Large home installation planning - Z wave vs. UPB lighting

[macrho]

The latest z-wave beta fixed some flickering I was seeing in my lights. The rest of the switches are getting installed later this week -- all of my lights will be controlled via the new HS switches with the exception of 3 areas where I have overhead fans these are controlled via Insteon

[Pete]

Relating to UPB; here utilize PCS, HAI and SA.

All of the newer UPB switches are SA. I have automated many of the toggles on the multi toggle switches these days for scenes and utilize single and double clicks for hard dim settings these days.

For occupancy stuff (which really sort of works but not) I utilize wired Rokonet ceiling mounted PIRs which are separate from the wall mounted PIRs. I did shut off the follow me lighting due to WAF.

I still today have to justify or explain why a $50 plus automated switch is better than a $10 mechanical switch these days.

Years ago would only purchase black multimedia equipment that fit in black wooden shelves such that new equipment was never noticed.

[Patholoraptor]

Large home installation planning - Z wave vs. UPB lighting

Years ago would only purchase black multimedia equipment that fit in black wooden shelves such that new equipment was never noticed.

This is hilarious. I definitely need something with a high WAF but I hadn't thought of this tactic.

[Pete]

There isn't much today as everything is virtual; so really you just need one AVR.

Video and audio are streamed from the NAS or Internet.

I did keep a few older audio pieces around; guess being nostalgic. Nakamichi Dragon is still here along with an Akai stacked reel to reel tape recorder (except not in the family room).

[TomTom]

I have z wave for several years at my second home, with 80 some devices, for several years. I went into z wave when x-10 was the dominant.
For my primary home ( I moved to new place) I'm playing the waiting game. I'm still going with z wave but still deciding on the brand. I will need about 75 light switches( most likely HS), 25 motion sensors( aeon), outlets( ?), and 15 door sensors( aeon). Just waiting to have all the HS light switch bugs worked( so far only 1) which seems to be fixed.


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[Guest]

I have z wave for several years at my second home, with 80 some devices, for several years. I went into z wave when x-10 was the dominant.
For my primary home ( I moved to new place) I'm playing the waiting game. I'm still going with z wave but still deciding on the brand. I will need about 75 light switches( most likely HS), 25 motion sensors( aeon), outlets( ?), and 15 door sensors( aeon). Just waiting to have all the HS light switch bugs worked( so far only 1) which seems to be fixed.


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Did you decide on your switches?

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[TomTom]

I haven't been on here for awhile now, but Ive tried to keep up with new devices being released. Ive been bought motion, door sensors, and smokes but still haven't gotten around to buying the switches yet. At first I was going to go with all hs or ge/jasco, but now I'm thinking about a mix. Some will be hs for most commonly used areas and where I'm most likely to use multiple click solutions. For upstairs and non frequent areas I'll go with Dragontech(paddle style which looks like he and hs) and zooz( toggle style). In some rooms I won't be able change existing toggles out to paddle style so for those I'll use the zooz. In my former primary home, now vacation, I used only GE as it was the infancy of zwave, but since then I've used ecolink, monoprice devices, and go control/linear without any issues. So I feel the dragontech and zooz will serve me well based on reviews I've read. Hope this helps.

[aptalca]

I haven't been on here for awhile now, but Ive tried to keep up with new devices being released. Ive been bought motion, door sensors, and smokes but still haven't gotten around to buying the switches yet. At first I was going to go with all hs or ge/jasco, but now I'm thinking about a mix. Some will be hs for most commonly used areas and where I'm most likely to use multiple click solutions. For upstairs and non frequent areas I'll go with Dragontech(paddle style which looks like he and hs) and zooz( toggle style). In some rooms I won't be able change existing toggles out to paddle style so for those I'll use the zooz. In my former primary home, now vacation, I used only GE as it was the infancy of zwave, but since then I've used ecolink, monoprice devices, and go control/linear without any issues. So I feel the dragontech and zooz will serve me well based on reviews I've read. Hope this helps.

I would go for hs over ge/jasco simply for instant status. Not having to set polling on the hs switches is really nice. Not only it's a lot more reliable, but it also reduces network transmissions significantly.

[Kerat]

Large home installation planning - Z wave vs. UPB lighting

I am pretty new to HA ( I started about 7 months ago). I run HS3 standard for linux on a RPI3. I went with HS3 based on the recommendation of a friend, in order to forgo any headaches with the controllers programming and cloud hosted systems. I went with an RPI running Linux in order to minimize power consumption (RPI system runs a 12v 2.5a max of 30 watts) and to keep my Linux skills up.

I went with z-wave as my interface of choice on the recommendation of a good friend. I also have only used GE (jasco) and HS switches, dimmers, and addon switches. I have only used ecolink PIRs. And I have a few of the latest aeotech smart switch and dimmers 6s, as well as an outdoor GE outdoor plug. I also have a Trane z-wave thermostat.

In total I have some 30 physical z-wave devices (200 total devices), 100 events, and 6 plugins running inside HS3, and a dozen or so supporting applications running on the Linux OS. I work very hard to keep the system resource overhead low in order to keep HS3 purring.

I have only had a handful of problems with z-wave and with the help of friends and the forums, was able to resolve them.
1. GE addon switches connected to GE dimmer don't automatically update the device if you power in or off from them. I resolved this by moving to the latest HS dimmers.
2. At first some of my GE switches and dimmers wouldn't instant update in the application. This was resolved by ensuring that they connect directly to the root z-wave transceiver.
3. Motion detection seemed delay at times in areas I needed to trigger an event on motion. This was resolved by putting the Ecolink PIR into test mode.
4. Some battery devices didn't seem to update regularly. The was resolved by making the battery devices polling interval is less than the root device's wake interval.

As far as reliability is concerned my equipment has been rock solid since working through the above problems. The equipment just works.
The only time i have automation down is when I bring my server down to take an image backup of the flash media (after I add devices, plugins, or events). Note, I also take nightly backups of my HS3 root directory JIC.
Honestly, my experience with z-wave has been very good. I will say that I come from a technical background and have to deal with projects often. Murphy's law is strong when you don't perform due diligence during your planning and testing. Whenever I make changes to my system I try to fully test changes before fully rolling them out and try to have a well developed back out plan if things go wrong.


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[sparkman]

I haven't been on here for awhile now, but Ive tried to keep up with new devices being released. Ive been bought motion, door sensors, and smokes but still haven't gotten around to buying the switches yet. At first I was going to go with all hs or ge/jasco, but now I'm thinking about a mix. Some will be hs for most commonly used areas and where I'm most likely to use multiple click solutions. For upstairs and non frequent areas I'll go with Dragontech(paddle style which looks like he and hs) and zooz( toggle style). In some rooms I won't be able change existing toggles out to paddle style so for those I'll use the zooz. In my former primary home, now vacation, I used only GE as it was the infancy of zwave, but since then I've used ecolink, monoprice devices, and go control/linear without any issues. So I feel the dragontech and zooz will serve me well based on reviews I've read. Hope this helps.

Hi Tom, from what I understand, Dragon Tech has discontinued their switches.

Cheers
Al


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[TomTom]

I would go for hs over ge/jasco simply for instant status. Not having to set polling on the hs switches is really nice. Not only it's a lot more reliable, but it also reduces network transmissions significantly.

I may end up doing that( going with hs). Having said that I believe ge switches are capable of instant status also. I could be wrong but I used to get instant status few years ago on my ge switches until an hs update one day. At that time we were informed the there was a patent on instant status and that couldn't be used any longer. the only way around that polling the switch when a status change was detected by hs- so I didn't really suffer too much when I didn't have instant status and had a lot of devices (80 or so). I believe intant status is not an issue for any device maker as of last February when the patent ran out.

[TomTom]

Hi Tom, from what I understand, Dragon Tech has discontinued their switches.

Cheers
Al


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Good to hear from you Al! Just haven't had time since I moved to be on here. Kerat thanks for the info about hs switches!

[Kerat]

Large home installation planning - Z wave vs. UPB lighting

I may end up doing that( going with hs). Having said that I believe ge switches are capable of instant status also. I could be wrong but I used to get instant status few years ago on my ge switches until an hs update one day. At that time we were informed the there was a patent on instant status and that couldn't be used any longer. the only way around that polling the switch when a status change was detected by hs- so I didn't really suffer too much when I didn't have instant status and had a lot of devices (80 or so). I believe intant status is not an issue for any device maker as of last February when the patent ran out.

Agreed, I have not noticed much trouble recently with instant status. One thing I have noticed works with the GE/Jasco and HS dimmers and switches was in each z-wave device, set the next hop route to be the root z-wave transceiver. I have not had to do it the last few times I have added z-wave devices as all of my most recent devices have all automatically set themselves to this.


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[sparkman]

I may end up doing that( going with hs). Having said that I believe ge switches are capable of instant status also. I could be wrong but I used to get instant status few years ago on my ge switches until an hs update one day. At that time we were informed the there was a patent on instant status and that couldn't be used any longer. the only way around that polling the switch when a status change was detected by hs- so I didn't really suffer too much when I didn't have instant status and had a lot of devices (80 or so). I believe intant status is not an issue for any device maker as of last February when the patent ran out.

Hi Tom, good to see you here. All settled in? HS uses a pseudo instant status with the GE switches. The switches don't support instant status, but do send out a packet when they are controlled locally. HS will poll the switch when it sees that packet. From what I understand, this particular packet does not get forwarded by other zwave devices, so if the switch is not in direct range of the controller, then this pseudo-instant status does not work.

Cheers
Al