Smart Home Protocols: Z-Wave Explained!

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Hope you are all enjoying the Smart Home Protocols series so far, I certainly am! There is a slight mistake at 5:42 - Low power consumption should clearly not be listed as a con, my bad!

[@AnisKadri]

I was about to say that in the comment 😃

[@vk3fbab]

My zwave network improved so much once I turned off device polling. With this turned off performance is nearly instant. Before that messages could get delayed or were more likely to be lost. Most of my smart in Wall switches can publish when someone locally toggles the switch so I can trigger scenes based upon a switch changing state. This made my zwave network run so much smoother.

[@ilyavolodin7414]

Very nice and thorough review! I think the only small thing that's missing is that Z-Wave is very configurable and provides a lot of tools for the end user to correct any issues. You can force specific routing maps for each and every device, and you can usually configure options for each device as well. And associations are a great feature that doesn't really exist in any other protocol (ZigBee has groups, but they are mostly hit or miss due to compatibility issues). But those are more advanced features, that most of the users would probably not need.

[@PetervanHofwegen]

Another nice one! I love this series. please do not forget 433Mhz btw... it's an often overlooked standard that is incredibly usefull in a lot of ways.

[@AnisKadri]

I have both z-wave and ZigBee and I much prefer z-wave because of the interference issue. It is slower for sure but it always works and most of the messages sent from smart home products are binary. The cost of devices and frequency difference per country are huge cons for adoption for sure

[@RyanDuffy]

Another great video. I would have also mentioned that options for DIY Z wave devices are almost nonexistent.And at $50+ they are quite cost prohibitive for a DIY solution

[@EsotericArctos]

Just as a note on Primary and Secondary controllers, If the Primary controller does fail, the Secondary can be converted to Primary to allow all the functionality to return. It is a step above Zigbee, which cannot have a secondary controller. It does provide some kind of redundancy as the Z-Wave network can continue to operate as is, just without the include/exclude function on a secondary controller

[@wickedcoyote271]

When I first started my HA journey, I decided to go z-wave. HA integration was a bit rocky for beginners like I was, but it is great now and I have no regrets.. This is a great series, keep up the good work!

[@christianmeinert8806]

Great unbiased compact information. Keep on your great work! Looking forward for the next chapters!

[@andreassetterlind]

Forgot the new Z-Wave 700 series which use much lower power (they sat 10-years on a coin-cell battery), has 150% longer range as standard, and does not have 255 device limitation per Z-Wave network.

[@waelali3519]

Man you’re really good at this, keep it up!🎉🎉

[@thesmartechguy2583]

More great content Lewis. Loving your work, as ever!

[@nathanmobbs5755]

Great video! I've recently watched and re-watched your tutorial on room sensing so I'll be very interested to hear what your Bluetooth video has to say

[@WhoisMI_Kaiser]

Can you link the article shown at 6:00 ? I see elsewhere that Z-wave uses frequency ranges between 800-900 MHz, not 50-60 Hz.

[@makeitworktech]

Nice one Lewis! Looking forward to thread next.

[@nicoladellino8124]

Very nice video, TNX

[@1988m6kitefan]

Great Video. Maybe at the end of the series you can address some of the rumors floating around that Z-wave (zigbee , pick a protocol) is on its way out and we should move to some other protocol. I still have both zwave and zigbee but have been migrating to all zigbee just because it is more convenient for me personally. My devices connected to mains are either Wi-Fi or zigbee and all battery powered devices are zigbee. They connect through home assistant now.

[@yuxiangchen3742]

Great vid! Would you mind make a parallel comparison of the few protocols? I’m deciding between zigbee and z wave

[@bennylloyd-willner9667]

Another concise and informative video 👍. Due to the higher cost, I will probably not get any Z-wave stuff, this well-made video, along with many more on the channel, helps a lot in deciding where to go with my first smart home design. I am very much looking forward to the next video, BLE devices are very interesting (I think, let's wait for the video from someone who actually knows stuff😁). I will probably end up trying to make some ESP32/8266 projects and just get a good antenna to reach my barn and stables with regular WiFi, but BLE is intriguing to me somehow. This will be a great gadget year for me, I just received my 3D-printer to make boxes and clamps and other stuff for the electronics, no more eBay or Amazon just to get a new phone holder or protecting cover for the heating cable in the henhouse water bowl, etc. Only one camera and some switches'n'outlets so far in HA but more are to come! Hopefully, I will be able to ESPify the "Sign" branded smart switches and outlets I have, the Tuya cloud isn't talking properly to HA so the status is a bit unreliable. I haven't looked into it much, but my router shows them as "ESP_XXXXXX" so they should be pretty bog-standard and programmable I guess. Rambling on again, sorry all 😁

[@richardburguillos3118]

The cost is a killer for me… really like the technology, but the cost and adding yet another protocol to my home is why I’m trying to phase it out of my home. Great overview.

[@junkins]

Thank you!!

[@edgar9651]

Thanks, this is a great series. What happens when the main controller fails with Z-Wave? Can it just be replaced with another controller (maybe if we buy a spare device)? Or will it be necessary to pair and configure all devices again?

[@vk3fbab]

You can backup configuration and then load it onto another device. You can also promote a secondary to primary from what I remember.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Yeah exactly as bravo says, backup options for z-wave networks seem easier in comparison to ZigBee

[@norwayroadtrips8446]

What hub do you use with rapberry pi and home assistant ?

[@Schlaegel]

Where I live, there are lots of close proximity wifi networks, not to mention my own network. I use ZWave to avoid getting interference and causing interference.

[@bearhntr928]

i love your videos . Been trying to learn more and more about HA. I only wish your videos had some sort of index (an order to watch them 😁) You had one posted I watched a few weeks back that explained the "parts" of HA (i.e. DOCKER, CORE, SUPERVISOR, etc.) - for the life of me I can no longer find it, and I could sworn I bookmarked it (can you point me to it - or was it removed?). I really want to use my INTEL NUC box to run Hass.IO and HA - but I have also been able to put Debian 11 on it - and get everything working (Bluetooth and WiFi) through much trial and error. {good thing my HomeSeer is still up while I prepare for and learn HA}

[@aliciawang-u2g]

Enjoy the series!!

[@ankitMishra-ix7mr]

Hello Sir, I wanted to integrate wired motion sensor with Home Assistant. Please let me know if its possible. I have beening following you so a long time now.

[@TheArnoparno]

Nice LTT shirt not surprised to see you watch them

[@jkeltonga]

So, "Low power consumption" is both a pro and con?

[@pfurrie]

Video idea: how to make a smart home that doesn't look like a smart home (no obvious sensors, no visible robot vacuum, switches that work like ole school switches, etc).

[@FaradHusky]

....1999? You're telling me someone thought home-automation was a thing in 1999? 8 years before the iPhone? Some people are really ahead of their time. Some by over 2 decades. Yikes.

[@TheBroz]

Not sure why that’s so surprising. People have been doing things like automated lights and heating since waaaay before 1999.

[@timderks5960]

You get what you pay for. Well.... I've had a Z-wave network for years, basically since the start of my adventure into home automation. It has been nothing but horror. The inclusion and exclusion rarely work properly. You'd think you wouldn't have to do that too often, but back before Docker, making a tiny mistake could mean a complete reinstall of your HA setup. I actually have written a manual for myself at some point to document the installation process. You might think, that was way back when, things are better now. You have more experience, stuff is documented better and works together better. Well: no. I recently switched from the RaZberry hat controller to a Z-wave USB stick. I figured: Great, that's one PITA less (the RaZberry was the only reason for still haveing a RPi in my HA setup, and it just kept having issues, both Z-wave related and just RPi related). So I plugged in the USB stick, created a Docker container and linked the USB device. Everything worked first try. Except for.... Inclusion. I had to mess around for HOURS before it finally worked. I tried including and excluding multiple devices so many times I lost track, and then suddenly out of nowhere, it just worked. Now, compare that to my recent Zigbee install: Plugged in the Zigbee stick, installed a Zigbee integration in Home Assistant, pressed the buttons on the devices, and everything just worked, and has been working ever since. Granted, my Zwave network has been working fine too since the successful install, but I do NOT look forward to having to mess with the Zwave network in the future. I may just have extremely bad luck with Z-wave, but with these experiences I'd rather do some research upfront to figure out which Zigbee devices work with my setup, then having to do frustrating debugging for hours after buying a Zwave device.

[@zsqduke]

Z-wave is more expensive in general than zigbee.

[@Sparky_D]

My ZWave network is rock solid and super easy to add / remove devices. I use the Aeotec USB stick. I just you just had a bad run. Yes the devices are more expensive than ZigBee. I also have a ZigBee network

[@ray_mck]

Thank you for all the work you put into these videos, but in missing one of the features of zwave, you confused the terminology. Zwave networks have a hub that controls devices. A zwave slave device is specifcally one that is associated with another device with direct interaction between them.

[@EverythingSmartHome]

I'm not sure what you mean - unless I'm mistaken, it sounds like you're saying what I already said?

[@ray_mck]

@@EverythingSmartHome Association is a feature of Z-wave. The slave/sub terminology is really only used there. Edit: Okay, I went into the Z-wave spec data sheet from Silicon Labs. Z-wave devices are denoted as slave in the protocol implementation. In practice, the terminology isn't used except in Assocations other than Lifeline.

[@dpn1604]

Bought a zwave stick a year ago but then decided to go zigbee and the zwave is still sitting around collecting dust... Cost of the devices really put me off. I am considering selling it but then every time that happens I go "what if I ever need to use it?" and it goes back in the box, until next time 😁

[@EverythingSmartHome]

Haha fear of missing out for sure 😂

[@marc0523]

I counted 30-40 potential smart items in my living room alone. Huge potential to hit that limit in a medium sized home. Still, this looks like the technology I am going to go for.

[@mastershredder2002]

Auto downvote for using an apostrophe on "Pros"

[@Sheyii]

Can the just call them receivers and not slaves 😒

[@smartifi_egypt]

Thank you so much for this great series ❤️ Till now I just experiencing with WIFI but you are revealing a new worlds, and this is the magic of nature nothing works for everything 🧙‍♂️ Eth/WIFI > high speed ZigBee > battery powered and reasonable price Zwave > battery powered and strong mesh network