New to Z-wave

[jkraus]

Hi, have large system with Insteon devices, just stated exploring z-wave.  I have an on/off Dome switch with energy monitoring, and supposedly that works as an extender.  It only works about 20ft from my isy, so despite recently ordering a new Dome motion sensor, I was wondering the advantages of zwave vs insteon.  Insteon works over wire and wireless, so seems to be a much better performer.  What is the attraction of Zwave?  Just the different device you can get?  with the motion sensor locate in garage a good 60ft away, would I need a lot of extenders?  Any extenders work through the wire, or are they all wireless?

 

Thnaks much

Joe

[mwester]

Roughly in order:

 

- The ISY with the new series dongle installed is a very poor performer in terms of RF range.  Resolve this by ensuring it has a repeater within a dozen feet (unobstructed) of the ISY.  

- The attraction of z-wave is controversial, at least on this forum.  You will undoubtedly see posts on this thread shouting loudly how your experience "proves" the absolute superiority of Insteon above all else, and "proves" that z-wave is dreadful in every conceivable way (we've all had these arguments).  The attraction of z-wave, in my experience, is that it does NOT suffer from the Insteon "All-On" bug, it appears to have a long-term future whilst that of Insteon remains in doubt, it has a diversity of devices while Insteon has actually been "pruning" some of their more interesting devices out of the product line.  In addition, Z-Wave has multiple vendors, which is both good and bad (you can buy utter crap z-wave devices, you can buy excellent quality devices -- with Insteon, you generally get excellent quality devices, with a couple of exceptions where you have no choice in the matter at all (e.g. PLM, and the shoddy new plug-in modules).  Both technologies have their propagation advantages and disadvantages -- Insteon's power-line technology was great, but as switching power-supplies become ubiquitous, that's becoming less and less effective.  Insteon's RF is good, but suffers from the fact that it is synced to the power-line, and power-line noise can render the RF unable to function correctly.  Z-Wave's mesh doesn't have that sync problem, but it features a royal PITA requirement to manually re-establish the mesh every time something changes -- and there's NO means to avoid RF (i.e. one cannot put the z-wave signal on the powerline, the way Insteon does).  Finally, for those who care, Insteon has no security (neither obscurity nor lack of documentation is good security!) -- Z-Wave does, and that's critical for door locks and garage door openers... but it adds to the pain of getting the pairing set up, and keeping the mesh healthy.

- While the diversity of devices on Z-Wave is an important factor (you can't get a door lock, nor a proper garage door opener at all for Insteon, plus the water valve kits, and similar are just more interesting), for me personally, the lack of reliable Insteon communications has driven me to a long-term strategy to replace most of my Insteon devices with Z-Wave.  I can forgive a lot of things, but erratic behavior of Insteon in the most-often-used places in the house affects not just me, but the entire family.  And when given the ultimatum that either I fix the issues, or my home automation gets replaced with "plain old ordinary but RELIABLE" wall switches, well, I am forced to find alternatives (I no longer have anything more that can be plugged into filterlincs... and I've even got filters on my wired-in appliances!)  So, this is not a switch I wanted to make, but one forced upon me by the realities of modern power-lines and Insteon's inability (be it technology limitations, or economic limitations -- I suspect the latter) to update the protocol and signaling to be more resilient to switching supplies on the power-lines.

- Since Z-Wave is all RF, and like Insteon on the same 900MHz band, the signals propagate in the same manner.  Sixty feet is not a stretch by any means.  Assuming your Dome is an always-on device, and of course your ISY is an always-on device, the presence of a strategically-located repeater about 10 to 12 feet away from the ISY with as few obstructions (and no metal obstructions) between it and the ISY and between it and the Dome should be all you need to establish a reliable (but very small) mesh.  Note that if you have metal electrical boxes, and install a in-the-wall switch or outlet, that device cannot be considered a viable repeater!  It will certainly attempt to repeat what it hears, but you'll find its signal is far less than the same device in plug-in form that's not "sealed off" by a metal box.  As an example, by manually inspecting the mesh formed by my z-wave devices, I have a number of links that are 50' and longer.  On the other hand, I have a few troublesome devices that are installed among the pipes and wires down in the utility room with the metal water heater, furnace, backup boiler, etc -- they highlight another z-wave problem which is that they make very poor repeaters buried down there among all that metal, but there's no way for me to tell the ISY's dongle that they should not be part of the mesh!  So, physical location matters far more when it comes to Z-Wave than it does with Insteon.  And did I say that the manual mesh mechanism in Z-Wave is a royal pain??

- There are no wired Z-Wave extenders that work with the ISY.  Yet.

[oberkc]

I am mostly a fan of the ISY-994 , rather than insteon or zwave.  Given this, I tend to prefer the way insteon works with the ISY and what I believe tobe a more robust scene relationship among the devices.  Having said this, I cannot help bit notice that things are pretty quiet in the insteon world and want another path forward should something happen to insteon.  For me, this is zwave.  Besides, there are some zwave devices that are not available in insteon (and vice versa) so having both options seems like nothing but an advantage.

Besides, sometimes one can run across a steal deal on a zwave device at lowes.

[lilyoyo1]

There's quite a few debates on this subforum about insteon and zwave. I would recommend reading them as it will give you a good picture of people's feelings towards zwave. 

As MWester pointed out, the 2 camps are pretty divided. Im opposite of him in that I prefer insteon for my lights and zwave for everything else. If I had the experience with Insteon that he had, I would probably feel the same way but with the way zwave works, I probably would've gone with Control4 for my lighting. 

As an Insteon user, you already know the pros and cons so I won't go into much detail with them. While you can't go wrong with either protocol, zwave is funky to me. From the popcorn effect to parameters, it feels like a 2 bit automation system. This is mostly the mfg. fault as they all support different things in different ways. This has improved tremendously over time but still lags behind insteon to a great degree. Especially in simplicity.

I say simple because with Insteon, you buy a switch, link it to another device and it turns on/off, shows status etc. Cut and dry (barring comm issues). With zwave, before you buy a switch, you have to ensure it has scene support otherwise it's just a remote controled switch. 

Some products are sold to do specific Jobs. However, in order to do what they were designed to do, you'll need to go online to find the owners manual, find the correct parameters to enable the features. What works for device A isn't the same for device B from someone else. 

My biggest gripe is the popcorn effect. Turn a device on/off with Insteon, they all respond in sync. Different led bulbs may respond differently but the devices themselves operate as 1. With zwave, there is a pronounced off/on sequence in random order. It could be switch A,B,C,D,E ir it could be B,E,D,A,C the next time. 

In my experience zwave's range isn't that great. Granted, I use only embedded devices (in plastic boxes) but I've found its generally no more than 20 feet Max (give or take). The 40' plus range is more of an exception than the rule. Plug in devices most likely would give greater range. However, I'm hard pressed to see someone getting more than 50-60' out of them regularly. I hate wall worts so I take lesser range to avoid it. House construction and so forth plays a major part in this. 

I'm not going to go into details about insteon's future as MWester pointed out. We've been hearing that for the last 10 years. More zwave companies have shut down in the past year than insteon (and we know there is only 1 insteon). Companies close. Insteon will eventually. My switches will still work so it doesn't matter. I'd still be good for the next 5 years if that happened tomorrow. 

Zwave does have security built in which insteon does not. However, in all these years, it's never been "hacked" in the wild. The fact that insteon doesn't have locks and is not an alarm system (nor do I use it as such), minimizes my need for such. Besides, most people don't even use the encryption since it slows down the network. Couple that with the fact that a rock through my window (or a size 12 boot through the door) is much faster than hacking anyway. 

[jkraus]

Thanks so much for the very lengthy and informative responses.  I will play around with z-wave and see how I like it, but all my critical devices will stay Insteon for now.

 

Thanks

Again

[simplextech]

Resident experts have already provided lots of info.  I hope you don't mind me sharing my opinion.  I recently (6 months or so?) transitioned all of my lighting from Z-Wave to Insteon.  Prior my whole home was Z-Wave with a smattering of Zigbee and Wifi and I was running HomeSeer predominantly.  I tired of the inconsistencies of lighting and popcorn effect of not JUST lighting but also with wall outlets (think holiday season and decoration lighting).  I still have quite a lot of z-wave devices and I do still run HomeSeer for some things that are not yet migrated to ISY because a nodeserver does not yet exist (working on them  ).  

For me Insteon was a great choice for the lighting and the keypads and fan controllers are excellent for my uses and for family friendliness of being able to easily turn on fans from a keypad that says "high, medium, low" which is far more intuitive than a multi-click z-wave switch.  I still use z-wave thermostat's and z-wave plugs for power metering where I want it and I still have some zigbee and wifi devices.  All in all I think my point is there's no single one-tech fits all of my requirements and mine aren't that much different than most I think.  

I'm looking forward to decorating this year and doing that setup as I now have Insteon Outlet's in the normal decoration lighting areas so I'm hoping for that nice sequence of all on at once this year instead of the here, there, wait for it... wait... oh now it's on... effect from z-wave.

[asbril]

9 hours ago, mwester said:

- There are no wired Z-Wave extenders that work with the ISY.  Yet.

New Zwave Plus (non-battery) devices are all extenders. That is why I would not recommend to buy Zwave Extenders or Sirens (as some suggest). Just use a Zwave Plus plug-in device and it work as an extender, as well as give you control of (as an example) a lamp.

[simplextech]

3 minutes ago, asbril said:

as well as give you control of (as an example) a lamp.

And my electric blanket

 

[asbril]

Just now, simplextech said:

And my electric blanket

We don't need these in South Florida

 

[larryllix]

On the popcorn note...
I have acquired 25 MagicHome-like WiFi (<$10 each) RGBWW lamps that I wrote my own code on a RPi to bridge between ISY NRs and WiFi. The 14 bulbs I have installed on my outside warp-around deck, I have divided into three groups, including every third bulb. When I turn them I turn on each group at a time to avoid so much popcorn effect.

This three groups also allows me to diplay various themes in lighting on my porch and decks. For Christmas I use a red, green and dimmed white repeated around the building. For Halloween I use two deep purple, and one orange, repeated, etc...
For lots of fun, I wrote a sequencer to rotate each bulb colour one about 50 times, so it appears the light colours are moving...….just to annoy the neighbours. I am still thinking of better ways to flash my outside lights yet.

Alexa. Turn on deck party lights!
Alexa turn on deck rotation!

Hopefully this will save me some Christmas lighting installation time and effort this year.    Let the animations begin!!    

[larryllix]

3 minutes ago, simplextech said:

And my electric blanket

 

I used X10 dimmers for my electric blanket years back. It gives a very nice softer heat for later in the night once you get the bed warmed up. You can base it on the motion detection counts. If you are restless, or warm for other  reasons,  you will toss and turn more.

[lilyoyo1]

29 minutes ago, asbril said:

New Zwave Plus (non-battery) devices are all extenders. That is why I would not recommend to buy Zwave Extenders or Sirens (as some suggest). Just use a Zwave Plus plug-in device and it work as an extender, as well as give you control of (as an example) a lamp.

All hardwired zwave devices act as repeaters (except bulbs). The main thing you want is beaming capabilities (if using locks or other wireless devices. So devices just work better than others. I do agree with dual use though. It's a waste of money to get a one trick pony.