Zwave Long Range

So far as I know, only ezlo (formerly Vera, formerly micasaverde).

2 Likes

Bryan announced it almost exactly 2 years ago.

4 Likes

I never heard mention that it was actually released, as in "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry". As always, I could be wrong, and like always, I'd be more happy if I was wrong. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Ha, released for what? I believe there are 2 LR devices, a Zooz GPIO module and the Ecolink GDC.

4 Likes

I have just purchased a number of a new LR product:
The Zooz Zen54: a new single, in-wall relay that is a dimmer (truly a unique product).
I am planning on instilling this device in a rather large home, and I will report back here if there are any issues.
While there are no drivers for this thing, I imagine it's not going to be a big deal to make one (or modify an existing driver).

2 Likes

Well LR isn't turned on on Hubitat so you won't be able to take advantage of the LR until Hubitat implements it in a firmware update.

1 Like

To be very frank, I'm not sure I need it for this application.
Greatest distance (projected) from device to hub is approximately 40-50 feet - so I think that just regular zwave should do the trick (there may also be a repeater in the middle also).

You know, around 2-3 years ago, I predicted that Zigbee would win the race, and zwave would be dead by now. Just shows you how wrong you can be. Perhaps I shouldn't make a prediction about Matter.

1 Like

:smiley: Or you should so the rest of us know what's going to happen (opposite of your prediction) :smiley: :smiley:

4 Likes

I installed a Zooz Zen54 LR yesterday and I don't have any issues. I used the Qubino 0-10V dimmer driver since Zooz hasn't released their driver for it yet and it works fine.

3 Likes

The prediction that Zigbee technology would take over and Z-wave would be in decline seems pretty accurate, though the parts of Zigbee that appear poised to take over are in a significantly evolved and enhanced form.

The physical transmission layer of Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, was adopted as the physical layer of Thread (though the networking layers that sit on that were replaced with TCP/IP layers). The application layer of Zigbee, i.e., its use of clusters and attributes, became the application layer of Matter (but, again, with some significant enhancements and improvements such as multi-admin and greater separation from the physical layer to provide the ability to support multiple TCP/IP physical layers - i.e., thread, wifi, ethernet, etc.).

Apple, Google, Amazon seem to be on a path to abandoning their proprietary protocols of HomeKit, Google Home, and Alexa, and many chipset and software providers are implementing thread / matter so there's now a multi-vendor implementation.

Z-wave, on the other hand, has a new 800 series chip which remains sole-sourced and is just a marginal improvement (still the same routing protocols and routing problems, etc.) and two years since the final Z-wave LR standard was released there are still few certified products (seems that is pretty much DOA). On the other hand, only 5 months after the official Matter standard release, there are many Matter devices being certified and the pace seems to be accelerating Certified Products Search | IOT - CSA-IOT

2 Likes

I set one up for bench testing tonight. It was included okay, but whatever driver it chose didn't do anything. I saw your post about the Qubino driver, so I changed it to use that driver. It has some capabilities... on/off, set level change, and a few preferences.

Hopefully, there will soon be a Hubitat driver that supports all the functions that Zooz says it will.

1 Like

I set it up on the bench before adding it in the wall too to make sure the driver would control what I needed which is basic 0-10V for my LED lights. That works fine with the Qubino driver. In my case I have it configured a little different because my eight 8-foot LED lights draw 5.6A which is more than the 4A specs for the ZEN54 so I used a ZEN30 to control the power to the lights with the relay and the dimmer as the dimming controller. The ZEN54, the relay, and the dimmer are all tied together with a switch binding. Works as expected.

I have it on my desk.. Driver is coming soon

2 Likes

@bcopeland it'd be awesome to see a video of you or Mike taking a new (or new-to-HE) device and making a driver for it. I know I'd learn a lot watching that, if you guys could be persuaded to produce such a one for the dev community.

1 Like

In my humble personal opinion, there is only one key critical capability that distinguishes this (and the zooz zen 54 double relay).
This was pointed out to me by a client who said that she really liked this "simple" option.
In most of these internal relays, the installer has a choice of momentary, or toggle (for the action of the switch). In this device you also have a choice of "normal" (which coordinates with the state of the light). For some people, this is by far the preferred setting.

LR was mentioned to be enabled on 2.2.6 - But I can't seem to confirm it was or not as @jgalu62 mentioned on the start of this thread. Most (albeit older) replies are about 'no devices' to use it so no hurry, but there are a good handful out now, with Zooz for example.

@bcopeland apologies if I missed anything?

Zwave LR is not in enabled/exposed in the hub yet. Much to my displeasure.

5 Likes

I assume you meant version 2.3.6, which was recently released. But regardless, where did you see that?

AFAIK Hubitat staff have never publicly announced a timeline or specific plan re: z-wave long range, although it should be technically possible for them to implement at some point.

That was true in prior releases, and in the most recent firmware release.

Anytime you’re uncertain about what’s included in a platform update, check out the release notes. Here’s the 2.3.6 release notes thread.

Edit: oh wait I see, 2.2.6 was mentioned in one of @bcopeland’s announcements in an old thread linked above. And the announcement said they were planning to enable it, not that it was already enabled.

No you haven’t missed anything. Presumably since that announcement was made, they decided to focus on a few other things that have since been released for general usage, or are currently in public beta.

1 Like

Bryan mentioned working on LR a couple years ago, so I do think it was 2.2.6 not 2.3.6...

3 Likes

I am not Bryan (much to his relief), but I fully believe Zwave LR is still coming and will even be coming "soon".

Probably not next release "soon" as that release is already in testing, but some time not too far after that is my GUESS,

On other systems I'm more intimately familiar with the code base on, the backend of adding LR support isn't that bad (though still work, of course). It is the front end crap that takes a lot of time.

4 Likes