Z-Wave New Device Frustration (Rant Warning)

I've written several personal plug-ins including a MODBUS bridge and a full climate controller for our use and really appreciate the plug-in architecture of Indigo.

Recently I installed some Leviton Z-Wave Scene controllers because I want button controls for different whole-house commands without having to find an iOS device. It works great when associated with other Z-Wave switches but I also want to control my Philips Hue lights supported by Sheldon's great Hue plug-in and noticed a major fault in Indigo's lack of extensibility in Z-Wave.

Say you want to create your own device definitions. Forget about it. It's locked down and one has to wait until Matt can support it in a future release with no timetable. There's no way to use "Virtual Device".

Say you want to write a plug-in to communicate with your new Z-Wave device. Forget about it. There's no API to receive a Z-Wave command.

Say you want to write a plug-in to get a device's Z-Wave command from the SQL DB. Forget about it. My device has a table created but there's nothing entered in the db even though I can see z-wave commands in the log. I can't modify the SQL plug-in because it's compiled.

The only thing I can hack is I have to turn on Z-Wave Debugging and write a plug-in log sniffer that gets every line through eventLogLineReceived and parses it to see if it's my scene controller device and then parse the command. I can then do something meaningful. It's a hack that works but full of holes.

Why can't these things be in Indigo? I'm not switching to SmartThings but even that inexpensive system provides the capability of supporting your own device and receive/send z-wave commands with parsers.

Is Indigo is becoming the MS-DOS of Home Automation where so much legacy is supported there's not time to support new? Please open Z-wave to at least get command events! What good is it to trigger off Any Command when I can't even get the command to parse and see what it is?

I've appreciate Indigo and have a lot of code accumulated over the years but it's disappointing when I'm missing the API to do the things I need. I've not installed Z-wave locksets for the same reason. Buy another system like Vera and use the Indigo Vera Bridge plug-in just to control a lockset?

Come on, man.

[matt (support)]

We are actively looking at ways to expand Indigo's support of hardware, including Z-Wave.

[matt (support)]

This thread is old but I wanted to follow-up that Indigo 7.0 is now available. It includes supports for dozens of new Z-Wave devices and has low-level subscription APIs for plugins that want to catch incoming and outgoing Z-Wave commands.