Now, for ALL Zwave products, have a basic interface and instructionset : what they do and how they do it.
All apps including Zwave products, maps predefined interface and instructions to Homeys messageque in a way that predictable, and they get to add features. So far so good.
Now the Nexa ZSD-109 is a smokedetector. All its features and interfaces are documented in the product, thats part of Zwave. But Nexa doesn´t provide an app for this.
I can include it, but I cant tell it what it is and how it interact.
If there was an generic zwave app, I could tell it that it was an smoke alarm, and all the things it needed to know. It would function in it self
And in addition it would pressure NEXA to make an App for it that would provide extre functionality like connected alarm and warning.
In addition, it would make it possible to support zwave equipment that follovs the standard, but that has been left by the supplier
Thats just not possible with an app, all 3 IDs (product ID, product type ID and manufacturer ID) needs to be specified in an app to be able to pair a device to said app.
If it is not it will be added as a simple “unknown” z-wave device, with only a few supporting command classes.
Only Athom will be able to add such functionality by adding more command classes into the “unknown z-wave device” thing, but I kinda doubt they want to do that, though they have been adding command classes slowly, there are just many, many command classes (over a 100) they would need to add to have your dream, which they tried in their first implementation for z-wave, but too many manufacturers didn’t follow the rules close enough.
The possibility of adding Z-Wave devices for which there is no dedicated app is not a new topic.
I once read that Athom wants to make using a Homey as easy as possible. A necessary configuration of generic Z-Wave devices would not fit into their concept.
Is it true? I don’t know.
Personally, however, I would also welcome more support for generic Z-Wave devices.
