I recently migrated from a C-8 to a C-8 Pro. Migration was very smooth, and there were no problems that I identified with a cursory exam. I had a stubborn ghost left over from the C-8. I switched to ZWaveJS to use the built-in ghost busting tools, and successfully removed it. I left ZWaveJS on. And a bit later, I noticed that there were a few devices that just wouldn't connect. I managed to wake a couple of then up by pulling and replacing their batteries. But there were others that just would not connect no matter what I tried to do. I reverted back to the old Z-Wave, and everything automatically hooked itself up and started working with no problems. So far, so good.
I realize that Z-Wave is at EOL and ZWaveJS is the new cool kid on the block. My question is: would it do me any good to try to switch over permanently, knowing it might mean having to replace some devices that were OK before?
I have a small house with a rather simple set up, including around 15 Z-Wave devices and around 20 Zigbee.
What would ZWaveJS buy me?
I've tried searching the forums and googling, but I'm not finding an answer to this question that I can wrap my head around. Thanks for any info!
For the moment nothing. ZWave—JS is currently only supported on the C8-Pro due mainly to memory consumption of the added stack and is still an optional choice even there, which means that Hubitat is still committed to support for the Z-IP version in production releases.
Given that the device drivers only care that there is a stack available and don’t differentiate, if the old stack is working for you no need to update.
My Zooz lr contact switches weren't reporting the right state with zwjs, even after updating firmware. Went back to zip, everything fine (and snappier). Going back and forth wasn't trivial either. There were several devices, in-wall switches, that didn't make the transition back to zip when I went through and tested them all.
edit: I did like the ghost removal aspect though.
I switched to JS during beta and have had nothing but good results with it (about 68 z-wave devices (including a couple of LR ones). Haven't had any issues adding devices either. I've switched back and forth to zip gateway and back for testing but never had an issue.
What he said. Falls under the "If it ain't broke" category. The main weaknesses of the ZipGateway Z-Wave stack for me were devices occasionally dropping or becoming intermittently unresponsive, and issues w/the hub struggling with exclusions-inclusions, creating ghosts during inclusions that could be difficult to remove.
If you have a stable set of Z-Wave devices that are behaving well, and you aren't running into exclusion/inclusion issues, really no need to switch. ZipGateway will be around for a while.
I was under the impression with release notes that Hubitat started to default new fresh C8 Pro installs to Zwave JS.
Though the Zip Gatweay software will likely exist for a while, I believe it has EOL for some time and not receiving any updates. It is very likely as time passes it will become more and more problematic. Zwave JS on the other hand is relatively new and being actively developed and as such having fixes implemented and improvements made to it's base code.
That said do you need to upgrade, as others have stated above it all depends on your experience. If you are sufferfing from known issues with the Zip/Gateway stack then it can't hurt.
One thing i will say is that If you are switching back and forth you really need to give the Zwave JS stack a good shake with plenty of time. When you switch over every device needs to go through a re-interview phase. This generally occurs the first time the device itself talks back to the hub. It can be tricky for Battery powered devices like contact sensors, remote buttons, ect. You may need to trigger the activity button and then manually reinterview the device, or even exclude and include the device again if it doesn't natrually do it. Of the 58 Zwave devices i have I seem to remember about 10 of them having issues fulling completing the migrating process. A few of them were fixed simply by telling the hub to re-interview them. The rest which were primarily Zooz Zen 34 remote switches just needed to be excluded and then included again.
The unfortunate part is that the migration to Zwave JS isn't as simple as just flipping a switch to use it in the UI. You do need to monitor the Zwave environment and then if needed take action to resolve devices that just fail to switch over.
I have been running Zwave JS since it was released on my prod hub and have had zero issues with Zwave JS. I had one device that needed a driver update because of new data being passed with Zwave JS, but that was it. I moved to it because of the issues that @danabw mentioned. I was also under the impression that the ZwaveJS would help with the S2 Bootstrap issue, which i hit and had to completely rebuild my zwave network (prior to ZwaveJS). Part of the issue with waiting is you don't know when those other issues will show up.
However you look at it you are trading one set of possible issues for another set of possible issues. It is just what impacts you now. The good thing about Zwave JS is that it should only get better.
I need to check on this. I have had a variety of Ring G2 Contact sensor issues with them failing after needing battery replacement after being fully drained. My last replacement sensor connected as LR so i will need to check this. I don't remember there being any issue with initial testing.
