Best recommended hardware and practice

[Zebedoux]

Hello Forum compadres,

I promise, I have done some scouring of the forum for this information first but I hope it will be useful to ask ( and I hope have answered definitively and up-to-date :-

Please could anyone give a best choice / best practice for setting up on Raspberry Pi from scratch ?

I have a rev 2.1 Z-wave.me board which I have not been using recently ( and having forgotten passwords, it's time for a reinstall )
I have Raspberry 3B, 4 and 5 here so I have that choice.

But then there isn also the choice of 32bit vs 64bit versions of the OS - I see some discussion, coming down on the side of 32 bit.

The instructions say ( recommended ) that one should have "Jessie" installed and then install the Z-wave server. I'm guessing, hoping that that is just an old manual.

In short, it's hard to decipher what is the up-to-date best practice.

My guess would be to stay on a Raspberry 3B for a better chance of time having ironed things out.
And then ... 32 bit Bookworm or Bullseye ( have to admit, that is a search I didn't do on this forum ).

Since starting to write this, I have seen and started reading the Helpdeskeddy pages which look good, and a thread about 64 bit Bookworm installation on Pi 5. But I think my shout out / plea for the latest and best still stands.

Any guidance would be much appreciated.

[seattleneil]

Regarding hardware, I suggest using either a Pi 3B or Pi 4, with a 32bit OS. I don't have a Pi 5 so I can't provide a recommendation about a Pi 5.

The least complicated method (IMHO) is if you have a virgin Pi - you can download an SD card image from Z-Wave.me that includes the Pi OS and Z-way here:

Code: Select all

https://z-wave.me/z-way/download-z-way/

Since my level of linux is pretty good, the approach I use is to install the official Pi OS 32-bit bookworm image and then add Z-Way on top of a bookworm. The link for the OS is:

Code: Select all

https://downloads.raspberrypi.com/raspios_lite_armhf/images/raspios_lite_armhf-2024-11-19/2024-11-19-raspios-bookworm-armhf-lite.img.xz

To add Z-Way, follow to instructions here:

Code: Select all

https://z-wave.me/z-way/download-z-way/

Note that bookworm and Z-Way package will need to be tweaked - follow the instructions in this thread:

Code: Select all

https://forum.z-wave.me/viewtopic.php?f=3422&p=99574

Good luck!

[Zebedoux]

Wonderful, thank you Neil.

I am in learning mode , so I am going to do it your way ... in fact, I am more than halfway there already.

[lanbrown]

If you really wanted to get adventurous and are looking to use Home Assistant, there is the path to help future proof the setup. Z-Way is still used, but installed differently. You install Home Assistant which you can from the Raspberry Pi imager. Home Assistant is an option. Mount the SD card back into the system that you imaged it with and in the boot file make the same changes you would on a fresh Raspberry OS install to disable the BT. Put the SD card back into the Pi, let it boot and get Home Assistant ready. Then add the Z-Way add-on for Home Assistant:
https://github.com/Z-Wave-Me/ha-z-wave-me-addon

Once it is installed and you start it, you have Z-Way at the same IP address as Home Assistant but instead of port 8123 for Home Assistant, Z-Way is at the standard 8083 port. If you ever want to start using Home Assistant you can then use the Z-Way integration which is also listed at the same above link. That will bring the Z-Way devices into Home Assistant.

Outside of the Razberry Z-Wave controller being backed up, I have Home Assistant do a full backup of Home Assistant every day. This would include the Z-Way add-on.

A caveat, when I tried to restore from a Z-Way backup running on a Raspberry Pi to it running as the add-on, it didn't work and caused issues. The good news, it did know of the devices from the controller, but any rules, automation and rooms that are setup would not.

[Zebedoux]

Hi Ian,

Thank you, I do indeed want to get adventurous and do want to use Home Assistant.

In fact, the other day, I was 'bickering' with chatGPT about this ( silly I know, if only because it is so not up-to-date ) ... Anyway, it said that Z-way and HA served basically the same function and that you didn't need Z-way to control z-wave stuff in HA.

Clearly, that isn't the case and I'm sure I'll find out about the finer details very soon and look forward to it !

I'm actually here on my second re-install of z-way because my HA SD card ( from the imager, in the way that you said ) failed to boot at all ... I suspect it didn't like the way that I edited the config file.

[lanbrown]

There are plug-ins for Home Assistant and Z-Wave devices. You have three options which Z-Way being one of them for Z-Wave devices. The other two options are a little more integrated into Home Assistant than Z-Wave. I will say this, when something goes wrong, Z-Way has much better tools to see what is going on with the Z-Wave network than the other two options. So while you can have both Home Assistant and Z-Way running on the same system, they are more or less, virtualized. So same system, different programs running. They just communicate with each other.

I have five systems plus a sixth test system running Home Assistant with Z-Way running as a docker.

Here is one of the other options other than Z-Way:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zwave_js/