ZWave refuses to work in Hass.io (first time Zwave user)

Installation Home Assistant OS
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Full disclosure: This is my first time using zwave. I chose to delay rolling out zwave in my house until Hass.io was out so that I wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel with a new process

Steps taken so far:

  1. Install Hass.io by imaging my SD card
  2. Install Samba and SSH
  3. Transfer over all of my yaml files from my old hassbian setup - everything is working great! Add hassio: to config just to be sure.
  4. Plug in my new Aeotec Z stick 5, add usb_path: /dev/ttyACM0 under zwave:
    to my config.yaml file as per instructions here
  5. Reboot Pi 1000 times, tearing my hair out a bit each time as nothing I seem to do makes the zwave panel appear (which I see lots of people refer to, but have no idea what it looks like - I assume it’s a panel in the frontend)

Troubleshooting steps so far:

  1. Confirm I’ve got the right usb_path. $ dmesg | grep USB says I do.
  2. Unplug, and replug the zstick controller multiple times, trying different usb ports, etc.
  3. Try pairing a motion sensor out of a thought that maybe hass.io won’t recognize my controller until it’s connected to a zwave device. It appears to be paired (based on the light show) but I have no way of cross-checking.

I think there’s an obvious step I’m missing or a mistake that a complete Zwave amateur like myself would make, but no one ever thinks to point out.

Either that or I’ve got a dead controller. I really hope it’s not that…

1 Like
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Probably not of much help, byt IFAIK, THe zwave panel should appear whether or not you have a controller plugged in. Once you put zwave: in the config file, a zwave menu item should appear in the main menu.

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@anderstbl Do you mean in the same list as States, Map, Logbook, etc? A new sidebar menu item? Or is it buried in deeper?

I’ve dug through the entirety of the frontend looking for any reference to zwave and haven’t found anything. But at least this way I’ll know where to look!

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I installed Hass.io tuesday and was struggling to get Z-wave to work.
After a few hours of messing around and trying to get help regarding this I took a backup of all my config files.
reinstalled the image on the sd card and applied the configs again and BOOM it worked almost flawless with Z-wave.

Now I only have one issue left and that is, that I cant remove dead nodes.

1 Like
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@anderstbl Do you mean in the same list as States, Map, Logbook, etc? A new sidebar menu item? Or is it buried in deeper?

Yes exactly, a new sidebar menu item

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I eventually got fed up and also reinstalled the image. For whatever reason it works now. Sigh… No idea what went wrong the first time.