z-wave, anyone?
 

Just curious: Has anyone here purchased any z-wave compatible hardware such as lights, light switches and other home-things? What do you think? Worth it? Easy to program, etc?

I did. I have z-wave working locks for the houses & appartements that I rent in Canada while I am in Spain.

It works fine most of the time. The company that you use to manage your devices makes probably the difference. I am currently using Vera Smarter Home Control with which I am not really happy. Their software is slow and, lacks a lot of features and is not user friendly.

Yea i plenty of z wave & zigbee stuff going on. Z wave is pretty easy

Thanks for the feedback.

Question though, why do you have a company to manage the devices? And have you considered writing your own software to manage them? Lately I find myself going hobby-crazy and want to experiment with some home automation stuff, and I think Z-wave is the best way to go.

You are welcome :-)

I haven't made much researches on that cause I just didn't have time to develop a software myself so I when the easiest way : Buying a Vera hub (seems like it cannot be managed that through my own wifi hub) for each house (or appartment) and I connected my wifi locks to it.

The problem is that I could not even recommend you another company cause Vera is the only one that I know. If I recall correctly, I found them cause it was suggested from my lock manufacturer which is Schlage.

MrBottomTooth and CHMOD: Have you guys looked into the node-red / json language? What I want to do is install some z-wave switches etc, and then use a raspberry pi 3 + node-red to control it all. From what I've read it seems like a fun project that is both challenging yet easy to do (large community support, etc). Have you looked at this?

I know what is json. I regularly use it. I do not know what is node-red though. But like I told you, I have not been looking at all into it. I'd like to have some news if you do it though :-)