Hello, sorry for the obvious and maybe dump question, but why is there 2 addons for ZwaveJS ?
Won’t it be possible to describe the difference between them in the doc and maybe which one to chose for typical users. On my hassio, I use ZwaveJS2MQTT to have the UI. Maybe I am wrong
From what I can tell, basic users are fine with ZwaveJS whereas more advanced users or users with specific needs would use ZwaveJS2MQTT. I’m using ZwaveJS2MQTT because there are some events that aren’t being exposed by ZwaveJS (and probably won’t be) that I need to handle specific needs for my Z-Wave in-wall controllers that have associations for some devices.
I suspect that the answer is going to be that if ZwaveJS works for you, use it as it is simpler. If it doesn’t, use ZWaveJS2MQTT.
Oh really?! Is one of those events like the group associations for the GE zwave switches / dimmers that can send a double tap up and down unofficially? 
I’m not sure. I’d hook up MQTT Explorer and look what comes across in the zwave topic.
I started with the MQTT version. But it didn’t appear to support some of the lock features I wanted (who and how a door was unlocked) so I enabled the ZWAVEJS Integration. Now they are both running and I have 2 separate devices for the same device in Home Assistant. But other then the ability to set a lock code I don’t see anything related to what user unlocked a door or if the keypad was used. One difference I did notice was my GE Fan works correctly with the API integration but cannot be turned off when using MQTT.
I think I will end up using the Integration long term, but keep MQTT running but turn off the Home Assistant discovery. My hope is that eventually I will get what I am looking for.
I managed to switch from OpenZwave to ZwaveJS.
But now i’m coming to the conclusion that i have specific needs so i want to make the switch to ZwaveJS2MQTT.
Does anyone have any experience with this?
I am pretty happy with zwavejs2mqtt, the ui does the job for maintaining the devices (names, inclusion, exclusion, even debug)
Well I’m glad I saw this as I’ve been very confused. I’m planning on using Home Assistant for a new house with a lot of ZWave. I’ve been off these forums for months and I come back and find that ZwaveJS is now the big new thing (before I believe it was OpenZwave). Now there are two version of this? In my previous testing the zwave legacy offering didn’t work with at least one of the devices I wanted to use (hence why I came here to see that OpenZwave was the big new thing back then).
I’m feeling a little less confident about HA. While I like to tinker, and am a programmer, I worry that Home Assistant is a bit more unstable than I thought (well at least with Z-Wave). Will I have to be active on these forums to make sense of using Zwave with it? Is there a clear direction planned that I just can’t see (I think the docs are still all for using the legacy stuff).
Is there a page or something that makes all this clear? Pros and cons of each solution?
Home assistant is not affiliated with any of the Zwave platforms, it was just integrated into home assistant. Unfortunately, OpenZwave’s developers have taken a break from developing. This made openzwave stagnate in home assistant (and any other open source platform that used openzwave). Zwave JS is actively being developed by a number of developers. Theres 2 ways to use zwavejs: through the official addon, or the zwavejs2mqtt addon which has a nice separate GUI. Other than that, they are relatively the same.
There’s an overview in the community guides section which may help you understand the communication process.
Thanks so much for this. I have zwave js installed but I might try the mqtt version to get the additional UI (and try and make more sense of zwave in general).
I will check the community guide.