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THE SMARTEST BLOG

Your Gift Guide to Z-Wave Hubs

December 08, 2017 6 Comments

The Smartest House Gift Guide to Z-Wave Hubs

Choosing the ultimate smart home system for your needs and lifestyle can be daunting if you don’t know what to look for. Each hub comes with its own advantages and limitations; a certain feature might be a godsend for someone else but a deal breaker for you. That’s why we’ve listed our top 3 Z-Wave hub recommendations below, including what we love about these hubs but also some things to consider when choosing the right one for you. And good news! They all support Alexa, so you can count on a voice-activated smart home this holiday season.

Your Gift Guide to Z-Wave Hubs SmartThings

For the Beginner: SmartThings

What We Love:
  • Set-up instructions are clear and easy-to-follow.
  • The user-friendly interface lets you navigate the app quickly. 
  • SmartThings has a very responsive tech support. Its robust community online makes it easy to find the answers you’re looking for. Chances are someone has asked it before!
Limitations:
  • SmartThings works great for basic automation scenarios. BUT for more advanced control and access to additional settings in some of the newer Z-Wave products, you may need to spend extra time adding Custom Device Handlers and SmartApps.
  • Support for local control is limited since the system heavily relies on cloud execution for rules and scenes. This affects reliability and can be plain annoying.
What Users Have to Say:

“Excellent starting point for home integration.” – Adidas1976 (Amazon review)

“Easy Set Up: There is a lot to like about this system!

1. EASY to set up. EASY.
2. So many things (basically all the 'internet of things' type equipment) connects to it
3. Did I say it was easy to set up?” – ZenDarb (Amazon review)

Your Gift Guide to Z-Wave Hubs Vera Control

For Anyone: Vera

What We Love:
  • Vera comes with a clean and intuitive smart phone app.
  • It also has a powerful online interface with direct, easy access to advanced settings.
  • The hub offers the widest compatibility for Z-Wave devices. More choice means more personalization for your smart home! 
  • If you want the set-up or troubleshoot process to be laid out for you step-by-step, Vera offers helpful video tutorials for the most common executions and questions. And for additional resources, check out their community forum!
Limitations:
  • Your primary interface is on the web so you can’t add / remove or program devices from the app (which can be a good thing too!). With so many options and configuration settings, it can get overwhelming for a beginner.
  • You may wait a few minutes longer for support to respond
What Users Have to Say:

“All in all a good unit with a lot of compatibility without extra fees. But the unit is not for someone expecting plug-n-play.” – AZEqualizer (Full review here)

“Easy set up, good community support. As you get comfortable with the options you can tailor it to be more robust. It offers lots of configuration options. Check out their forums for help and all the different things this controller can do.” – Travis (Full review here)

Your Gift Guide to Z-Wave Hubs Fibaro Home Center Lite

For the Pro: Fibaro Home Center Lite

What We Love:
  • The Fibaro HCL is one of the pioneers of smart home systems. Their software is super advanced and comes with many built-in tools for analyzing energy usage or temperature changes. 
  • You can execute more elaborate automation scenarios with the advanced scene and rule building tool.
  • The HCL is incredibly stable, secure, and fast since most communication is executed locally.
  • It is composed of durable hardware and high-quality components all around. It is made in Europe by a global company.
Limitations:
  • The Fibaro HCL only supports Z-Wave devices. While for many the one protocol is all they need for their smart home, other users prefer a hub that supports other protocols such as Wifi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee as well. You can still get some of these products integrated using third party plug-ins but the integration will not be native and quick like for Z-Wave devices.
  • It’s a serious machine and one of the more expensive ones too. So it requires commitment (but makes for a great investment)
What Users Have to Say:

“Very easy to get to grips with. The graphic interface makes this a dream to use.” – David S. (Vesternet review)

“The Fibaro HCL is a powerful device able to manage up to 230 Z-Wave devices with impressively fast local processing.” – Big Bruin

Why Not Echo Plus?

Amazon’s recent answer to home automation has some smart home capability built-in. However, it only supports the ZigBee protocol. This means you won’t be able to directly connect any Z-Wave devices, which leaves some of the more innovative and affordable smart home options out-of-reach.

Why Not Wink?

While Wink may be a good choice for basic light automation and very basic monitoring, it doesn’t offer any access to advanced settings and works with a very limited pool of Z-Wave devices. Just as you start having fun with automation, you run into a wall. Because it lives primarily in the cloud, we’ve received reports of the system being very unstable overall.

If you have input regarding your favorite smart home hub, let us know what it is and why in the comment section below! And have a very happy holiday season!



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6 Responses

Oliver Smith
Oliver Smith

November 18, 2019

Hey Nice write up about this..it useful for us..Keep Updated…

Jan (The Smartest House)
Jan (The Smartest House)

October 01, 2019

Hi Tom, yes! You can remove a Z-Wave device that belonged to a different hub using any Z-Wave gateway / controller. You’ll need to find general exclusion in your SmartThings app (under hub > Z-Wave Utilities > General Exclusion) and remove the device following the instructions in the device’s manual.

Tom
Tom

September 30, 2019

Piper sent out a firmware update a while back that broke all zwave device support. While they fixed it, I wasn’t able to cleanly remove all devices and 2 cannot be added back or added to my Smarthings hub. And thier force removal process does not work. Can I remove a device with Smartthings that was previously on a piper network?

Jan (The Smartest House)
Jan (The Smartest House)

February 08, 2019

Hi Bill, We don’t carry any fan controllers at the moment but I believe that HomeSeer has a fan switch that would fit your needs, model HS-FC200+

Bill
Bill

February 05, 2019

Do you have a suggestion for a in-wall 3 speed ceiling fan switch? Z wave

David Bennett
David Bennett

November 24, 2018

You have a large customer base that is using the hubitat elevation hub. I have seen many links to your site in their community forum. It’s a very reliable, locally processed hub with many advanced features. Works with just about any z wave or zigbee device, and even wifi connected devices and lutron

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Z-Wave is the best alternative to Insteon

Insteon just became another smart home company to shut down their services. Overnight, the platform’s servers were disconnected, leaving their customers without a functional smart home. SmartLabs, Insteon’s mother company, claims to have sold over 5 million connected devices; that’s a lot of sensors, switches, and controllers that became orphaned. Does it mean that all of this hardware is now completely useless?

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How to connect Amazon Alexa smart speaker to a Z-Wave hub

If you already have Amazon Echo set up, you know how convenient it can be. There’s nothing like walking out the front door with full hands and telling Alexa to turn off your lights last minute. But these smart lights and plugs can be slow to react as you keep adding more smart home devices and clogging your network.

Alexa only “speaks” WiFi (and ZigBee if you have the EchoPlus). It currently doesn’t support Z-Wave, the protocol of choice for home automation thanks to its high speed and low interference with other connected devices in your home. That means you can’t have a Z-Wave switch or plug speak directly to your Echo. BUT you can use a smart home hub as a bridge between your Z-Wave devices and Amazon Alexa. Now that’s a whole other level of functionality to unlock!

And if you already have a Z-Wave hub but no smart speaker, you might be thinking how cool it would be to have voice control for your automations and smart home devices. It’s a step towards a more integrated, easy-to-use smart home with improved security, comfort, and convenience.

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