What is your assessment of the future of Zwave?
Three years ago I decided to standardize on Zwave as I had read it is more stable than Zigbee. My ramp up has been very slow, and now I am noticing fewer and fewer Zwave devices are available.
Seems GE/Jasco is not even selling plug in Zwave dimmer outlets anymore, and the devices that are available cost 2x as much as they did a 3 years ago.
Is this due to high demand (I don't think so), chip shortages (isn't that resolving itself?) or waning demand, so mfgs are producing fewer zwave devices, and those that do want the devices are gobbling them all up, driving up the prices?
Wanting a color bulb subsequently required me to acquire a few zigbee devices to act as repeaters, so now I have both zigbee and Zwave, so I suppose I could go either way.
For new acquisitions, are those using Zwave staying with it (and selecting from the limited availability), pivoting to Zigbee or waiting it out for Matter/Thread?
I'm not sure who would claim Z-Wave is more stable than Z-Wave, especially after the (early) 700-series controller debacle, but both should work well if the networks are set up with care. Zigbee is a bit more resilient, I'd say, but modern Z-Wave is better than "classic," and both have their pros and cons.
Back your issue: I'd say Z-Wave isn't dying, but there were indeed chip shortages since 2020 that do seem to be resolving now. Unlike Zigbee, there is/was only one manufacturer for these (Silicon Labs, but they've recently opened that up; not sure if that will take off or if it will help).
However, if you were looking mostly at bulbs, I can understand why you'd think that no matter when you looked; there have never been many Z-Wave bulbs, and IMHO, most Z-Wave bulbs have some oddities, and either Zigbee or natively supported LAN option like LIFX would be better options for Hubitat (as long as you avoid mostly-early Zigbee bulbs, usually ZLL, that are poor repeaters: GE Link, Cree, and others, unless you separate them on a bulb-only network or use something like a Hue Bridge to separate them and bring them in that way).
FWIW, I use both protocols, as there are generally devices I want that are only available in one or the other. On Hubitat, there is no reason to choose--both work well (if set up with care). Either should be bridge-able to Matter, though I suspect many Zigbee manufacturers might transition to Thread, as it's a "native" physical layer for Matter, or at least offer different firmware that can handle each protocol if their chips support both (some do). However, Matter is so in its infancy right now that it's both hard to say and not factoring into any plans for me personally.
Here is a good post from @JDRoberts on the ST forum. He is very knowledgeable on this topic and to summarize Zwave has certifications that Zigbee doesn’t so don’t expect it to go away anytime soon:
i don't see z-wave going away. the new hotness is matter/thread, so all the big companies are putting a layer on top of zigbee, but z-wave works outside of the zigbee/wi-fi spectrum, so can be useful in many instances that zigbee can't (e.g. living in a high density area where everyone has a wifi router/zigbee devices). there may have been a slowdown due to global things and companies wanting to get in on the matter/thread stuff, but zwave is gonna still be here
My personal belief is that Z-wave is not going away any time soon. However, I do not see Z-Wave growing very much, if at all, in the future. Since the industry focus is now on Matter/Thread, that is where the growth will come from.
Again, just my opinion (says the guy with zero Z-Wave devices!!! )
My two cents: from a HA perspective, Z-Wave (Classic and Plus; Z-Wave LR hasn't yet been 'alive' in this arena) and Zigbee HA 1.2 are both on their way out. Which one will die last comes down to which has strongest demand and supply. Currently Z-Wave seems to lose on both counts.
If you're invested in a Zigbee HA 1.2 ecosystem, the demand/supply question is a non-issue for a few reasons: Successor Zigbee 3.0 supports the HA 1.2 profile (insuring a wide variety of products); Zigbee's uptake is much larger in Asia (vs. Z-Wave) winning demand, and it's based on an IEEE standard using multi-protocol 802.15.4 radios-- which also support BLE and Thread-- manufactured by multiple vendors guaranteeing supply. Z-Wave's proprietary designs though recently 'open' remain single sourced.
Zigbee (with custom profiles) gets wide use in factory automation, commercial lighting, building management, smart electric meters, set top box remotes, etc. further shoring up the demand. Operation in the 2.4Ghz band hasn't limited its industrial applications. Every Zigbee device gets non-optional AES-128 encryption, a standard 250kbps data rate and network wide inclusion with a self-optimizing mesh.
Z-Wave never passed the industrial application 'sniff test' to any degree; selling points of seamless interoperability and interference free are attractive but in reality, key features relating to security, data rate and network management depend on using devices with compatible spec levels. Z-Wave's murky controller-centric routing layer relies on 'repair and wait' to optimize; it doesn't scale well and is effectively useless for real-time data acquisition. It's telling that the most common recommendations for implementing a Z-Wave mesh are to disable security wherever possible and eliminate/reduce power reporting; not a good recipe for any industrial or commercial application.
Z-Wave LR may turn things around but it needs a market and an inventory of products; a number of non-Zwave long range solutions exist to satisfy that market niche. The moving target specs (700 series obseleted by 800 before a single LR product hit the shelves) and supply chain priorities aren't helping the effort.
I agree with all of this. I would call it more of a stagnating technology than dying technology though.
Z-Wave LR could have really changed things for Z-Wave. It ticks almost every checkbox for a good home automation protocol, even if it is a bit more expensive than zigbee.
But plain and simple there are no/few controllers that support it, and there are next to no devices. And when I talked directly to a few manufacturers last month, it didn't really sound like there were a whole lot coming anytime soon either.
With current manufacturing and supply chain issues, I think that is going to kill off Z-Wave LR. I consider it still born at this point.
I could be wrong, but I don't think I am. We'll see.
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