z-wave, anyone?
 

Just curious: Has anyone here purchased any z-wave compatible hardware such as lights, light switches and other home-things? What do you think? Worth it? Easy to program, etc?

I did. I have z-wave working locks for the houses & appartements that I rent in Canada while I am in Spain.

It works fine most of the time. The company that you use to manage your devices makes probably the difference. I am currently using Vera Smarter Home Control with which I am not really happy. Their software is slow and, lacks a lot of features and is not user friendly.

Yea i plenty of z wave & zigbee stuff going on. Z wave is pretty easy

Thanks for the feedback.

Question though, why do you have a company to manage the devices? And have you considered writing your own software to manage them? Lately I find myself going hobby-crazy and want to experiment with some home automation stuff, and I think Z-wave is the best way to go.

I have a shit load of zwave stuff. The problem was integrating everything together, along with other smart technologies. Nothing was worse than having to use multiple apps to control different parts of your home.

Everything has finally come together in the last few months for me. I purchased a Samsung Smartthings hub, and 2 Amazon Echo Dots.

Even if you don't want the voice control with the Echo Dots, the Smartthings is a must have. it brings all the different technologies together so they can be controlled under one app. I have Hue light bulbs, zwave appliance modules, zwave switches, a zwave motion sensor in the bathroom (so I don't have to turn the light switch on at night to take a shit) an ecobee thermostat, Schlage door lock (zwave), Harmony hub and Ring video doorbell.

I also have it connected to a server I have running in the house and I have it so it speaks to me over my sound system every time certain functions are activated. For example when my Ring doorbell detects motion it says "there is motion at your front door." Or when I turn a light on it says "Chandelier is now on."

In my basement home theater I can say "Alexa, turn on Media Center". The Harmony hub will turn on the projector and the receiver and source, and will dim the zwave lights to 5%, then says "I hope you enjoy your show." When I say "Alexa, turn off Media Center", it shuts everything off and brings the basement lights back up to 100%.

It's pretty cool if you are a nerd like myself.

The only problem with zwave stuff is most of the switches require a neutral wire. My house did not have neutral wires installed when it was built (only ground, hot and load). That is the only reason I am using Hue lights in certain places because I am unable to use zwave for certain lights. You need to have at least 40 watts worth of bulbs on a light in order to use some of the zwave dimmers that don't require a neutral. So if you have a light in your bedroom that only has 3 or 4 LED bulbs in it, it will never shut off completely because of the small amount of voltage that travels through it constantly. They work fine if you have enough bulbs connected to the switch.

Also it's not a good idea to set Alexa up to control your door locks. I can go outside and yell through the window "Alexa, unlock front door" and it unlocks it for me. Been meaning to disable that.

You are welcome :-)

I haven't made much researches on that cause I just didn't have time to develop a software myself so I when the easiest way : Buying a Vera hub (seems like it cannot be managed that through my own wifi hub) for each house (or appartment) and I connected my wifi locks to it.

The problem is that I could not even recommend you another company cause Vera is the only one that I know. If I recall correctly, I found them cause it was suggested from my lock manufacturer which is Schlage.

MrBottomTooth and CHMOD: Have you guys looked into the node-red / json language? What I want to do is install some z-wave switches etc, and then use a raspberry pi 3 + node-red to control it all. From what I've read it seems like a fun project that is both challenging yet easy to do (large community support, etc). Have you looked at this?

I know what is json. I regularly use it. I do not know what is node-red though. But like I told you, I have not been looking at all into it. I'd like to have some news if you do it though :-)