Question about "Link other Z-Way controller"

[sploff]

Hi,

Have anyone tested the function "Link other Z-Way controller" ?

"List of devices not to import from remote side" only show devices om the master controler. Bugg??

"List of devices imported from remote side (filled automatically)" seems to work but if i exclude and include same device i get blank devices and i cant remove them because they are filled automatically. i dont see the blank devices on remote raspberry. Bugg??

Can anyone test it and see if you get same result?

Thanks

[N2641D]

Hi, Same problem at my end.

My steps:
- added URL to remote side as myIP:8083 as well as http://myIP:8083
- marked the app as active
- entered my Z-Way admin credentials.

Result:
a) List of devices not to import from remote side --> list of all MASTER devices
b) List of devices imported from remote side (filled automatically) --> just the first one of ma MASTER devices

I cannot see anything from my remote side.

Thanks.

[lanbrown]

I use it and it does work. In my case I have six Z-Way systems; five with Z-Wave devices and the sixth that combines all of the devices and this is what Home Assistant polls. You do not need a dedicated system, I just went this route.

For simplistic reasons I will just detail how it works with two systems. One system is the master and the other is the remote. The master system is where you will provide the remote Z-Way system information; IP address, username and password. The remote system will only know of the devices local to it, the master will know of both.

This is why I have a dedicated system to combine five into one. Just to make things easier as if I need to remove a device, it is clear that it is on a remote system.

You can control what devices get imported.

[N2641D]

Hi, just for clarification…. I‘m talking about the Z-Way App „Link other Z-Way Controller“. I have not found a method, that I could see any of the remote devices. My question would be… I understand you have one Z-Way system as master that acts as „data collector“ for the other five systems which contain the Z-Wave devices. Do you see in your master system’s Z-Way interface any of the remote devices?

If yes… This would be strange to me.
If no… The answer to my issue most likely is that the devices are linked, however, the Z-Way UI does not display any of the remote devices.

My guess is that you are able to use that functionality, because you finally use Home Assistant to display/work with the remote devices.

Thanks!

[enbemokel]

If I read Lanbrowns post correct, it is exactly what happens. And so is my understanding, otherwise this function makes no sense.
You have one master system that shows and controls the other 5 client systems.
Sorry, could not test for my own.

[lanbrown]

Hi, just for clarification…. I‘m talking about the Z-Way App „Link other Z-Way Controller“. I have not found a method, that I could see any of the remote devices. My question would be… I understand you have one Z-Way system as master that acts as „data collector“ for the other five systems which contain the Z-Wave devices. Do you see in your master system’s Z-Way interface any of the remote devices?

If yes… This would be strange to me.
If no… The answer to my issue most likely is that the devices are linked, however, the Z-Way UI does not display any of the remote devices.

My guess is that you are able to use that functionality, because you finally use Home Assistant to display/work with the remote devices.

Thanks!

The remote systems do not see anything but the devices on their local controller. Only the master can see the nodes on the remote systems. Consider it a one-way system. Remotes send their devices to the master. The master can also have it own controller and control the devices local to it, the remote systems will not see those devices or devices on other remote systems. So on the master system in my case, it sees all of the devices. Home Assistant has nothing to do with it, I just use one system to bring all the remote systems together and then have that talk to Home Assistant.

I will be changing it where each of the remote systems are doing more of the work. They already run Z-Way in a container as the remote system is already running Home Assistant. So I will be having Z-Way use the local Z-Way integration for Home Assistant and then using the system that allows multiple Home Assistant systems to work together. So I will have one master Home Assistant systems and five remote Home Assistant systems. This will remove one Z-Way system from the setup.

[lanbrown]

For those interested.

Z-Way integration:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zwave_me/

Z-Way add-on:
https://github.com/Z-Wave-Me/ha-z-wave-me-addon

The add-on runs Z-way 4.1.4 in a container under Home Assistant. Nothing is exchanged between the system in my case at the moment. It is just normal Z-Way, but I did discover you cannot do a restore from a non-container Z-Way to Z-Way as the controller is not found and if you try to point it to the right place, it doesn't work. Don't do a restore and it works, you just need to rename devices and put them in the areas. None of this was a big issue for me since I did not do much automation in Z-Way and where I did it was a back-up scenario. Like turning fans on at a certain temp, Home Assistant was what i wanted, and the local Z-Way was 1 or 2 degrees higher.

The change I will be making is installing the integration into the remote systems so Z-Way will be feeding the devices into local system which is currently is not doing. This will not bring the devices into my main Home Assistant system though. I do have HACS installed on all of them for various additional features.

HACS:
https://www.hacs.xyz

With HACS installed I can use this:
https://github.com/custom-components/re ... eassistant

That is the Home Assistant version of what link to other controller in Z-Way does. Why am I doing this instead of using Z-Way? Technically I could put the add-on onto my main Home Assistant system to remove that master Z-Way node, but some previous releases of Z-Way had some stability issues so keeping them separate helped with troubleshooting. The other reason is that I plan on switching some devices. For starters I have some smart locks and there was an integration from HACS for it but it has since started having issues. So I'm just going to replace the locks and the new ones are matter based. So I can install a controller to handle matter devices and I can do that on each Home Assistant system. This will bring them from the remote Home Assistant system to the master Home Assistant system. So it just makes sense to move from the link to other z-way controller to what Home Assistant can do with HACS.

I do run into an issue that if I upgrade the remote Home Assistant systems, that they may not report back to Home Assistant. I need to restart the Z-Way integration. I expect this issue to go away with the new setup and here is why. Z-Way remote system uses HTTP the Z-Way integration while it uses HTTP it makes a connection and looks for updates and doesn't need to to opening a new connection for polling, as it doesn't poll, the remote system sends updates as they happen over the already opened connection. The Remote Home Assistant does the same. So if I upgrade Home Assistant on the remote systems, the integration will connect to the local Z-Way and the master node should also start communicating with the Remote Home Assistant system.

So I will be keeping with Z-Way for Z-Wave devices. Matter/thread devices will be on Home Assistant natively. Home Assistant will be the automation engine behind it all.

Also for those interested. The remote systems are Waveshare systems. They sell a setup that has a metal case and a hole for an antennae. So the Razberry 7 Pro uses the hole for the antennae. I use these:
https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/CM4-POE-UPS-BASE

They are powered via PoE and have battery backup. These also have a NVME slot on the back which I use. Then I have a CM4 lite as I don't need the eMMC, the NVME card is used to boot. These systems reside in the attic so they are out of sight. I do have the slim heatsink that Waveshare sells for the system. You can only use the slim heatsink as anything taller won't allow you to install the Razberry 7 or any card onto the GPIO pins. The system do not overheat even in the summer. I do not use the fan either as you cannot put the fan in and have any card installed on the GPIO pins. I did put a small heatsink on the Razberry 7 Pro. These systems have been in the attic for two or three years now and before I used Rasberry 4B's with a PoE board and Razberry 7 Pro. The Waveshare board is a lot cleaner since PoE is built-in, you get an NVME slot and a UPS all in one.

The remote systems do have 8GB of RAM but only 1.2GB is used and I don't expect the Z-Way integration to use much RAM. CPU is usually around 4%, so plenty of processing power left.

I do have a Prod and Dev Home Assistant system. Right now only the Z-Wave devices are on the Prod system. The Dev will have the Z-Wave systems once I start using the Remote Home Assistant integration. It will also have Matter devices. I do have a Dev remote Home Assistant system using the same Waveshare board, has NVME and a Razberry 7 Pro as well. It will be used to test the latest Home Assistant releases just like the Dev system is currently used for. At time devices from Z-Way stop working on Home Assistant upgrades and then it is fixed by the .2 or .3 release. This will allow be to throughly test Home Assistant releases before upgrading the remote and Prod systems.