some files and move them around

z-Wave JS --> z-wave JS mqtt

Hello, I would like to move from z-wave JS to the z-wave JS mqtt. Can I do this easilly and revert back if it fails? The reason is I like to have connectivity chart as I sometomes have issues reaching some devices.

Update- looks like you can heal an individual node and force remove now, but I still don’t see association setting in zwavejs

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

@mwav3 Tim, Yeah I thought so. I think I am going to give up on the Jasco switch issue for now. I can get a 3 pack of TP-Link Kasa Wifi switches for $39.99 prime delivery tomorrow from Amazon. A 3 pack of new Jasco #14318 Z-wave plus would be $144.40. My preferred Zwave switch is Homeseer’s WS-200+ and a 3 pack from them would be $139.00.

With the proliferation of zigbee and wifi Home Automation products whomever is getting rich off of Zwave needs to re-think what they are doing. I can’t justify spending prox $150 vs $40 for the same functionality. I know that zwave and zigbee are more secure etc etc. But $100 premium is too much for me.

On another note. I contacted Trane customer support regarding my XR524 thermostat issue and the display of celsius vs fahrenheit. They have no technical support help either via phone or email. I was told to contact an authorized Trane installer. Unbelievable that they will sell these products through online resellers such as Amazon and Homeseer, big box stores such as Lowes and Home Depot yet not provide any tech support.
I had a new Trane HVAC system installed this year. We left my XR524 in place rather than install their Nexia tied thermostat. I guarantee you the technician they sent out to install my system did a great job putting in the furnace, coil, and condenser. I am sure he could have installed the Nexia thermostat. But he admitted that he didn’t know much about Z-wave. So how much help will they be for something they didn’t install???

Been frustrating for me today.

Regards

Chuck

[mwav3 (Tim)]

@crudolphy

With the proliferation of zigbee and wifi Home Automation products whomever is getting rich off of Zwave needs to re-think what they are doing

Zwave does offer other advantages. It’s on a totally different frequency then zigbee and wifi, so less interference. It’s standardized and products need certification. This standardization allows for scene control, with the double and triple tap. You also have added range and devices mesh with eachother to form a solid and reliable network, where devices act as repeaters. I really like the Inovelli red switches- you get scene control, led notifications, and energy monitoring. They’re popular so sometimes tough to get a hold of.

https://inovelli.com/red-series-dimmer-switch-z-wave/

But with that certification comes licensing fees and added costs, and it’s becoming tough to justify the price difference. Many are buying cheap chips and flashing esphome. I am about to buy this zigbee sonoff mini. It goes behind a normal rocker switch, and is only $14.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MJL8G3C/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_fabc_KBEQSQ97B6AWEXAT4T2K?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

It depends on what features you want and what’s important to you.

@crudolphy

regarding my XR524 thermostat issue and the display of celsius vs fahrenheit.

I have a feeling that can be fixed with a custom template or custom Lovelace card. Maybe you want to start another thread specifically on that issue to get some more ideas for a fix?

[crudolphy (Chuck Rudolphy)]

@mwav3 Tim, I had seen the name inovelli but never explored it. That Red Series switch and dimmer are very similar to Homeseer’s WS & WD 200 series and a little cheaper than Homeseer’s.

The only Zigbee I run is some Phillips Hue bulbs. I have their Gen2 (square) hub. I use them in floor, bed, and desk lamps that aren’t controlled by a wall switch. We mostly use Alexa voice control for on/off and dim control.

My concern with something like the Sonoff you show and also the Shelly wifi that I have some experience with is that I don’t think I could fit that in the same box as the switch. It is difficult enough to get a smart switche in there let alone a separate box behind a standard Decora switch with all the wire behind the switches. If you go up in this post you will see how I wired the Shelly’s into my new garage circuits. I put them in a separate box (plastic - trying to minimize interference of the wifi signal) so that the actual box with the outlet wouldn’t be too crowded.

I will start a new thread on my thermostat issue. See if anyone can help with that. I am not real good with templates. I also would think that the modification would have to be in the lovelace card yaml configuration as I don’t know where else you would do it.

Good to converse with you and thank you for your help with my issues. I learned something new from you:

Developer → Events → Listen → zwave_js_value_notification

I have already duplicated the setup I had before and am beginning to define new uses for the double and triple taps on my switches.

I don’t know what it would be but if I can ever try to help or answer a question just send me a PM.

Regards
Chuck

[blhoward2]

This is wrong. The instant update patent was held by Insteon, and it expired before Plus came out. Smartthings just polls non-zwave plus devices (aggressively at that, every 5 seconds or so), which you can do in zwavejs too. There were no special arrangements with Smartthings or anyone else.

Our default is to not poll, but you can do it. You need to switch to the zwavejs2mqtt addon to access it. Or setup an automation that just refreshes the values on whatever schedule you like. They work the same way.