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.

  • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukMEnglish
    1·
    17 hours ago

    Is there a particular reason you want to put your z-wave controller on the network, rather than just plugging it into the proxmox hardware? (Assuming I’ve read your post correctly). Are you looking to do high availability on the VM or something?

    I found running HAOS in a VM, and passing through USB devices worked really well, and I just bought the bog-standard z-wave dongle from Aeotec.

    • IsoKieroOPEnglish
      1·
      16 hours ago

      Sort of high availability. I don’t really have the hardware right now for proper high availability setup, but I have a spare laptop running proxmox which I use for pihole and other ‘network critical’ stuff when doing maintenance for the main server. I don’t have any doubts about passtrough working, I’d just like to have flexibility on the environment and thus it’d be nice to have z-wave controller on ethernet.

      But I think I’ll end up with ZWA-2, I’ll just use usb hub or something to make it physically easier to move HAOS VM between different hardware.

      • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukMEnglish
        1·
        13 hours ago

        To be honest, part of the reason I leaned towards having the radios on the same box, was simplicity.
        I have a box, with a VM, VM is backed up, new box could be stood up if needed and restored from a backup.
        The other was, when I knock over the network (don’t ask…), I don’t lose logged data from the various sensors.

        If you did want to be able to fail over quickly, so long as you make the USB device paths match (ie, have them on the same device in proxmox), you should be able to swap things over inside 10 minutes.

        • IsoKieroOPEnglish
          1·
          8 hours ago

          Yeah, it’s not really a problem when I’m at home, but there are times when I’m not physically nearby the hardware and on those cases it’d be nice to have option to migrate HA to different hardware on the fly.

          Also having z-wave controller on ethernet would make it a bit easier to position antenna in the middle of everything, my server isn’t the centerpiece of our living room after all.

  • Passerby6497@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    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.

    Ha! I actually have exactly what you want ,TubeZB has a dual zigbee/zwave PoE network controller.

    I had a zigbee only model from a few years ago that I’m currently swapping this one for, and I’ve got no complaints about the product

    • IsoKieroOPEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Well that’s exactly what I asked for. Pretty neat thing at least on quick read up. Unfortunately the customs situation with shipments from USA to Finland (or EU in general) is a mess right now, so I wont dig up my visa card at least immediately. I need to study a bit what’s actually the situation today (and hope that it doesn’t change again after few days).

      • Passerby6497@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 day ago

        Ooof, yeah shipping anything in/out of burgerstan is painful right now. But I will say, the owner is a pretty cool dude and he might be willing to let you know where to source the components he uses to build his units. Looks like it’s basically just a PoE rpi, the zigbee and zwave modules, and a daughter board to connect the modules to the rpi, along with a 3d printed case

        • IsoKieroOPEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          I assume it’s the usual suspects, as in aliexpress and ebay for the components. Or quality ones from mouser/something. I’m just not in the market for yet another DIY project right now, there’s plenty of unfinished ones around, like adding sensors and IR transmitter to garage for heat pump control and temperature monitoring with esp32.

  • doogstar@lemmy.100010101.xyzEnglish
    2·
    2 days 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.

    • IsoKieroOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days 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.

    • IsoKieroOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days 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
    2·
    2 days 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?

    • IsoKieroOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days 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.