I have a number of zwave locks (Kwikset).
I have not had a problem with them, because:
when pairing only, Hub was within 2-3 feet (anything greater, forget it!)
very close to the lock (within 1-2 feet) there must be a zwave device which supports the "beaming" feature (required because the hub may send out zwave packets, which are then "semi stored" on the neighbouring device)
some people here have reported that they have required a zwave repeater within 1-2 feet of the lock (I didn't need this). The odd on favorite for this task is the aeon gen6/7 repeater.
as previously mentioned, these locks perform "secure" joining, so you have to give that plenty of time when doing the pairing process (don't forget to exclude first, then pair).
you must have PATIENCE in this process - it can be tricky, and you may need to do it multiple times.
I did originally pair my locks by walking within a couple feet by moving my hub around the house with a long Ethernet cable. I do have Z-Wave beaming light switches next to all three locks. I also tried the Aeotec repeaters but still have issues. I have also tried several excludes, factory resets and pairings which haven't seemed to make a difference.
Is HE perfect? No. Is it better than the other options? I personally think so.
Long time ST user here. After several outages, I pulled the trigger and bought an HE hub. Started moving things over, ran into a few problems and felt the same way you did. I pulled the plug and put everything back onto ST. But then there were more cloud issues, and outages. I quickly realized that a device taking 3-4s to fire every once in a while was a million times better than the entire house not responding at all for hours at a time. That's when I started the transition again over to HE.
I do keep the known problematic devices on ST like all of my Schlage locks. The hubconnect app is amazing for exactly this purpose.
I had Wink 2, which to be honest was great as my First true Smart Home device. I moved to HE due to;
Wink the company looks to be dying
Reliabilty and outages for ST seemed insane
This community form
Local nature of HE
I'm INCREDIBLY happy. Yes it's higher maintenance, more manual, but I'm actually automating my home instead of just using it for dumb app control.
The key was a strong mesh network, in fact I've paired my old Wink 2 to be a zwave repeater which has been great. I too was having major lock issues, but fixed those by repeaters and being patient as well.
Left Smartthings for Hubitat over a year ago. 128 devices, Zigbee mostly but some Zwave including a Kwikset Zwave lock that has never had any issues. My only issues went away when I replaced my repeating bulbs with Sengled a few months into Hubitat. Had problems with the bulbs while using ST but never knew what the problem was. I do have several Zigbee and Zwave repeaters in my house. LOVE MY HUBITAT. Don’t miss ST at all.
In my experience Z-wave devices are a crapshoot. Some will work but most will have issues of some sort. Inevitably, Z-wave devices will periodically fail and have to be re-paired, etc. This is not an issue with Hubitat. I’ve had the same issues on Home Assistant. Smartthings may have a greater number of specialized handlers that minimize device-specific issues, but if you want to have a headache-free HA solution, I would dump Z-wave.
I've never had that happen in the years I've used z-wave and various controllers. Is this a controller specific thing you've experienced? Which controllers?
If you want a hassle free experience you pay someone else to manage it and go with an RTI, Control4, Crestron setup otherwise there's always a hassle maybe not for you but for someone as No system is perfect.
I’ve got ZwavePlus devices mixed in with Zigbee devices and simply do not have ANY devices dropping off.
I put this down to the following:
not buying the cheapest devices
deploying repeaters -planned to ensure that any device has more than one route back to the Hub
Additionally I believe this approach spreads the device communications across the radio bands - minimizing queuing or bandwidth limitations. (I’m not seeing / feeling any need to add multiple hubs, either. Yet
Too many people trashing z-wave here. There is nothing wrong with z-wave.. period. How you setup the z-wave mesh means everything right down to response time. I do a weekly z-wave repair on all 3 of my hubitat hubs and everything runs smoothly.
Everyone has their own ways of setting up there hubs and that includes me. I find that zigbee gives me more of a headache then it's worth most times and I often find my zigbee radio on my C4 constantly coming down for no apparent reason but I don't don't trash hubitat for that because zigbee for me has sucked.
Now for the overall status of Hubitat -- mainstream for sure. ST is a pile of poo and with all the recent outages you are only going to hate ST even more because of the serious lack of local control. ST relies on internet 100% and if anything goes out you are SOL.... period.
So maybe you need to look on how you got things set up right down to whatever router you are using for a WiFi mesh before trashing Hubitat.
Edit:
And for skill level Hubitat is really geared towards advanced users.
Those users usually come from homeassistant, openHab, homeseer and a few others.
ST, Wink and Vera are all spoon feeding hubs.... that means it does everything for you and is more forgiving in errors and mesh networking like Z-Wave.
Now I have to admit I came straight from ST to Hubitat because I got tired of the outages and lack of local controls.... specifically pissed me off when ST had a outage and I couldn't get into my own house because I was using a keyless lock that had no keypad and to top it off I couldn't disarm my alarm system either so for 2 hours of waiting I eventually had to break my own bedroom window just to get inside....
To say the least I tossed my ST hub aside and moved everything over to Hubitat in 3 days.
@tobyp24 So go ahead and get your ST hub up and running but you will be back the minute you find out it sucks. And the minute you find out you can't turn on lights in the middle of the night because of a outage your wife will smack you around for it.
I'm on the same page. And the reason home automation is not ready for mainstream is - in my opinion - more a support issue than a hardware issue. Every time I reach out to a manufacturer for support I get a reply pointing me elsewhere - usually to another manufacturer. It's so easy to say "we don't know anything about their stuff". Things won't get better for us users until someone at a Brand X sticks up his or her hand and says, "I'll help you with that, and contact Brand Y if necessary". The knowledge is there; each manufacturer knows his stuff in depth. Cross pollination is needed. Thank heaven for communities!
