EBAY Deal on Zwave Duplex Outlets

In addition to Leviton outlets, I have several z-wave contact sensors and leak sensors. They don't cause an issue either.

Just did this .....

1 Like

Several have made comments inferring that (because of their cloud operation) Smartthings aggressively polls zwave devices. At which doesn't work with a small CPU running locally.

Sorry to break the bad news to everyone but Vera ALSO polls Zwave devices aggressively, the hub is also locally operated and has an even smaller CPU with much less memory.

One could reasonably question whether Hubitat's implementation of Zwave is up to par with the rest of the Home Automation world. But those are "Certified" Zwave implementations.

I compared only to ST because they are somewhat similar. They are both using groovy and support almost all z-wave devices. Not sure what other systems are using but I understand your point for sure. I didn't have this Z-wave issue with Wink but they don't support all the z-wave devices.

In terms of Zigbee versus Zwave, I'd like to point out what may be a critical difference:
group messaging.
There was a hint to this in one of the Hubitat Live shows. Mike Maxwell implied that he had many devices which he was shutting down in the course of a daily turn off routine. He implied that because he had so many devices, and he wanted them to go off at the same time, he used Zigbee, not Zwave.
@mike.maxwell: Can you please comment on this? Have I got the situation correct? What do you think is the cutoff number of devices (i.e. what's "many"?)
I know that you are not officially supposed to take a side on the zwave versus zigbee debate, but perhaps you can tell us of your own personal experience.

Im talking about on off switches and dimmers. I just bought that lot of z-wave on off switches when the warnings are in this thread To stay clear. It was too good of a deal to not risk it.
They are almond in color so my plan was to spray paint them and use them in garages and store rooms first.

I don't think its much of a secrete that I prefer Zigbee, this isn't a Hubitat corporate preference, just my personal one.
I own both types of devices, write and maintain drivers for both as well as work on parts of the hub code that interface with radios and the driver code.
I've implemented two complete HA systems for personal use, each with 200 or more devices.

The pattern I've followed until recently was zigbee sensors and zwave actuators, this pattern was established back in early 2014 when i got into HA, and at that time there were few zigbee actuators, and zigbee sensors seemed a better bargain.

The only reason I switched over to zigbee actuators recently was to advantage group messaging.
So yeah, my goodnight routine would touch some 50 zwave devices.
Initially these were all done in one rule, one after the other, most of the time every command made it, some times they didn't and the routine seldom took the same time to execute.
So I started splitting things up by area and turned off groups one after another, this helped but was difficult to manage.

At some point I ditched my hue bridge and moved over all my bulbs to a separate HE (as a proof of concept more than anything), creating Zigbee groups on that hub, then mirroring the group device back to the primary hub.

Based on my experience with group messaging on the bulb hub, i switched out almost all of my zwave switches and dimmers for zigbee devices.

The remaining zwave devices that are on line are there for mesh support of the zwave locks and garage door controllers we have.

I think you meant to say that, right? (second to last paragraph, not trying to knit-pick, just lookin out for ya. ) :smiley: :+1:

I have used all zigbee contact and motion sensors since they just seem to react a lot faster than the z-wave ones I have tried.

1 Like

yes, thanks, updated!

1 Like

:+1:

@mike.maxwell:
Thanks very much for sharing that story with us.
Even with my (Puny) experience, I've found that being familiar with a certain switch/relay/lock/device can make all the difference in the world.
Your real world experience is a great inspiration to us all.

Well, I received the 40 Evolve Z-wave wall switches today. The first one I tried paired immediately with HE as 'generic'. I updated the device to the Generic Z-wave switch, and it works fine. On/Off/Flash all working. The option to turn the led off when off might not work, I can live with that for a $1 Z-wave wall switch, even if not plus.

I'll update if any problems with it. The guy had multiple copies of this 40 pack for sale.

Have you tried seeing if the status updates in Hubitat if you switch the wall-switch though? That was the big issue between z-wave and z-wave plus devices. Z-wave devices will not update the hub when their status changes, so they have to be polled for changes made to them not made by the controller. Z-wave plus devices will report local changes back to the controller without being polled for it.

I see the light (bad pun). I get it, when I manually hit the rocker, it does not update the status, unless I hit the poll button if I watch it from the device detail screen. So my next obvious question - how do I get HE to poll them?

You can add the built-in app called Z-wave poller. Then select all your z-wave devices you want polled.

Thanks. The cool thing is that an automation updated the status on the dashboard. I added the first switch to a rule to turn on when a door opens. I tested the app, and the dashboard changed when I opened the door.

Thanks again

Yes, changes made in Hubitat will be reflected correctly in Hubitat. Changes made locally on the switch will not be reflected in Hubitat without polling.

I've read that polling can drag down the CPU. I wonder if you could have a rule that if the device controlled by his switch turns "changed" then "refresh" his switch. Would that work and put less of a strain on the hub?

1 Like

Respectfully, I disagree with this sentence.

The purpose of polling is for the hub to learn the status of the device when physical changes are made directly at the device (eg. a switch turned on or off)

If the hub knows that a change has occurred (i.e. device is changed), then surely polling isn't necessary?

1 Like

Thanks for the comment Ashok. I always appreciate your posts, you certainly know what you're talking about. In my previous tests when I have polling turned on I see polls taking place about every 10 seconds. My suggestion was that while the bargain priced switch doesn't report physical changes I'm thinking you could trap a change of the device controlled by the switch and then call a refresh of the switch which would set the status of the switch in the hub. Maybe I'm missing something - I'll have to experiment. I know Zwave+ includes the status update to the hub, but I have several non plus devices that report status change as well as level - even a cheap little Intermatic HA03 lamp module does this reliably.

1 Like

I've seen some GE zwave switches also do that. So you're correct, some plain zwave devices do report their status.

I think it has to do with when they were manufactured vis-a-vis the expiration of Lutron's instant status patent.