Unclear how all the pieces fit together

[scottj97]

I'm new to Z-Wave, though I have some home automation programming experience (Insteon modem). I'm trying to control my new Leviton Z-Wave dimmer/fan switches using my new Zooz ZST10 700 Z-Wave USB stick from my custom automation system written in Ruby.

Everybody recommends Home Assistant and its Z-Wave JS plugin, but it seems like overkill for what I want (a software API).

My goals: (1) query light/fan status at any time; (2) receive notifications when the state is manually changed; (3) control the state. Bonus: specify a ramp rate when I change the dimmer.

Can/should I skip Home Assistant and use only the zwave-js stuff? If yes can I use only the node-zwave-js repo and somehow control it from Ruby? Or maybe that's what the zwave-js-server is for? Do I also need MQTT, which seems to be in zwave-js-ui (which is weird because I don't think I need a UI)?

It's not clear to me how all the pieces fit together and which ones I really need. The project README lists all these projects, but doesn't really explain how they all fit together, or when I would want/need to use each one.

[AlCalzone]

You can do what Home Assistant does internally:
Execute an instance of https://github.com/zwave-js/zwave-js-server, which wraps node-zwave-js and exposes the API via a websocket, then interact with the websocket from the Ruby side.

We try to keep the server component relatively up to date with node-zwave-js. If something is missing, just open an issue in the server repo.

[scottj97]

I will check that out.

Elsewhere I received advice that I should use zwave-js-ui and its MQTT feature. Would that give me any additional capabilities beyond zwave-js-server?

Should the project README have a section explaining these kind of things? To answer these questions for each subproject:

• Who is this for?
• Why would I want to use this?
• What can this do for me?

[AlCalzone]

IMO, interfacing the API through MQTT is needlessly complicated. The Websocket API gives you a much more "natural" interface.
That said, Z-Wave JS UI also hosts the websocket server by default, so you can also run that for a feature-rich UI and tailor your project to do just what you need it to.

Who is this for?
Why would I want to use this?
What can this do for me?

Happy to take some suggestions for this.