Seeking Advice:

[toggledbits]

Those of you on HA with Z-Wave, you might consider adding ZWaveJSController to your Reactor configuration. While it seems redundant at first, HA hides a lot of detail and functionality in its integration that I can expose and use by directly talking to ZWave-JS in Reactor. And it doesn't interfere with the HA integration with ZWave-JS, it operates in parallel with it. There is a lot of device support I have yet to provide (I don't and can't own every device to test myself), but it has mechanisms now (as do all controllers as of a couple of builds ago) where you can just download and place a ZIP file to enhance or correct device support, no "forklift upgrades".

[Pabla]

@toggledbits I use ZWaveJsUI (Formerly known as ZWaveJs2MQTT) will it still work correctly? Is the main purpose of the Reactor Z wave controller just to expose some extra actions, capabilities, attributes etc? I haven’t run into any missing Z wave actions yet but good to know for the future.

[toggledbits]

@pabla said in Finally gave up on my Ezlo Plus:

I use ZWaveJsUI (Formerly known as ZWaveJs2MQTT) will it still work correctly?

That's exactly what it uses.

@pabla said in Finally gave up on my Ezlo Plus:

Is the main purpose of the Reactor Z wave controller just to expose some extra actions, capabilities, attributes etc?

The goal was to create a native ZWave integration, so you could run Reactor as a ZWave hub without HA, Hubitat, Vera, etc. As such, it needs to access and expose everything. I will be doing the same for ZigBee at some point.

[mrFarmer]

Still reading the forum, but mainly busy with serious reconstruction work on the house (bathroom and two rooms to go). Once that dust settles I am sure I will be more active again. Ezlo is powerd off, Hubitat slowly taking over (has its own short comings, but zwave does not seem one of them). MSR provides a key function to make that transfer simpler. openLuup still key in keeping it all running.
Keep up the good work.

Cheers Rene

[Cadwizzard]

With regret, my three Vera controllers (VeraSecure and VeraPlus) are now in a cupboard. It's been such a shame to see the support for vera drop to impossible from being able to get someone on the phone straight away over the years. A firmware update (official) killed one of them and support didnt replace it. EZLO secure never came to the UK.
I've been with vera since vera3 and had a LOT of automations in PLEG and Reactor on that platform.
Updates were few, and the hugely contributing people on the forums telling Vera/Ezlo support how to fix things often got banned when they raised concerns.

They had so much good potential and reasonably decent hardware in itself. I moved everything (60 z wave devices) and my alarm panel and weather station all into HA. It's been a pain, but with MSR at least I have some familiarity and less MASSIVE pains including devices like you get with over 50 or less on the Vera. At least in ZwaveJS when something goes wrong, its easy to check logs and reinterview/delete entities that aren't valid and sort it, without the exclude/include everytime (sometimes many times per device) on the other platform.
z stick on Pi with HA has less range and more tedious backup methods, and not as tidy package on the shelf, but at least its progressive.
And i'm able to update the z wave devices OTA without excluding and including into a different network to do it as a bonus.

[PerH]

I still have the "prototype" Ezlo plus in a box somewhere, any chance of "nuking" it like the Vera Plus? Zigbee and Z-wave 700 chip could be useful..

@toggledbits, the only reason I use Z-wave JS UI into HASS is that i use the HASS visualization on phones and UI panels, that would have to be replaced by helpers/virtuals if I were to take it into MSR instead?
I could offcourse feed both MSR and HASS from JS UI, but that seems like a bit of a waste of bandwidth? dunno..

[toggledbits]

@perh UI stuff is big on my mind these days...

[akbooer]

@perh said in Finally gave up on my Ezlo Plus:

I still have the "prototype" Ezlo plus in a box somewhere, any chance of "nuking" it like the Vera Plus? Zigbee and Z-wave 700 chip could be useful..

...same for me. Never plugged it in, but interested in possibilities. I recall, though, that the hardware is bottom of the range, so perhaps not worth the hassle? I do still have an unused Vera Edge as a backup if necessary.

[toggledbits]

It's about equivalent to an RPi 4, but with only 512MB RAM. That's more limiting than anything. I've run Reactor on it. It works. Not something you'd really want to do, but doable. I wonder if ZWave-JS would run on it and see the chip... I haven't tried that yet...

[PerH]

In other words, you stopped and deleted the Ezlo SW? In that case, installing ser2net should be a breeze? It would be cool to try running JS UI on it, I'd give it a go if you show me the door in.

[wmarcolin]

@toggledbits wow!

UI/Dashboard by Patrik is going to be great! And no longer have to depend on the limited HE and Apple Home to set my dashboards.

[LibraSun]

Any time Patrick sets out to do something, count me in! I still have my bucket of unused Vera/Ezlozerz controllers (some retired, some never used) sitting in a distant corner, while I thrive on Hubitat. Is every HA company run by a Melih-type? I'm starting to think so. All about "control" if you catch my drift.

Always grateful to have the company of titans like you guys, and glad we all escaped our old dungeon intact. Surprised as anyone that V/E is still in business; their products must have reached whatever sufficiently "okay" status needed to serve the CEO's mansion.

I won't be a party pooper by mentioning my current favorite (by far) Dashboard app, nor is this the place for me to publish/share my spreadsheet of HA Dashboards currently competing in that space. For mulit-hub use, none surpasses MSR!!!

Let me know if you'd be interested in me posting that database up somewhere on the SmartHome forum, and I'll happily do so.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE!

@LibraSun

[toggledbits]

@librasun said in Finally gave up on my Ezlo Plus:

I won't be a party pooper by mentioning my current favorite (by far) Dashboard app

Do it! That certainly won't offend me! While I have plans for the (much ignored) Reactor Dashboard, I don't think it will ever be a match for some of the amazing alternatives out there, for at least two reasons: first, I'm never going to make myself an Apple or Android (or Tesla phone?) developer and have apps for those platforms; second, the core of the product for me is the logic engine, not the dashboard, and that will always be true and it will always be where I put the lion's-share of my thinking and effort. Just like Home Assistant has its Lovelace, I want to get Reactor's Dashboard to the point where some plurality of users is fine with it; the rest can choose to go bigger if they wish.

So please, if you have favorites, it doesn't kill my joy to have you promote them here!

[gwp1]

I would honestly rather @toggledbits kept his focus on the logic engine - there's plenty of ways out there already to do "pretty", not as many doing such a great job at the "smart".

[toggledbits]

Also, I want to add: some of you may know that on Vera, I added support for some of my plugins (e.g. AVT) for the now-defunct ImperiHome, which had its own "lingua franca" query API by which it could request information from a foreign system. I thought that was extremely clever and useful to incorporate (they called it ISS). It made it possible for me to make the effort of integration, rather than hoping/asking them to do it. If there are other existing dashboards that can do this, I'd be happy to look at providing the necessary endpoints in Reactor to make it work. For dashboards that don't do this, encourage them to do it!

[LibraSun]

My home setup is minimal and because WAF only depends on Alexa listening and Hubitat executing, a dashboard really doesn't factor into my daily driving.

But for now, having scoured the forums for details on every extant DB app out there, and compiled a comprehensive tally of their features, my current "favorite" (read: for beta testing purposes) is definitely hubiVue from the Australian developer Grant Slender.

He is taking it in all the right directions, IMHO, and his upcoming releases promise to achieve feature completeness and mass appeal.

Highly recommend kicking the tires. I may even invite him to join SHC so he doesn't risk pissing off HE staff as traffic to his user app thread increases. They love declaring upstarts as "competitors" and then banishing them from the community, which is mighty regrettable. Sound familiar?

[CatmanV2]

@librasun said in Finally gave up on my Ezlo Plus:

Sound familiar?

Never heard that!

C