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Sufficiently advanced home automation is indistinguishable from a haunting. Lighting controlled by home-assistant is endlessly frustrating. Especially if zwave

Sufficiently advanced home automation is indistinguishable from a haunting. Lighting controlled by home-assistant is endlessly frustrating. Especially if zwave. The networks are slow, the devices are awkward to configure, and when things go wrong debugging is difficult. Sometimes it takes my lights a good 60 seconds to respond during which time I'll try a few different button dances which all then get lifo queued... End result is light automation that works 95% of the time with the 5% remainder being enough to sour the whole experience. This isn't home-assistant's "fault," it's the zwave product space being a convoluted mess that HA tries to paper over. Other integrations are better but each integration is a separate plugin thing so quality depends on who wrote the plugin. My house got a 10% premium due to the home-assistant setup according to the realtor. Lights and music and blinds all easily controlled from an iPad mounted to a thing in the hall. I left all the equipment including the raspberry pi that ran HA, but I took the SD card for privacy reasons. 99% certainty that they don't even know what Z-wave is let alone how to rebuild the network... I'm sure that if I buy a "smart house" in the future it will be beyond my abilities.

jaywalk 5y ago
I don't know what your Z-wave setup looks like, but all I've got are GE smart switches and GE smart outlets, controlled with Home Assistant using an Aeotec Z-stick. It works flawlessly with zero noticeable delay, 100% of the time. It sounds like you've either got some bad interference or bad devices.
- oldsj 5y ago
  Same setup here. Love using z-wave as a standard and then bridging everything over to Homekit for siri / phone control center access
- asveikau 5y ago
  I've had a lot of issues with battery powered z-wave devices not waking up. Also, IIRC there is a bug in the zwave-js github issue tracker about the 700 series Z-sticks dropping commands. Sometimes I need to reboot for outgoing packets to reach devices from the Z-stick.
  - jamiepenney 5y ago
    I have this bug too. It happened with the old zwave plugin as well, my Aeotec stick just stops delivering packets if it gets bumped and I have to restart the whole system.
    - asveikau 5y ago
      One of the recommendations I read on some github issues was to put the z-stick on a USB extension cable to rule out interference from other ports. I was skeptical of this but it did seem to improve my experience. I still get the issue that makes it need to reboot every now and then however. Edit: https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/issues/3906 https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/issues/3906 -- apparently there is a firmware fix for this now? Will try out later.
- ryanianian 5y ago
  So much of one's experience depends on the z-wave hardware and it's not obvious at all which brands or products will be more reliable or better than others. My network is a hodge-podge of different switches and outlets, but mesh networking means it's easy to poison the network with a bad implementation. And then good luck finding the offending hardware.
  - luma 5y ago
    Up until this past year, every single ZWave radio was made by the same company. They are now allegedly certifying third parties but I haven’t yet seen anyone announce that they’ve achieved that certification. It’s possible to build a crappy ZWave device, but the radio and network side should be solid, even on crappy devices.
luma 5y ago
You have a serious problem with your ZWave network if it is performing as you describe. I have just over 70 devices live right now and have none of these problems. Monitor your logs and see if some node out there is screaming or otherwise taking up a lot of bandwidth, as your experience is not at all typical of how ZWave should work.
- javawizard 5y ago
  I have exactly the same problem. Glad to hear this is not typical of all ZWave networks. It's funny because I have exactly three types of devices: - Several Inovelli Red dimmers - A few Zooz Zen34 remote switches - An HUSBZB-1 USB stick attached to the machine running Home Assistant And I've never heard of anyone else having the same sort of trouble with any of the above. Definitely an exercise in frustration.
nathan_f77 5y ago
I had a similar problem with my Zigbee network when I first started, but I was able to dig in and fix all of the issues. I changed the Zigbee channel and moved everything away from my WiFi router. @NathanCu was really helpful [1] on the Home Assistant community forums. [1] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-problems-how-to-get-a-switch-module-to-stay-connected-to-network/377811/3 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-problems-how-to...

jaywalk 5y ago

I don't know what your Z-wave setup looks like, but all I've got are GE smart switches and GE smart outlets, controlled with Home Assistant using an Aeotec Z-stick. It works flawlessly with zero noticeable delay, 100% of the time. It sounds like you've either got some bad interference or bad devices.

oldsj 5y ago
Same setup here. Love using z-wave as a standard and then bridging everything over to Homekit for siri / phone control center access
asveikau 5y ago
I've had a lot of issues with battery powered z-wave devices not waking up. Also, IIRC there is a bug in the zwave-js github issue tracker about the 700 series Z-sticks dropping commands. Sometimes I need to reboot for outgoing packets to reach devices from the Z-stick.
- jamiepenney 5y ago
  I have this bug too. It happened with the old zwave plugin as well, my Aeotec stick just stops delivering packets if it gets bumped and I have to restart the whole system.
  - asveikau 5y ago
    One of the recommendations I read on some github issues was to put the z-stick on a USB extension cable to rule out interference from other ports. I was skeptical of this but it did seem to improve my experience. I still get the issue that makes it need to reboot every now and then however. Edit: https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/issues/3906 https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/issues/3906 -- apparently there is a firmware fix for this now? Will try out later.
ryanianian 5y ago
So much of one's experience depends on the z-wave hardware and it's not obvious at all which brands or products will be more reliable or better than others. My network is a hodge-podge of different switches and outlets, but mesh networking means it's easy to poison the network with a bad implementation. And then good luck finding the offending hardware.
- luma 5y ago
  Up until this past year, every single ZWave radio was made by the same company. They are now allegedly certifying third parties but I haven’t yet seen anyone announce that they’ve achieved that certification. It’s possible to build a crappy ZWave device, but the radio and network side should be solid, even on crappy devices.

luma 5y ago

You have a serious problem with your ZWave network if it is performing as you describe. I have just over 70 devices live right now and have none of these problems. Monitor your logs and see if some node out there is screaming or otherwise taking up a lot of bandwidth, as your experience is not at all typical of how ZWave should work.

javawizard 5y ago
I have exactly the same problem. Glad to hear this is not typical of all ZWave networks. It's funny because I have exactly three types of devices: - Several Inovelli Red dimmers - A few Zooz Zen34 remote switches - An HUSBZB-1 USB stick attached to the machine running Home Assistant And I've never heard of anyone else having the same sort of trouble with any of the above. Definitely an exercise in frustration.

nathan_f77 5y ago

I had a similar problem with my Zigbee network when I first started, but I was able to dig in and fix all of the issues. I changed the Zigbee channel and moved everything away from my WiFi router. @NathanCu was really helpful [1] on the Home Assistant community forums. [1] https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-problems-how-to-get-a-switch-module-to-stay-connected-to-network/377811/3 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zigbee-problems-how-to...