Hello all,

I’ve been fighting with razberry7 pro on top of rpi4B and it just doesn’t work reliably (if at all). I’ve dug around the internet, tried different software on it, verified that firmware is up to date and so on and even fed my logs to LLMs in hopes they could spot something. Currently my z-wave devices are practically useless (gladly I got devices with physical controls too) and based on discussions around I’m not alone.

So, I think it’s time for me to just get something better. Ideal device would be wired over ethernet and have z-wave and zigbee hubs and possibly POE, but I haven’t found any which would also be fully supported by HA.

ZWA-2 should be pretty solid choise, but I’m running HAOS in a virtual machine on my proxmox host and I’d really like to have an option to migrate VM to different hardware as needed but that would require also physically moving the USB plug from one host to another.

What are your experiences, what I should get? I’m in EU, so frequencies need to match, but otherwise I’m pretty open for suggestions and having a rock solid z-wave network is a top priority. If it means using ZWA-2 or some other USB gadget I can work with it, but, again, ideally I’d like to have something wired to the network. Wifi is of course an option, but good old ethernet would be preferred.

  • doogstar@lemmy.100010101.xyzEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I migrated from another ZwaveMe product to the ZWA-2 (which was a firmware related headache to get my network out of the ZwaveMe one onto it but fortunately finally got it resolved) on a QEMU machine under Incus with no problems but I understand the desire, and the ZWA-2 has been rock solid.

    Have you seen this (experimental) project

    https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/10/13/portable-z-wave-with-wifi-and-poe/

    I’ve not dug into it much other than being aware of it, but conceptually don’t see why it, or potentially one also leveraging a ZBT-1 or -2 couldn’t also be possible, if you’re prepared to tinker.

    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I saw that project and it seems to be pretty promising, but as it’s on pretty experimental state I think I’ll skip that for now. The biggest headache I’ve had with home automation so far is unstable z-wave connectivity, so I’m not really interested on tinkering with experimental stuff.

      But good to hear that ZWA-2 actually works as well as advertising claims.

    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I’m not running LXC, so USB passtrough should not be a problem. Running zwave-js on haos requires that the hardware is visible to the OS and as razberry7 connects to raspberry pi gpio ports I’d need to move the whole installation over to rasberry which I don’t want. I’ve already burned myself with broken SD-card with that setup and even then the controller didn’t work as reliable as I’d want to.

  • tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.gardenEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    Not familiar with Zwave, but ZHA (the Zigbee HA integration) has a list of recommended stations in their docs, maybe ZW has something similar?

    • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      2·
      2 months ago

      There is, but as with all hardware, it’s one thing to have something supported and another thing if it actually works in real life scenario. My current razberry7 is on supported devices list but constant jamming of the controller says that even if it’s technically supported it doesn’t really work in practise.