Palms-on with Dwelling Assistant’s new long-range Z-Wave adapter

I not too long ago described how a latest flurry of good house failures made me flip to Dwelling Assistant, the more and more polished DIY good house platform that you would be able to host your self with out counting on the cloud. Beginning right now, Dwelling Assistant customers have an superior new toy to play with. 

The Dwelling Assistant Join ZQA-2 ($69) is a brand new good house adapter with a really tall antenna. And earlier than you ask, it’s not for Matter, the newest and hottest new factor in good house. As an alternative, the Join ZQA-2 is all about Z-Wave, an older however broadly used good house know-how that’s getting renewed consideration because of its new “Lengthy Vary” functionality, which permits for connectivity with Z-Wave LR (Lengthy Vary) consumer gadgets as much as a mile—sure, a mile—away. 

Dwelling Assistant has lengthy supported Z-Wave, along with Zigbee (the good house commonplace favored by Phillips Hue) and the aforementioned Matter. (I simply added the Matter integration to my very own Dwelling Assistant occasion.)  

However the Join ZQA-2, which relies on the newest Z-Wave 800-series chipset, is the primary Z-Wave adapter constructed by and for the Dwelling Assistant platform, with the group behind Dwelling Assistant noting that the {hardware} has been “exactly tuned to Z-Wave’s very best wavelength.” 

For these not conversant in Z-Wave, it’s a radio know-how that operates within the sub-1GHz frequency band. This low frequency is right for penetrating stable boundaries, reminiscent of partitions, nevertheless it additionally avoids interference from Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Zigbee gadgets that every one function within the 2.4GHz frequency spectrum. Greater than 4,500 good gadgets from the likes of Ring, Leviton, Shelly, Yale, and Vivint provide Z-Wave gadgets, making Z-Wave a key ingredient in any Dwelling Assistant set up. 

Earlier generations of Z-Wave gadgets make the most of a mesh community protocol that may assist a most of 232 nodes. The newer Z-Wave 800-powered elements are backward-compatible, however they’ll additionally use the Z-Wave Lengthy Vary protocol to function on a star community that may assist as much as 4,000 (!) nodes.

Nabu Casa, the industrial arm of the Open Dwelling Basis below which Dwelling Assistant operates, provided me a pattern Join ZQA-2 for analysis. Whereas I haven’t had time to provide it a proper evaluation (I’ve been enjoying with the unit for rather less than every week), I can attest that it was straightforward to put in and has—so far, anyway—labored like a attraction. 

The Join ZQA-2 is available in two components: a 5 x 5-inch plastic base, and a 12-inch antenna with a 1.5-inch LED section on the prime that serves as a standing indicator. Meeting is simple: Screw the antenna into the bottom, use the supplied USB-C cable to attach the bottom to your Dwelling Assistant server (a Raspberry Pi 5 in my case), and that’s just about it. 

Deciding the place to find the Join ZQA-2 is a possible problem. Dwelling Assistant advises holding it away from objects that would trigger interference, reminiscent of thick brick partitions, our bodies of water (like fish tanks), different wi-fi transmitters, and wire mesh or steel fixtures (reminiscent of server racks).  

I admit, I broke the rule and place the ZQA-2 on prime of the wire mesh cupboard that homes my assortment of Raspberry Pi boards, however a fast diagnostics test confirmed that the radio’s efficiency wasn’t unduly hampered. The antenna’s LED tip will blink yellow to warn you of a “sub-optimal” connection. 

The Dwelling Assistant of us additionally packed in a number of Z-Wave gadgets for me to connect with the ZQA-2, all of which assist each the usual Z-Wave protocol in addition to Z-Wave LR: a sensible plug, a water leak detector, and a sensible water valve actuator, all constructed by Z-Wave system producer Zooz. 

Being that I’m an house dweller, I wasn’t in a position to set up the good water valve system, however I did strive the good plug and the water leak detector, which I configured through the Z-Wave JS management panel. (I run Dwelling Assistant in a Docker container, in order a brand new Z-Wave person, I first needed to spin up the Z-Wave integration in a separate container, a course of that took all of 20 minutes.) 

I didn’t carry out formal testing on the connectivity between the 2 Zooz gadgets and the ZQA-2, however they labored flawlessly on an anecdotal stage. I first linked the water leak sensor through Z-Wave LR and the good plug with commonplace Z-Wave, after which swapped the protocols.   

Ideally, I’d have carried out some true long-range testing with the brand new antenna—an important instance is perhaps inserting the water leak sensor in a indifferent shed that’s, say, 100 yards away from the primary constructing. The Z-Wave Lengthy Vary protocol helps a theoretical vary of 1 mile, line of sight, so one may actually dream up some ingenious use instances. 

The Dwelling Assistant Join ZQA-2 is out there now on the Dwelling Assistant web site. I’ll replace my findings as I proceed testing.