Configuring Home Assistant for the Aeotec Z-Wave Stick

In theory Home Assistant's native support for Z-Wave is quite good. Plug and play.

In practice, not quite.

Start here of course: https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/z-wave/

Note: Make sure you follow the steps about configuring a network key if you want to add secure devices (which I do).

Home Assistant installs the required Python modules at runtime when you modify your configuration, so in theory there is nothing to install. It's just a bit slower at start up the very first time.

Unfortunately I had problems pretty quickly. The logs show that the openzwave module failed to install.

The solution was to install a required system library that was missing on my Ubuntu server system: libudev-dev. Details at https://community.home-assistant.io/t/aeon-labs-z-stick-gen5-on-hassbian/31687

The next problem, although obvious now, was that my homeassistant user didn't have permission to access the USB device. Add the user to the dialout group, but of course, that only works for new login shells. If Home Assistant runs via systemd, better to just reboot!

Now I see the Z-Wave section in my configuration screen.

If I go in there I only see 1 device (the USB stick). Here is the information screen.

It seems that HA lies about its zwave plus capabilities, and also the baud rate. Anyway, looks good.

The electrician is coming tomorrow morning.