I’m trying to run away from Smartthings as fast as possible. Its awful now. I cant stand it.
I have a raspberry pi 4 running HA and I’m transitioning products off ST and onto HA ASAP.
What is the preferred method for getting the best support for Inovelli products on HA?
Should I use OpenZwave Integration or the normal Zwave integration?
i was considering the move, but honestly, i dont hate smartthings at all and you are nailing exactly why i didnt make the jump. Do i think HA could be better. yes - but it is also a LOT more work and much less user friendly. There is no device (usb stick) that will just work like ST does with zwave and zigbee. People are talking about msqtt and all this other garbage. it doesnt seem worth it to me.
I dont think ST has changed that much. yes - SHM cant be contolled. yes they are killing off the current echo speaks (new version launching before its sunsetting). yes they will kill groovy. This is ALL for the better of the platform.
This is not what you asked for but i say stick it out and watch the platform get more stable, better, and local. I am literally going to play with my home assistant instance once im done with this post, but i still feel like smartthings is the right main platform for me and by FAR the easiest to use with a ton of functionality.
I’m sure a better answer will come from someone with more knowledge but I’m fairly certain you want Open Zwave and if I recall it needs to be version 1.6 which I think is in the latest update.
The new OZW is the way to go. I’m running HA-core and MQTT and OZW as dockers on unRAID but you can do it on the PI since the supervisor allows you to install all the parts. I’ve been running build 150 for weeks now and it’s been stable for me.
My tack in keeping my sanity with ST is to run as many automations as possible outside of it. SharpTools Rule Engine, WebCore, IFTTT, Life360, etc. If I don’t have to do it in the ST app, I don’t.
Well I moved over just to the normal z wave integration. I’m liking it and not really having any problems.
I initially tried the setup up MQTT and OZW but it was way too complicated for me right now with my experience level with HA and don’t know what benefit it brings.
The inovelli products that I have are the RGBW bulbs and the 2 red dimmers.
Am I only going to get the advanced functionality of the switches (scene control, notifications, control of the RGB strip) with OZW?
Sorry if the answer is a obvious, I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time tweaking with the settings.
What I can see is that ST is becoming more corporate – exacly what one would expect from Samsung. (For example, they updated their mobile presence to be able to track multiple places not just “home”, but that new feature works only on Galaxy devices. There’s no technical reason for that – Location Services works the same across the entire Android platform – it’s just a way for promoting their own “ecosystem”. That doesn’t really bother me, since I use WebCoRE when I need more advanced presence logic, but it demonstrates a particular attitude).
Anyways, it is the killing of Groovy that is a step too far; the ability to run custom code of my own, easily, is not something I am willing to compromise on. So I too am going to run away from SmartThings, but not quite yet: I can wait to see how badly they mess up the sunsetting of the classic app, but I will be moving before they sunset Groovy. I’ve been on the fence between HA and Hubitat, and for me @IseWise is nailing the reasons which I am leaning towards Hubitat. But, frankly, I am going to follow threads like this for both platforms until it’s time to make the jump… better to learn from others’ struggles. 
Can you detail why OZW and MQTT is the way to go? Is there any performance improvement? Better support of Inovelli prodcuts in terms of controlling the RGB strip, or scene scene control?
Genuinely curious, because I really liked the ability with Smartthings that when my house went into “Night” mode. I turned the RGB strips to dark red color to minimize glowing in my bedroom. As of right now i’ve lost that ability with HA but I’m just getting started.
The short version is because the built-in Z-wave integrations is on it’s way to being phased out. I believe they have a plan to make the transition as painless as possible, but if I were starting a new IoT build, I would just go straight to the new version so I don’t have an incoming major change.
Also the default integration is stuck at 1.4 and won’t be updated, which means you have to hack together most of the functionality for all inovelli products. There’s instructions on doing so all around this forum.
For “night mode” you’d have to build that yourself. You’ll want to start playing around with http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8123/developer-tools/service to get familiar with setting things like “light.turn_on” with sub settings of color and brightness. Then you will use those service calls under http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8123/config/automation/dashboard to build a “night mode” that runs various services at sunset.
Thank you for the direct answer. I didn’t know about the phasing out or it not being updated.
I’ve started to look into the services and automations. I understand the general idea of it and I’m sure I could find some How-To’s to complete the tasks I would want to automate.
I was looking at some other forums posts about enabling scene control with the normal Zwave integration. I took a shot at it and wasn’t successful. Sounds like I should probably just abandon it and move toward OZW.
Thanks for the answer.
Is this step still required for scene control as of today? I looked through the XML file and didn’t see the 3 additional lines, but I didn’t want to go editting an xml if it’s not needed.
Yup, will need to make that change if you are on built-in z-wave. The “File Editor” addon is useful for that, but I prefer Notepad++ with a samba connection to the config folder. May have to change some settings in File Editor to be able to see all the files correctly.
I moved over to OZW last night because of your response that it was the future going forward. Got all my Inovelli products associated with the network and working.
I also like Notepad++ and use the samba connection.
I’ll keep reading some forum posts about how to get the “zwave.scene_activated” to register so I can start running some automations.
I edited the zwcfg file to add the additional information to enable scenes and got them working…kinda…
Heres my setup: I have a LZW31-SN dimmer switch in a room with 2 LZW42 bulbs in lamps.
I set up 4 automations in HA: 2x tap up and 2x down to turn on and off 1 bulb, 3x up and down to turn on and off the other bulb.
Somehow the automation is getting passed to both lights regardless if I press 2x or 3x. So if I tap 2x to turn on Lamp “A” both Lamp “A” and “B” turn on. The same for turning them off. 
I triple checked the scene_id and scene_data information in all the automations and the info is unique to each automation.
I checked Developer Tools - Events to see what HA was seeing when I pressed the paddle. I noticed that some of the scenes were “firing” twice but with slightly different data in them. See below:
Event 4 fired 5:50 PM:
{
"event_type": "ozw.scene_activated",
"data": {
"node_id": 15,
"scene_id": 1,
"scene_label": "Scene 1",
"scene_value_id": 0,
"scene_value_label": "Inactive"
},
"origin": "LOCAL",
"time_fired": "2020-09-10T00:50:24.876176+00:00",
"context": {
"id": "9cc1fcd4f2ff11eaa33c21e19ee2658d",
"parent_id": null,
"user_id": null
}
}
Event 3 fired 5:50 PM:
{
"event_type": "ozw.scene_activated",
"data": {
"node_id": 15,
"scene_id": 1,
"scene_label": "Scene 1",
"scene_value_id": 5,
"scene_value_label": "Pressed 3 Times"
},
"origin": "LOCAL",
"time_fired": "2020-09-10T00:50:20.130312+00:00",
"context": {
"id": "99edd2bbf2ff11ea82bb7963257e654a",
"parent_id": null,
"user_id": null
}
}
Anybody have any answer for why it would be behaving like this?
I didn’t manage to get back quickly but it was already covered. The openzwave will be the new version and it is zwave 1.6 so supports the new Inovelli stuff as is.
As for your lighting, you probably have to create some combination of automations and/or scenes that will do what you want. You’re not clear on how those strips work and get turned on and off.
I have motion sensor lights in the kitchen and bathroom that change brightness automatically for day and night. Kitchen lights also don’t come on if it’s bright enough in there.
Here is the automation trigger I’m using for a NZW31 dimmer, the first gen Inovelli dimmer.
trigger:
- event_type: ozw.scene_activated
platform: event
event_data:
node_id: 12
scene_id: 1
scene_value_id: 1
This captures a single tap down.
I have the dimmer setup that a single tap up turns on or off a heat lamp and a single tap down turns on or off a fan. The dimmer internals operate a vanity light on motion only with no ability to control it manually.
The tap up for turning one device on/off is way better than using 2 taps up and down for on and off. I tried that first and it just wasn’t acceptable to me.
I know this is an old thread but I just moved from ST to HA.
Zwave JS is where things are going now with HA, but I decided to use zwavejs2mqtt and zigbee2mqtt. I did have to order a zigbee radio from the uk, and yes there is a bit of a learning curve to get it setup, but it wasn’t that much. I’m also not even using mqtt much right now.
Once I got it setup for the most part, I can say I’m much happier with HA than ST and have so much more control of things. And I don’t even think I’m scratching the surface of what HA is capable of.
This is where I am headed. Waiting on my “HA Blue” to arrive before I start
Things sure changed in a hurry since this thread started. ZwaveJS is the way to go now. I recently switched to the ZwavejsMQTT container and the ZwaveJS addon, so not using the MQTT part. To me, it works about the same as openZwave did but will be better supported in the future so I figured might as well switch.
There are benefits to using MQTT, if you’ve got unsupported devices that don’t transfer through MQTT to HA properly and want to work through handling them yourself.
Hi, OP of this thread.
As the first post reads, I have transitioned off SmartThings and initially I went with OZW. Worked well for me at the time. As everyone knows now, OZW is pretty much dead now. So I had to find another option.
Currently I’m on ZwaveJS2MQTT. I read great things about the webui so I went with this guide
It was really simple and not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. All my zwave products are working well and really fast.
I am eagerly awaiting this latest update in HA for the new service call with zwave for partial parameter configuration.