What’s the impediment to supporting Z-Wave hardware (like a dongle)? Looking through this thread, it seems support is at best spotty. Presumably, with an interface to a Z-Wave device, a Vera wouldn’t be necessary.
I have previously suggested to integrate openZwave which has become quite reliable but require another layer.
Trying to not get too technical but:
- First layer is the zwave communication stack which converts the serial communication from the zwave chip to a device id and command class layer. This is provided by the Zwave SDK. (firmware + serial API)
- Second layer is to take all of these zwave device ids and command classes and make them objects which need to be in sync with the underlying zwave stack. What I call objects are the logical entities behind graphical devices you see on the vera. That’s the host controller.
- Third layer is the automation logic, multi protocol integration, object level API and GUI.
The vera has all three in a box. OpenLuup really is doing the third. The 1st and 2nd layer could be done by OpenZwave or homeassistant (which really is using openZwave) but they would need to sync up with openLuup. The Verabridge is connecting the 3rd layer openLuup to the second layer of the vera. (and the 3rd too for that matters for you to migrate the scenes for example)
I saw on OpenZwave github that there is a very old lua wrapper but it seems to be a lot of work…
I took a quick look at OpenZwave, and it seems to be a set of software libraries. With what hardware would that stack interface?
Yes it is basically a library to communicate with the Zwave serial API and it is open to anyone to create an interface for it. There is a basic interface on the repo called OZWCP (CP for controller Panel) which can be a very useful tool. I have it as an additional panel to my homeassistant instance so I can switch back and forth between the two UIs to control OZW. It is basic but has functions/tools Home assistant does not offer.