Is Leviton moving away from Z-Wave?

[WhiteHat]

Hi

I’ve recently noticed that Leviton Z-wave products seem to becoming hard to purchase. For example, AArtech, one of the best home automotive distributors in Canada, is no longer stocking their products. And  the Leviton website seems to be promoting their Wifi solution over Z-Wave. 
 

Maybe I’m just being paranoid after the Insteon/smartLabs disaster, but after starting to migrate our home from Insteon to Z-Wave last year after my last PLM fried, I’d hate to think I’ve backed the wrong horse a second time. Am I worrying unnecessarily? And if not, is there a quality Z-Wave dimmer anyone would recommend? The GE product was really flakey when I tried it.  
 

Thanks for any suggestions. 

Edited September 11, 2022 by WhiteHat

[oskrypuch]

There are a gazillion Z-Wave producers. Wouldn't worry if one exited the field for their own proprietary network.

I have just dipped into Z-Wave, impressed so far. Using Zooz & Aerotec for the most part.

* Orest

 

Edited September 11, 2022 by oskrypuch

[WhiteHat]

Hi Orest

Thanks for your reply.  There might be a “gazillion Z-Wave producers” but I see only a few that produce dimmers and of those, only two of those are mainstream electrical suppliers that are very likely to be around in 5 years. If one of the top three producers of electrical hardware decides to exit the Z-Wave community, I’d like to know about it. Hopefully I’m wrong, but as I noted early, I was burned by SmartLabs and once burned, twice shy.  

Aeotec is a product I’ve used now for about 5 years and seems reliable. Unfortunately their Dimmer Switch is only compatible with small list of dimmable LED bulbs. It also seems to be available only in white, which in our home is a non-starter. Still I like that they are on Gen7

Zooz is interesting but I can’t seem to find any corporate information, not even a legal company name. Does anyone have any info on who they are and where they are based? And anyone have any multi-year experience using their products? Also they seem to only support white faceplates.  Anyone know if this is the case?

Thanks 

[Dub]

8 hours ago, WhiteHat said:

Also they seem to only support white faceplates.  Anyone know if this is the case?

I haven’t bought any of these but I have a friend who has.  I’m not sure which dimmers you are specifically looking for from Zooz but here are some different color paddles.

https://www.thesmartesthouse.com/products/replacement-color-paddles-for-zooz-700-dimmers-zen72-zen77

 

 

[asbril]

8 hours ago, WhiteHat said:

Hi Orest

Thanks for your reply.  There might be a “gazillion Z-Wave producers” but I see only a few that produce dimmers and of those, only two of those are mainstream electrical suppliers that are very likely to be around in 5 years. If one of the top three producers of electrical hardware decides to exit the Z-Wave community, I’d like to know about it. Hopefully I’m wrong, but as I noted early, I was burned by SmartLabs and once burned, twice shy.  

Aeotec is a product I’ve used now for about 5 years and seems reliable. Unfortunately their Dimmer Switch is only compatible with small list of dimmable LED bulbs. It also seems to be available only in white, which in our home is a non-starter. Still I like that they are on Gen7

Zooz is interesting but I can’t seem to find any corporate information, not even a legal company name. Does anyone have any info on who they are and where they are based? And anyone have any multi-year experience using their products? Also they seem to only support white faceplates.  Anyone know if this is the case?

Thanks 

The home automation is evolving very fast and there is no way to know how long Zwave will persist. The multitude of Zwave manufacturers is good and bad at the same time. It remains a limited market and the more producers there are the more difficult it will be for all of these to be profitable. Zooz is the "star" of the moment as Inovelli was some time ago. Inovelli did not make (enough) money and apparently it is moving away from Zwave to Zigbee. Their new Zigbee switch is at the same time ON/OFF and Dimmer, and also works without Neutral.

I have ignored Zigbee so far as supposedly its  standard was not universal from one manufacturer to another. Now that UD's new board is both Zwave and Zigbee, I assume that Zigbee has become a realistic option. I trust @Michel Kohanim  to know what he is doing, so if he adds Zigbee (*), then I pay attention.

I would not worry too much about the longevity of Zwave. It will be there for a while and as it does not depends on a single hub (like Insteon) your Zwave devices will work for a long time. And.... with Matter on Polisy your devices will work with most other technologies.

Personally, I mostly use GE/Jasco, Homeseer and Zooz devices, but I still have Inovelli devices as well. I used to prefer Inovelli, but the quality and support is not as strong as with other products.

(*) Zigbee was always an option with ISY, but only instead of Zwave, not both at the same time.

[upstatemike]

There are 3 "Deal Breaker" issues with Z-Wave that show no signs of getting addressed:

1- The popcorn effect where groups of devices cannot operate in unison.

2- The lack of keypads where the buttons can be used as switches the way Insteon buttons can. Zooz makes a nice scene controller but all it does is load a value into the central scene and allow some rudimentary associations. If you want to truly keep the buttons and associated LEDs in sync with other switches in a group you are going to be relying on a lot of programming in your controller and even then the results are sub-optimal. Z-Wave simply does not have a command class for keypad buttons that do anything other than trigger scenes.

3- Like Insteon, Z-Wave is a single source technology. You are at the mercy of Silicon Labs for all Z-Wave hardware and they do not appear to be any better than Insteon when it comes to responding to what end users want; focusing instead on catering to the companies who pay the license fees. This allows companies to implement the protocol in a way that promotes brand lock-in if you want to use advanced features and defeats the idea of interoperability between brands except at a very basic level. To be fair though it looks like Matter is heading down this same path with most of the delay in introduction being down to negotiating with participating companies who want to preserve ways to "differentiate" themselves in the market place. This does not mean unique styling or competitive pricing but rather some leeway in implementing the protocol to lock folks into a brand in order to get proprietary features.

Zigbee 3.0 looks like it may solve the popcorn effect problem. At least the demos I have seen of the Inovelli Blue Line switch suggest it will. I am also curious to see what the new Yolink LoRa dimmer can do. Z-Wave however seems to have stopped improving and may be approaching end of life as a competitive protocol.

[lilyoyo1]

35 minutes ago, asbril said:

The home automation is evolving very fast and there is no way to know how long Zwave will persist. The multitude of Zwave manufacturers is good and bad at the same time. It remains a limited market and the more producers there are the more difficult it will be for all of these to be profitable. Zooz is the "star" of the moment as Inovelli was some time ago. Inovelli did not make (enough) money and apparently it is moving away from Zwave to Zigbee. Their new Zigbee switch is at the same time ON/OFF and Dimmer, and also works without Neutral.

I have ignored Zigbee so far as supposedly its  standard was not universal from one manufacturer to another. Now that UD's new board is both Zwave and Zigbee, I assume that Zigbee has become a realistic option. I trust @Michel Kohanim  to know what he is doing, so if he adds Zigbee (*), then I pay attention.

I would not worry too much about the longevity of Zwave. It will be there for a while and as it does not depends on a single hub (like Insteon) your Zwave devices will work for a long time. And.... with Matter on Polisy your devices will work with most other technologies.

Personally, I mostly use GE/Jasco, Homeseer and Zooz devices, but I still have Inovelli devices as well. I used to prefer Inovelli, but the quality and support is not as strong as with other products.

(*) Zigbee was always an option with ISY, but only instead of Zwave, not both at the same time.

ZigBee for the Isy was for energy not HA. They were different standards. ZigBee still has compatibility issues like zwave but it's gotten much better. 

I assume the new ZigBee dongle uses 3.0. if so, other ZigBee HA 3.0 devices should be compatible. 

[lilyoyo1]

9 hours ago, WhiteHat said:

Hi Orest

Thanks for your reply.  There might be a “gazillion Z-Wave producers” but I see only a few that produce dimmers and of those, only two of those are mainstream electrical suppliers that are very likely to be around in 5 years. If one of the top three producers of electrical hardware decides to exit the Z-Wave community, I’d like to know about it. Hopefully I’m wrong, but as I noted early, I was burned by SmartLabs and once burned, twice shy.  

Aeotec is a product I’ve used now for about 5 years and seems reliable. Unfortunately their Dimmer Switch is only compatible with small list of dimmable LED bulbs. It also seems to be available only in white, which in our home is a non-starter. Still I like that they are on Gen7

Zooz is interesting but I can’t seem to find any corporate information, not even a legal company name. Does anyone have any info on who they are and where they are based? And anyone have any multi-year experience using their products? Also they seem to only support white faceplates.  Anyone know if this is the case?

Thanks

What he's trying to say about multiple manufacturers is that long term, you have a greater chance of options. Large mfg. do get out the game themselves (ie: ge sold their lighting division years ago and license the name now). Even if they stay, there's a good chance they'll redesign the switches to keep up with other companies out there. 

Zooz is the house brand for the smartest house automation website(just like insteon was for Smarthome). One good thing about being smaller is that they're more agile than larger ones are. That's why Jasco/get, Eaton and Leviton are/were slow to the 700 Series. Zooz and aeotec will have 800 series devices before all 3 big companies combined. 

If you're looking for longevity, if recommend sitting this it for a few years because you're not going to get it. The way things are catching on, things will change fast and constantly. No one can guarantee anything for 5 years. Look at UDI. The 994 has been around for over 10 years yet UDI is set to release their 2nd controller in 3. Why? Things are changing quickly. Michel even hinted at another potential controller in another 3 years. 

That's not saying you need to abandon what you have (there are people using the 99i). Just that we're no longer in a time where things are set for 10+ years. Companies have to cater to what's new to attract new customers and stay relevant. They can't focus on their existing customers as much as we would like (not saying we don't matter). This means what we have and can do today may not be the case in 5 years. 

Most companies have started moving away from multi colored faceplates as a way to cut costs without raising prices. I know Eaton makes other colors for their devices but they're only 500 series. 

[Brian H]

Years ago when X10 was popular. As Z Wave and Insteon started to take hold. Leviton phased out all of their X10 compatible devices.

They maybe steering their products in a new direction.

[MrBill]

End of July this year, Leviton became the first manufacturer to join Home Assistants new "Works with Home Assistant" initiative.  The post specifically calls out Leviton's Z-wave products.  

(Note: link 1 and 2 are different, both are different HA blog posts.)

[WhiteHat]

Thanks everyone for your comments on my question. I'll give the ZooZ product a try, especially now understand where they are coming from (plus the fact that they have different colour paddles helps the debate with the head decorator in our home).