Starting with Z-Wave: all Z-wave PLUS/Gen5 or mixed?

[john316]

I want to ask the opinion of people who have experience with their Z-Wave network:
Is is better to have a Z-Wave PLUS(Gen5) network ONLY? (instead of mixing 'old' and new?)

Because I'm starting with Z-Wave, I now can choose...

Using Domoticz, I would rather have Fibaro switches (longer on the market and much cheaper) instead of Qubino (expensive and has to prove their reliability) but Fibaro is mostly 'old' gen Z-Wave.

As the Domoticz USB Z-Wave device I think the Aeon Gen5 stick is a good choice?

Any suggestions/tips?

[nayr]

at this point in time your never going to build a very good Z-Wave+ only network.. I dont expect ZWave+ only networks to become a common occurrence for a few more years, at least.

Put Z-Wave+ where you can, but dont let it stop you from deploying a nice network.. The rollout is going to be slow and steady, perhaps in 5 years or so all the old z-wave devices will have Z-wave+ equivalents... perhaps.

They are fully backwards compatible, and until this transition period is over most of the benefits of Z-Wave+ will be hard to notice, but if you buying a Z-Wave device and looking at Gen2 or Gen5, well duh get the Gen5... but to be Gen5 only at this point would really limit your choices, part of choosing Z-Wave is having more options than the others.. Having said that, I am still buying some old gen sensors because the new Gen5 version has made the old one's so damn cheap its worth it... $20 for a whole house energy monitor? hell yeah.

The only thing I would hesitate about buying that was not Z-Wave+/Gen5 at this point would be, Controller and Door Locks basically for the stronger crypto. I might think about Gen5 perimeter security sensors, but I buy ones with dry contacts and can use them for all sorts of other stuff when I decide to harden the perimeter. I was ready to install Z-Wave locks a few months back but decided to wait until the existing devices are released with support for Z-Wave+/Gen5, I suspect im in for a long wait. I am happy with my Aeon USB Gen2 controller, I probably wont be compelled to upgrade until those locks start appearing.. I have a few Gen5 devices now, but I dont expect to ever be fully Gen5+ only.. and thats okay with me.. in my network everything can already talk directly to the controller, even stuff outside dont need to relay through anything else.. so I suspect a mixed generation network will run pretty well in my case.

There is nothing wrong with the old z-wave and there is a ton of stuff out there for it, except the security is pretty weak by modern standards.. Id hesitate before using it for access control, but for everything else its kinda mooot.. yeah you just broadcasted the lights got turned on, but if the room has a window.. you were going to do that one way or another.. nobody wants to hack your z-wave network to turn your lights on and off, they would hack your z-wave network to unlock the front door and disable all the perimeter security.. but then again who's going to do that when a swift kick to the door will get the job done with no technical skills needed.

[john316]

Thank you very much, very helpful indeed.

I was a little affraid mixing the two types of Zwave versions would 'weaken' the total Zwave network, rendering the ZWave+ benefits useless.
My Domoticz system and Zwave Aeon Gen5 USB stick will be placed at the center of the house so hopefully not much signal hopping is needed.

I now have to decide which roller shutter switches to buy, Fibaro or Qubino but I now can focus on reliability. More reading to do...

[Gravityz]

i had the same questions
since there was no fibaro zwaveplus yet i settled for the regular plug.

as far as i can see th fibaro plug works better in routing the data to a module far away then a zwave plus dimmer from fibaro(FGD-212)

so yes zwaveplus is probably better but it does not mean regular zwave performs worse.

in my case the zwave plug is able to reach a module far away while the dimmer module is not.
maybee because the plug does routing

[svenker]

Hello,

I have the USB Z-Wave.me controller (very small) which is a PLUS one and it works extremely well with all my network (40 devices) which is mainly Z-Wave Fibaro and a few Z-Wave Plus ones.

I can see a longer range with the new USB dongle versus the old one. Except of no, NO difference...

I recommend to mix and it will work just fine.

Sam

[teha]

So there is a catch

Z-Wave Plus is backward compatible with Z-Wave , so when the Z-Wave Plus - compatible devices included in a Z-Wave network will work, but will not be able to utilize the benefits of Z-Wave Plus.

All this sounds very good , right? There's a catch!, and that is that you can only take advantage of all the benefits of all devices on the network , including Controller , Z-Wave Plus-certified. This is due to the mesh technology a z-wave device can't reley z-wave plus information

Personally I have started with mainly 433MHz devices and only tested z-wave in a small scale (AEON stick and 3 devices) I will probably replace my units with z-wave plus devices before I invest in more hardware, If I can't find a z-wave plus device I need I rather try to find a work around with a 433 MHz (or other)

However someone can maybe fill in this scenario:
Can I add another RPi with a z-wave plus stick to build a 2nd z-wave plus network or will the 2 different z-wave network interfear? if so I allready know that several Domoticz can work very good together and then I can yse a z-wave for home automation and z-wave plus for sercurity device (doorlock, alarmfeature and so)

[raym]

I've run 2 independent Z-Wave networks for quite some time and never had an issue.

[juankar]

Well if you use ZWave Plus in all your network you get the benefits of this technology, but if you have old ZWave devices (not Plus) then your network will work as ZWave (old). Remember Zwave net is like a chain (a mesh indeed), it is only as strong as the strongest link. So the speed of the net will be the speed of ZWave not Zwave plus.
Greater ranges, update of firmware and less power consumtion are advantages that can benefit, but the higher speed not at all.
Therefore the first element in your net, the controller, must be GEN5 if you want to take advantage of the higher speed in all your net, or part of it if you use any old Zwave device.