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Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

z-wavealliance.org

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Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#81

Post by X-Istence »

enobrev wrote: post #74
X-Istence wrote: post #52

I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches, got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare. I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it, and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave. Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices it becomes too chatty and d…

I have ~65 Z-Wave devices around my house, and I definitely notice lag from time to time. Recent versions of Z-Wave seem to be significantly faster and I've noticed it less. I can't say I _love_ dealing with Z-Wave. But I do like having a single protocol throughout my house. At the very least, any issues I have tend to be consistent. I'd say in this past 6-months, I've practically had zero problems. I blame that over…

The single protocol throughout my house was my primary goal too, just to reduce complexity of having to deal with multiple hubs and integrations... but with my new house I did away with that.

Lutron Caseta for physical in-wall switches, IKEA Tradfri for cheap motion sensors/lighs, Philips Hue for more expensive motion sensors/lights, and a whole slew of Thread enabled devices, all controlled from HomeKit.

I don't really notice that its a bunch of different protocols/wireless standards underneath. I can control it from a single location which also makes it easier for guests/people visiting. Hand them an iPad with the Home app and they can control the house, or add them a Guest to my home on their own iOS devices.

I do miss some of the more advanced Home Assistant stuff I was doing, but overall the experience has been much cleaner, and with almost 0 lag.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#82

Post by X-Istence »

enobrev wrote: post #75
burnte wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the network, it's the number of devices.

My (likely incorrect) assumption has been that my zwave stick is handling everything serially and falls behind when traffic spikes.

It's not that the Z-Wave stick falls behind, when a Z-Wave device is broadcasting everything else has to go quiet (nature of RF), but the transmission speed is just very low, so when chatty devices (think sensors that report multiple bits of information such as humidity, temperature, light level, UV level, and more) are sending data you can't also turn on a light.

When you have a lot of those devices on the Z-Wave network (multiple motion sensors in a room to do more accurate presence detection and the like) those chatty devices slow down the network tremendously.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#83

Post by willio58 »

X-Istence wrote: post #52

I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches, got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare. I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it, and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave. Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices it becomes too chatty and d…

What you described is exactly why I'm waiting to install more automation in my home. I think Matter + Homekit (assuming Apple continues to work on Homekit as it's still pretty clunky for me UX-wise) will eventually be the solution for me as I'm already so deep in that Apple ecosystem.

If you've watched Linus Tech Tips videos recently, there's hours of content covering his Z-Wave woes. It's funny, his house is supposed to be automated but it ends up eating significantly more of his time in debugging than a manual house would.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#84

Post by kansface »

jzawodn wrote: post #76
oceanplexian wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also running a Zwave network and it's highly responsive with around 50 devices. A friend of mine is running a few hundred devices and I haven't heard him complain much about it, all of his actions/triggers/etc seem to execute pretty much instantly. I'm going to guess that his network topology has a lot devices that are only accessible by repeaters, or aren't using Zwave+. Zwave is pretty much _the standard_ for l…

Yeah, I used virtually all Z-Wave switches and dimmers in our new house (and motion sensors, temp sensors, etc) and haven't had an issue. The one time things seemed a bit laggy I had to "optimize" the network, which I realized I had NEVER done until that point. All issues went away. We have well over 100 Z-Wave devices spread over 4000 sqft.

What does optimize mean in this case?

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#85

Post by chime »

willio58 wrote: post #83
X-Istence wrote: post #52

I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches, got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare. I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it, and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave. Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices it becomes too chatty and d…

What you described is exactly why I'm waiting to install more automation in my home. I think Matter + Homekit (assuming Apple continues to work on Homekit as it's still pretty clunky for me UX-wise) will eventually be the solution for me as I'm already so deep in that Apple ecosystem. If you've watched Linus Tech Tips videos recently, there's hours of content covering his Z-Wave woes. It's funny, his house is suppose…

If you have good wifi, you don't need to wait. I have a two story house and the floor plan looks like a T-shape, so I basically have 6 different zones. I pulled Cat6 everywhere for decent AP coverage. Right now I have about 80 Meross light switches and dimmers, 6 wifi blinds, wifi garage openers, Ecobee thermostats, multiple Apple TVs, ton of personal devices - easily over 200 devices on the LAN, most of them connected to HomeAssistant. Instant status updates with no problems except for the occasional need to reboot a wall switch due to power issues. Meross has a tiny hidden button at the bottom of each switch that instantly reboots the switch.

I bought Meross products off Amazon in bulk and absolutely love them. I have single pole switches, 3 way switches, single pole dimmers, 3 way dimmers, and a few smart plugs, power strips, and RGB bulbs.

PS: I even have a few Z-Wave devices and bought Zooz Hub ZST10-700 to work with HomeAssistant. I use these to measure power consumption on a garage freezer and a space heater. As long as the Z-Wave devices are close to the hub, there's no issue. But oddly enough they sometimes send negative power usage data which HA complains about.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#86

Post by tomkaos »

willio58 wrote: post #83
X-Istence wrote: post #52

I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches, got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare. I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it, and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave. Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices it becomes too chatty and d…

What you described is exactly why I'm waiting to install more automation in my home. I think Matter + Homekit (assuming Apple continues to work on Homekit as it's still pretty clunky for me UX-wise) will eventually be the solution for me as I'm already so deep in that Apple ecosystem. If you've watched Linus Tech Tips videos recently, there's hours of content covering his Z-Wave woes. It's funny, his house is suppose…

The funniest part is he have to use two smart thermostat in each room and he realize that one smart thermostat heat up the other one and fucked up the temperature reading.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#87

Post by coreyp_1 »

Everybody here keeps talking about how reliable Z-Wave is, and I absolutely HATE mine, and was telling someone last week that I would never recommend them to anyone. Have I just had a bad experience? I have 3 Z-wave switches, and once a month at least one of them needs to be reset. They just stop responding until the air gap switch is pulled. I hate them and I can't rely on them at all.

Conversely, I have 30+ Zigbee switches, and they are quite reliable.

The only reason that I have the 3 Z-wave switches is that I needed paddle switch fan controllers with an almond color, and I could only find them in Z-wave by Enbrighten. (Side note: why are almost ALL the smart switches only available in white?)

Of course, as I type this, my RPi with HomeAssistant got bricked with the latest update, so now my SmartHouse is not merely dumb, it's stubborn!

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#88

Post by ugh123 »

coreyp_1 wrote: post #87

Everybody here keeps talking about how reliable Z-Wave is, and I absolutely HATE mine, and was telling someone last week that I would never recommend them to anyone. Have I just had a bad experience? I have 3 Z-wave switches, and once a month at least one of them needs to be reset. They just stop responding until the air gap switch is pulled. I hate them and I can't rely on them at all. Conversely, I have 30+ Zigbee…

I had a regular resetting problem with a switch once. Bugged me for months. Turned out the button switch would occasionally get stuck in the pressed position and cause the reset. Bad design, but wasn't the protocol/firmware's fault.

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#89

Post by StreamBright »

X-Istence wrote: post #52

I installed Z-Wave all over my house. Replaced all the switches, got the sensors, light bulbs where necessary, everything was Z-Wave... and it was a nightmare. I ended up selling the house with everything Z-Wave still in it, and the new owners were happy to have a "Smart Home" capable home, but I will never again touch Z-Wave. Once your Z-Wave network grows past a certain number of devices it becomes too chatty and d…

What was the problem you solved with Z-Wave?

Re: Z-Wave Alliance Announces Z-Wave Source Code Project Now Open and Available

#90

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

X-Istence wrote: post #79
oceanplexian wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also running a Zwave network and it's highly responsive with around 50 devices. A friend of mine is running a few hundred devices and I haven't heard him complain much about it, all of his actions/triggers/etc seem to execute pretty much instantly. I'm going to guess that his network topology has a lot devices that are only accessible by repeaters, or aren't using Zwave+. Zwave is pretty much _the standard_ for l…

All the devices were Z-Wave+, it was the one thing I was buying for. Not all of them supported the new encryption standard which started rolling out after I deployed most of my switches. This was in a ~1400 sq ft house, with a little over 200 devices (motion sensors/lights/switches/smart plugs/humidity sensors/weather sensors). The network had a few repeaters the longest hop was 2 hops from the controller to the end…

> humidity sensors/weather sensors/motion sensors

This was your problem. I've been using Z-Wave in my house since, I think, around 2010. I had major major issues with it at first exactly like what you describe. I "fixed" them by doing two things.

A) Banished all battery powered devices from the network. Seriously. I have one in a hall closest I haven't gotten around to getting rid of, yet. The network seems fine-ish with only that sensor but large volumes of battery powered mostly asleep devices, it falls over.

B) Abolished any notion of using my Z-Wave network for sensor reporting. No tracking humidity or weather or power with my Z-Wave network because, as you mention, the Z-Wave network completely falls over when you have volumes of sensor traffic on it.

Want to have one humidity sensor which reports hourly? Sure that's fine.

Want to have a humidity sensor in every room which reports every time there is a 1% change in humidity? lol no, your network will fall over.

My Z-Wave networks are quite large at this point, 200-300 devices, and consist of Jasco/GE switches, Jasco/GE fan controls, Jasco/GE smart outlets.

Removing sensor traffic and battery powered devices from my Z-Wave network has made it extremely reliable for me. Unscientifically I would say 99% of Z-Wave control commands execute in <1s.

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