Home Assistant Connect ZWA-2

Great upgrade from Vera

I'm probably a low to mid-level home automation user with about 30 z-wave devices around the house. It's all simple stuff like timed lighting and thermostats without any fancy scenes or coding. I've been a very happy Vera user for 15 years and while it still works very reliably, it's slow and some new devices don't configure properly due to its lack of software support. In looking for a new system, my priorities were local control with a user-friendly interface. Hubitat was a big let down with its weak range and rough interface. Home Assistant has been great so far. My guess is that it's where all the earlier Vera users and developers have migrated to. It has the same basic logical design as Vera with a huge amount of user control for customizability. I'd say it's definitely more complicated than I need it to be, but I've been able to ignore a lot of the higher order stuff and make it work pretty easily. I had no problem pairing my devices and quickly setting up all the basic automations that I need. The system is robust, responsive, and I look forward to taking advantage of its other capabilities like linking to other wifi systems. Remote access with Nabu Casa has been good too, albeit not free. However, the subscription pricing is fair and I like that it goes to support developers instead of greedy corporations.

I had high hopes.

I was warned. The ‘Learning curve’ would be high for Home Assistant, and it’s associated ZWA-2. The antenna itself, as a product is nice. Larger than I expected, but robust and a nice product. Does it work? No. Is it easy to configure? No. Does it ‘seamlessly’ work with the Home Assistant Green product? Also no. In short, it’s probably the worst Zwave product I’ve used. I”m three days in, and still can’t get some light switches working. It consistently hangs on ‘device added but not provisioned’. Once you see this, good luck. Even after a factory default, re-adding is a long and tedious process that fails more than it works. I’m coming from a fairly robust but not huge Homeseer setup, and honestly their product is not as polished, and not as nice. But it works. And works reliably. This thing has been three days of absolute nonsense. My first controller was a Vera Casa Verde unit. I’ve been on Zwave for ‘a long time’. I’ve never used anything quite this clunky. Polished? Yes. Terrible documentation that is disjointed and community driven with plenty of ‘oh, check this persons site’ comments? yes. I have given it a few tries. I’ve factory reset it a couple times. Some of those errors were with me, but at this point I can’t give it more than 1 star since it simply doesn’t do the most basic functionality of Zwave - Reliably add and remove devices. I do not recommend this.

ZWA-2 fits the bill

Arrived on time, everything in order. Set up and replacing the Aeotec gen 5 controler to ZWA-2 worked well. Great performance.