Raspberry Pi4 Z-Wave Hat

Hardware Home Automation
1

Can anyone recommend a Z-Wave Hat for the Pi4? I’m attempting to make a self contained OH Pi4 and I am trying to avoid having the Z-Wave be a USB stick. I haven’t found one I’m overly thrilled with as of yet.

2

I don’t have any experience with zwave hats, but my guess is good options will be limited since an antenna is still required for zwave.

3

Razberry will work with openhab and pi4. You won’t need that much of a antenna since the network will relay on mesh.

4

Hi,

I’m only aware of one HAT for the RPi, namely the Razberry.

My setup uses the original smaller Razberry on a RPi4 with openHABian.

Some points to be aware of:

  • USB dongles can be more useful as they can also be used on any device. Z-Wave pairs physical devices (well, in theory, you can export/ import keys) so a dongle can be moved to a PC to run diagnostic or other test software (e.g. Z-Way to upgrade Razberry firmware or to delete dead nodes - doesn’t quite work on openHAB).

  • The Razberry uses the default serial port of the RPi - older RPi use this as the console, newer for Bluetooth so you can’t have both Z-Wave and Bluetooth.

  • Be careful with cases - passive heatsinks may obscure the RPi header pins preventing the Razberry from fitting. I had to build a header riser block to extend the pins above passive cooling case heatsink fins (also increased range as an aerial on top of a metal ground plane isn’t useful).

  • 7x24 operation can wear out cases and fans e.g. the Pimoroni SHIM can turn on/off automatically, but the Razberry uses the same I/O pins forcing the fan to be on all the time. A simple 5v fan and bluetack works for me when paired with a passive cooling case heatsink case (buy several spare fans!).

  • A RPi4 is CPU and memory overkill for openHAB, unless you start running containers for several other software components. That said, the cost difference is buttons and future proofing is useful.

Oh, and always buy >1 RPi to give a cold spare and test machine. Spare uSD cards for different openHAB versions and Z-Way are very useful.

1 Like
5

The RaZberry has been reliably working for years for me and others. It even fits into the standard enclosure. While not cheap you also get the Z-Way software which is working nicely for healing the network.

2 Likes
6

Thanks all. Just ordered the RaZberry to give it a test here. As for the Pi4, I’m just simply not going to buy a Pi3 at this point to upgrade later considering the price delta is trivial.