I have started doing some deep dive on monitoring my z-wave network and as a result I have been testing the other platforms Home Assistant, OpenHAB and Z-Way to see how they are managing this aspect.
Last night I tested Z-Way and was completely blown away!
They have a dedicated Expert UI section filled with extremely useful tools, here I will just show some of them, but there is even more...
Device Status and Network path:
In this section we can fix and see the communication path of al the devices, in addition with ust some awesome layout:
Z-Wave Radio Noise:
Actual radio stats from the controller!
Z-Wave Packet ZSniffer
And to top it all off it has a build int packed inspection and debugging too, just amazing!!
Z-Wave Job Queue
We can monitor and actually see the commands that ware being send to the devices, this is extremely helpful for detecting and monitoring floods..
After looking at this I really think it's a shame that HE has not invested into these kind of features, I am really thinking now of partially switching over some of my devices.
Once someone get really serious about home automation all these more "expert" features are a must have.
Update: I have event found something similar for zigbee with HA
Are we going to ever (In a short time frame) get some of these kind tools into HE?
I would even be willing to pay and extra $$ to have a (Expert Add-on) feature, and I am very sure the rest of the community would also pay for something like this.
Maybe with versions like Clubitat, designed for restaurants and clubs; Office Elevation, for office building automation.....
Not trying to make light of people’s problems, but Lightify has a pro hub for business. There might be some money to be made there.
Respectfully, I think you’re generalizing a lot based on your own opinion.
I don’t particularly need advanced z-wave diagnostic tools, and although there are certainly some value-added services I would consider paying for if hubitat were to offer that, detailed hub troubleshooting and/or performance measurement tools is not one of those things I would pay for.
This isn’t really any different than the most recent “performance edition” hub discussion thread, as a few others have pointed out already.
@bravenel’s response in that thread was pretty consistent with several other prior threads, in which he points out that many of these advanced feature requests would serve a very small minority of their users (albeit a very vocal minority).
I have been following z-way for many years. It is really an incredible package, and has connectors to Node-Red, Home Assistant, and OpenHAB either through REST or pyway python bridge. The utilities in z-way are 2nd to none. The automation features, well, not as great (in my opinion).
I doubt Hubitat will ever have diagnostic tools like z-way, though. Considering the engineering cost to implement, and the limited benefit of engineering level diagnostic tools in a CONSUMER oriented hub, it just doesn't seem to make sense.
If you need/want that level of diagnostics, a CONSUMER level hub like Hubitat probably isn't the right tool for the job.
Would be very nice to have some sort of simplified combo "health" report that maybe could help identify slower networks, suspect devices or misbehaving (resource hogging) custom apps/drivers. That seems kind of a consumer friendly thing to do and may reduce or at least add focus to some support calls.
Z-Way looks cool in a Home Assistant kind of way - but too much of a time suck I think for not a lot of gain relative to HE. Also no Zigbee that I can see..
Z-Way is a great reference system and Z-Wave integration system. The tools it provides are excellent as well as the device management capabilities. Z-Way is actually used behind the scenes and openly by a few "Pro" implementations as the means to integrate Z-Wave into the systems.
A public example is with Allonis MyServer. As with most Pro systems they are a framework system that builds around components rather than trying to provide the low-level device control. With MyServer they use Z-Way (either self installed or you can buy a rPi pre-installed) to provide the Z-Wave integration to MyServer.
Historically many of the Pro systems have used either Z-Way or Vera for Z-Wave integration into the systems.
Z-Way is a Z-Wave gateway at it's core. People have built addons and "things" around it and from the outside it may look somewhat similar to Home Assistant but they really are nothing alike.
There's no ZigBee and never will be with Z-Way... it's a Z-Wave gateway and not meant, intended or wanted to touch Zigbee.
Yeah have been following those threads with interest. Can't say I understand it yet but am learning. This is one of the things that makes HE great of course - the flexibility to incorporate outside things while still retaining ease of use. I might give that a try for giggles on a dev HE hub.
Thanks for the feedback and don't get me wrong, I am in love with my HE.
It's still on my top list being the best and most flexible, but the in love part is going to be for another post
This. Maybe this is just reflective of the kind of consumer I am, but I would never use this. I would however love it if something like this existed for those who are building apps, etc.
Personally I'd rather first seem some friendly alerting and trouble shooting for Mesh's gone bad or rogue devices spamming the network, not this deep of a dive.
