It's been a while since I've bought new switches and dimmers, and we just moved about 6 months ago. I pulled all my smart switches and dimmers from the old house, but many of them are not even zwave plus! I have a C-7 still in box that I ordered last year, to go with my 3 other hubitats... I may try to pare down a bit, but I just hooked those 3 up last night for the first time since moving.
I haven't had a chance to dig into the wiring of the new house yet, but I'm assuming and hoping that we've got neutrals everywhere, the house was built in 2003...
Basically looking for some recommendations on 700 series switches and dimmers, that can work with 3 way configurations for some rooms with multiple switches. I feel that anything that is space saving will be helpful, as the boxes might be kind of cramped in the two / three gang sets.
All current switches are toggle type, but wouldn't mind going to paddle or push button styles too.
I have had good success with Ecolink Z-wave sensors. I do not have one of their motion sensors as most of mine are Zigbee.
I do have one of the Zooz 4-in one sensors and it goes through batteries in a hurry, I guess since it is sending four data streams. I also have a couple of Zooz outdoor motion sensors. The one that is mounted beneath my deck is always shaded and has good battery life. The one that is over my deck is always responding to changes in sunlight, so it goes through batteries quickly. I have no experience with the Zooz ZSE18 motion sensor for indoor use.
Some notes that I scribbled for the house that we bought 10 months ago ... I was advised that we prefer paddle switches. Way more info <here>, but I needed to dumb it down to a couple of decision points.
Zooz Zen72 Dimmer (TRIAC)
• Single switch (requires re-wire for 3-way)
• Higher wattage (20W min, higher max)
Zooz Zen77 Dimmer (MOSFET)
• 3-way control
• Lower wattage (no min, lower max)
Zooz Zen71 Switch
• Up to 3A fan (using as a scene controller for Smart-by-Bond ceiling fan/light)
Zooz Zen76 Switch
• No fan
Since Zooz has so many flavors, it is worth spending a minute to find what is optimal for your application. Not having to re-wire a 3-way switch is a treat, for instance. Most of our lighting loads are LED fixtures, so having no minimum load was more important than handling a higher max load. Using scene control for ceiling fans was a spousal necessity. Your house, family, and tastes may vary.
I remember my old GE z-wave switches had "accessory" switches for the other end of a 3 way connection... Is there anything still like that? I'd like to put a dimmer in the dining room, which currently has an old wheel-style dimmer on one, and a non-dimming flip switch on the other. It would be nice to be able to dim it from either, maybe, not sure if I want to spend $50 instead of $25 on that room though
I've personally become disappointed with Z-Wave over time -- with some odd delays and performance problems that appear to be related to the Silicon Labs firmware, as well as the "Ghost" problem referenced many times throughout these forums. On the other hand, the zigbee devices that I have are generally flawless in their performance. If I were to do it over again (I have about 75+ z-wave switches, sensors, etc., so a "do over" is a big investment at this time), I'd give Zigbee a serious look (or even mix the two -- great feature of Hubitat is you don't have to choose just one or the other!). If you have the time to wait, this Zigbee switch for Inovelli is scheduled for release in about a week and looks interesting - Blue Series Smart 2-1 Switch (On/Off or Dimmer) | ZigBee | Inovelli
I have several 3-way and 4 way switches in my home. Trying to automate them using automated switches could be a hassle until I discovered Lutron Caseta dimmers and the Pico remotes. Although they are not inexpensive, they are easy to install and are reliable. The dimmers for lights do not need require a neutral wire. For 3-way and 4-way (or more if you wish), you install one dimmer in the primary location, short the traveler wires together in each of the secondary locations and install Pico remotes at those locations or anywhere else you desire. The Picos pair directly with the dimmer they control as well as with the Lutron Pro bridge (required). Thus, the lights continue to function from all locations even if the bridge goes offline.
Although a neutral is not required for the dimmers, it may be required for some switches used to control non-dimmable lighting or fans, so be sure you check device specs if you go this route. As far as 3and 4-way installations, the switches work like the dimmers.
While I periodically have issues with Z-wave devices, I have never had an issue with Lutron Caseta. For something as important as lighting, reliability is critical.
I have several different Zooz switches and products. They do support them well from my experience. If you check out there site they have a pretty decent page that acts as a primer to what you need to use where.
I have had a very good experience with Zwave so far, but at this point everything is zwave plus and only a few items are not Zwave 700. I would suggest to do as much zwave 700 as possible.
What kind of switches are you using toggle or the decora style.
Not to mention the most likely to actually have them in stock. Inovelli are good , but seems like the are always out of stock.
I've got two of them , both a couple years old, and both very reliable, and both have had the battery replaced once. But also, they are not 700 series.
Zooz does not require this. They can work with the other existing dumb switches. Zooz Support is awesome to work with if you have questions or need help with the wiring.
I agree with this assessment. After almost 5 years of Z-Wave unpredictability, and solid Zigbee by contrast, if I were starting over, I would try to go all Zigbee. Z-Wave routing looks like a 3 year old on an Easter Egg hunt. And just as efficient.
The only reason I stuck with Z-Wave so long is that I really like the Central Scene feature. I don't think most Zigbee dimmer switches have an equivalent of this (I can't find any that do). I think the Inovelli "Blue" series dimmers that are just coming out might - the web site mentions supporting paddle multi-taps.
I can confirm that the Inovelli Blue series can be used to start scenes, or whatever else you might need. I have had the opportunity to beta test it and it is now my kitchen switch - one of the switches we use the most in the house.
The paddle supports 2-5 taps (up and down) and the config button is also a usable button. Further to that, the LED bar on the right can be set by rules to be on at any level or color. It also support setting it to one of several available light patterns. Also, it is possible to control each LED individually. We really, really like it.
C7 + the external zwave antenna makes zwave like it should be.
We are going to be building a new house next year and zwave will again be my in-wall solution.
The Zooz zen7x series are stocked, the are better than the inovelli zwave devices (even the zen2x series beats inovelli for performance) and they are priced better.
That said I still have four inovelli red series because the notification bars are awesome. The inovelli blues might be my one exception for in-wall zigbee where I want notification indicators.
I am not a zigbee hater. I have 2-3x more zigbee devices than zwave.
I bit the bullet and picked up a zen76 and zen77 to put in my kitchen and dining room, respectively. I also took this as a chance to get my "new" c7 out of the unopened box that it's been sitting in for the past ~8 months.
Question is, I have lots of old plus and non-plus z-wave devices. Currently not that much has been unpacked / hooked up at the new house, but I'm wondering if I should start making a clean break with this, and start getting 500/700 series devices going forward, and start dropping some of the oldies off.
As it is, all my old / existing devices are still joined to my old c4 hub, and there are some oldies, like the aeotec dsc06106's, and lots of old non-plus GE z-wave toggle switches and dimmers.
I'm thinking of keeping those old devices on hub1 (c4), and putting future devices on the c7. I have 2x c5's that I'm mainly using for app processing, using the devices from hub mesh.
Question is, should I start migrating some of my zwave plus devices over to the c7, will it perform better with them compared to on the c4? Will it help clean up the mesh to not have any non-plus devices on the c7's mesh?
There's really no reason to replace the 500 series (plus) devices, but you absolutely should throw the non plus devices in the trash and replace them. They are nothing but trouble.
Edit: I should add a bit more. Old non-plus/300 series devices can only talk 40 Kb maximum speed. So any Plus devices routing through them are limited to 40 Kb. So a few non plus devices in the wrong part of your network will slow the entire back end of the network by up to 2.5 times - which is a lot.
There are a bunch of other technical reasons why you don't want non plus devices on your mesh, but I will leave that for you to Google instead of writing a book in this post. there are a bunch of really good comparison FAQs and documents out there.
Good to know! Is there a (relatively) simple way to identify the "plus" devices on my old c4 hub? I may start working on moving them over to the c7 one at a time, as I work on re-smartening this new house
