Lutron has a physical switch that you replace your lightswitch with -- it works via the Caseta smart stuff, or it just works as a normal light switch that's 100% bulletproof. Also they use a much lower and less busy frequency (433mhz) so you get great range, no interference, and very low battery consumption when using the remote products. I went from 1/20 button pushes not doing what I wanted on Philips to 0 failures ever when I bit the bullet and replaced everything with Lutron.
Well I just went into the first one, and you can't use it if you have e.g. low volt LEDs in your kitchen like I do.. and they all look to be in the 900mhz range. I'm sure there's some combination of Zigbee stuff that could match the Lutron setup -- they look more customizable so maybe that's a plus for people too. We were just tired of fighting to get our smart home to not be annoying so plug and play with Lutron was a big win, and you can layer in more control with HA that has no danger of breaking everything. If I were starting over, I might take a look at some of those, and I'm glad there's some competition in the space.
Zwave is a proprietary protocol. Its old and unnecessary complex. Zigbee devices are a lot cheaper. And in many cases better performing than zwave mesh networks. A few years ago you still had zwave devices you did not have zigbee variants for. But now? Cant think of one.
> Zwave is a proprietary protocol. Its old and unnecessary complex. Zigbee devices are a lot cheaper. And in many cases better performing than zwave mesh networks.
That’s not entirely correct. Zwave is more expensive because if you want to sell your zwave solution there’s a monopoly on zwave.
Nothing to do with complexity or age.
As for “better performing”, I don’t even know how to respond. Latency? Reliability? Power? Bandwidth?
Zwave in general is better then zigbee due to lower frequencies and staying out of WiFi/bt. However it is more expensive and less options.
I had a house full of a variety of switches I just moved out of - some Lutron, inovelli, and Leviton.
For zwave, the best actual physical control was with Leviton - they have a rocker switch for dimming and are therefore easier to use than most. They don’t support multi-press scenes or anything like that but I found that to be a bit of a gimmick anyway, and dedicated buttons are a better option.
Inovelli had the most features, but aren’t precisely colour matched to other brands - they are kind of whiter than the standard white colour so stand out if you put them in a bank with others or against certain face plates.
In my new house I have a few zooz switches for special cases alongside Lutron for everything else and Zooz work fine.
Inovelli and Zooz dimming controls are both done by holding down the on/off paddles which isn’t intuitive for visitors, and it’s hard to fine adjust without resorting to app control.
Of everything my favourite is Lutron Diva for hands down the best looking and easiest to use actual physical control but these use a proprietary (albeit easy to integrate) hub.
I honestly haven't tried those products, but what I don't see is the ability to have remotes control switches (or plug-in lamp modules) without needing to use a controller. Caseta allows this because there is a pairing process that just involves the remote and the switch. I'm not aware of any similar Z-Wave or Zigbee thing, but it would certainly be cool if those existed and honestly would make me reconsider Z-Wave/Zigbee if I was redoing my system.
I only recently (3 months ago) set up my new house with Lutron devices because their diva dimmers are truly the best of anything out there I’ve used - their slide dimmer control is easy to use and their lack of flicker and buzzing with leds is the best out there. Their battery powered remotes also last forever (10 years?) without needing battery changes and work very reliably.
I do have a couple of zwave dimmers for special cases (dimmer and fan in one switch), and they support zwave association. Without the hub being available, one switch can turn on another - you could have the light turn on a fan, for example, or associate a remote control to a light. Zigbee has a similar feature.
Worked for them in various capacities for 6 years. It’s still what’s mostly in my house and mostly what I recommend for lighting control on projects. I’ll admit I have been eying Casambi with some interest.
Q: > Why is "work[s] totally independently of Home Assistant" a desirable property?
A: > the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM could make it so I can't turn my lights on and off feels like a bit too much. Caseta doesn't use an open protocol, but it does allow all your switches, remotes, lights, etc, to work totally independently of HomeAssistant or Internet/WiFi
That's exactly what I do and in fact I've had very few problems with Home Assistant in this setup. I just don't like the idea of needing the VM to be functional 100% of the time for my lights to work. Maybe it's just a mental block or me being old fashioned or whatever, I just think things like lighting should be able to work the old fashioned way in additional to cool home automation stuff.
...I got the OG yellow/amber when it was kickstarted, and have added a 1tb NVME and a z-wave dongle (it came with zigbee).
The newer ones (green) have "ditched" internal networking other than wifi for compliance / regulatory reasons (eg: 1 hardware radio == complex, 2-3 hardware radios == exponentially more complex and requires differing international certifications).
...as that reddit thread alludes to: you're fairly better off chasing an old NUC-type-thing and just plugging in the extra dongles to that anyway (potentially zip-tying a hub, or maybe getting some 90º USB connectors so you're less worried about snapping things off if it gets bumped, dropped, or stepped on).
The software is pretty darned solid, I've dug into it a fair amount and haven't had much issues with it in the ~3-4 years I've had it.
As the CLI link describes, there's 2-3 layers of "reliability" going on: core => supervisor => host. Basically the supervisor will restart / rotate / backup the HA-core (aka: docker image), and you can occasionally update the "Host" (aka: OS). https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/linux/#install-ho... ...their HomeAssistantOS basically wraps all that up, and if you install it "that way", you effectively turn whatever hardware you're using into an "appliance"... really, just depends on what layer you want to handle your O.S. updates (ie: throw HA on as "just another service" on your homelab? ...or "let the little box manage itself").
The reason I added Z-Wave (eventually) was to get access to an exterior-rated, dimmable plug/extension cord (dimmable string lights) ... HomeKit ones were finicky, and I couldn't find any good ZigBee ones. The reason I added an NVMe inside (eventually) was I wanted to chase using it as kindof a plex-ish / backup / media server, but there's "gross" issues with HA's backup strategy by default (ie: it backs up the "whole HD", including `/Media/...`, which makes backup times exponential compared to "just the *.config.yaml", and effectively halves your usable disk space).
Since you'll have to buy some of those dongles anyway, start with that and do the "home assistant OS running on a rpi" route. Get a feel for it, and then jump in to a NUC which you can air-drop next to your family's cable modem.
I've got 80-90% of everything bridged over to Siri/HomeKit (all devices are treated "as good as apple home app", and only a few HA-specific "super-nerd stuff" that I've set up in the HA gui itself (ie: timed scripts for turning things on/off when we have a party in the back yard). You still have to pop in to HA when adding a new device, new device-type, or to update any of the three layers (integrations => home assistant => kernel/os/core), so like once every few months like any potentially vulnerable IoT device.
Overall, a solid 7-out-of-10 (because it's OSS) ... as OSS it's 9-out-of-10... just desperately needs some cohesion, GUI-love, simplification, etc, but the compatibility and power is all there!
Why is "work[s] totally independently of Home Assistant" a desirable property?
https://www.zwaveoutlet.com/pages/z-wave-associations
https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/application-notes/AP...