Episode 1 – Exploring the SMLIGHT SLZB-MRW10 (Z-Wave Radio + Home Assistant Integration)

<p><strong>Episode 1 – Exploring the SMLIGHT SLZB-MRW10 (Z-Wave Radio + Home Assistant Integration)</strong><br><strong>Channel: Tinker Tut</strong></p><p>Hello channel and welcome back to a new video. I finally got my hands on the <strong>SLZB-MRW10</strong> quadruple multi-radio device. It supports Zigbee Matter over Thread, Wi-Fi, Z-Wave and Bluetooth in dedicated mode. This device is experimental. It is early adoption for testers. The Z-Wave radio is a prototype, is not certified. And in this episode, let's discover the device and let us focus on the Z-Wave integration in particular and get it running with one device and see whether it is reliable or not.</p><p>If you like this video, please subscribe because I'm going to be shooting the next episodes for the Zigbee coordinator and controller and also the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth dedicated mode. And finally, we're going to also test the Matter over Thread. So stay tuned.</p><p>So unlike Zigbee and Wi-Fi, Z-Wave operates at different frequencies in different countries and you have to make sure that you are getting devices that are allowed in your country. So for example, in UAE, we have the EU frequencies approved. So I got the siren on the EU radio frequency. USA would be a different case. I cannot run this in the UAE. It's not legal. The controller itself can be changed to whichever region you are, but the devices are probably hardwired, if you will, to a certain frequency.</p><p>So, with so many protocols in the smart home world, can one device rule them all and solve all the connectivity? This is what we're going to discuss. So, let's do the unboxing for the <strong>MRW10</strong>. But before that, let's explore my ecosystem here. So, I have a Raspberry Pi with a Conbee Zigbee stick. It has been rock solid for two years and I love it. Zero issues. It's USB powered and connected directly to the Home Assistant. I have a Philips Hue Go with Zigbee.</p><p>Now, let's look at the <strong>SLZB-MRW10</strong> or multi-radio 10. It supports Zigbee Z-Wave Wi-Fi and Bluetooth proxy. And I also got this Z-Wave Plus, yet another variation of Z-Wave or like call it Z-Wave 2.0 with better range and better quality and so on.</p><p>Okay, let's open the <strong>MRW10</strong> and see what we're going to get. Essentially, we get two antennas. We get the device itself and two antennas. The antenna with the white label on it would be your Z-Wave antenna. And this would be your Zigbee or Matter antenna. I don't know what this sticker is, so let's leave that, and some screws if you want to mount the <strong>SMLIGHT MRW</strong> on a wall.</p><p>So, let's connect the antennas like so. We have to put the Z-Wave one with the white sticker on the right side. I'm going to show you a schematic later. Make sure that you get this one right. And that's about it. Essentially, there's nothing more to do. It is power over Ethernet connectivity or USB-C that can power it up.</p><p>So, I am so in love with the PoE connectivity. If you don't have a PoE switch, you can just get this PoE injector. It has two Ethernet, one data and one PoE. One goes to your switch and one goes to your device. And it has also the USB-C if you want to power it with a USB-C.</p><p>And this let's look at this siren. I got just one test device to test the Z-Wave integration. The box came in shabby condition from AliExpress, but the device is okay, is new and intact and looks sturdy as well and looks like it's not cheap either. So, the Z-Wave devices tend to be on the higher side. It is battery powered. The battery should stay for one year. And that's about it. Let's get this thing connected and let's integrate it with Home Assistant.</p><p>So for first time setup of the device, put your device with the PoE port facing upwards and then get the Z-Wave antenna on the right hand side and the Zigbee Thread antenna on the left hand side. And you might want to spread them out a little bit also as so. Awesome.</p><p>So after you powered up your device, open your browser and enter the DNS name shown on the screen or the IP address from your DHCP for the device. And let's check the interface of the stock operating system. First, I have here the Z-Wave radio. It's on the EU region, so that's good for me, and the Zigbee coordinator on the second radio and the Bluetooth proxy mode is disabled. This is by design and I don't want to enable that. It's going to flash the device to a different firmware altogether. And Zigbee hub is disabled. That's okay. I have it network on DHCP. You might want to have a static IP.</p><p>Okay. Let's first check the now move on to the firmware updates. Since this is the first time we might want to check for updates and I love updates anyway. So let's do that. So first we're going to check the operating system. This is the factory operating system. And I am currently on version 2.9.5 and there is 2.9.8. So let's update to that. It's going to take few seconds to flash the firmware. Again, this is the official proprietary operating system for the <strong>SLZB</strong>. There are other custom operating systems and whatnot, but I'm sticking to the stock operating system.</p><p>Okay, fast forward to the flashing firmware. Good. So, the update succeeded. We have version 2.9.8 or the latest. Now, let's go and update the Z-Wave. This is a typo, by the way. I raised a ticket for that one and they replied in few hours. So, it's going to be updated to Z-Wave over-the-air update. So let's check my current version and I have an update for the EU region. So let's proceed with updating this one as well. So let's flash that one and click flash again. It's going to download the firmware and then fast forward update is done. Again this should be updated by them.</p><p>And the last controller would be the actual Zigbee. It's on latest version. Actually, this one is a dev firmware. So, we're going to skip that. I don't want to have any bugs. This is for test purposes only. If you want to proceed with it for a reason, feel free to. But I'm going to stick to the stable version for now. And that's about it for getting our firmwares and operating system updated for the first time setup. Good.</p><p>So now let's move on to the Home Assistant setup and check out our new device. So let's go to devices. We will see that the <strong>SLZB-MRW10</strong> is auto discovered. Let's add it. Submit. And I'm going to put it in my ground floor living room. And then yeah, you can see this one is just for the operating system configurations and entities and diagnostics. Nothing much to do here rather than just visibility on the actual device, CPU usage, temperatures, things like that. But I'm not going to be using this one much. I'm not either going to update the firmware from here, even though you can. And, what else? You can do some controls like disable LEDs and things like that, but again, not super important for us here.</p><p>What we really care about are the actual radios. And in this video, we are going to talk about the Z-Wave radio in particular and zoom in on that one. Our first controller, the Z-Wave controller. We are going to use the Z-Wave JS UI. It's an add-on. So, install that one. Make sure it's started. And then let's open the web UI.</p><p>So, now I don't have anything installed. So, let's go to settings, Z-Wave. Make sure it's enabled. I'm going to expand this one. Now, we're going to talk to the here I have the Conbee stick discovered as a USB, but we are going to use a TCP serial port and get the IP address for the device and get the from your OS and then put it here and put the port. Now generate these security keys as such and make sure the RF region is where you are located and where your devices are configured. Save that one and then let's go back to the dashboard. It's going to take a few moments and then you can find your controller up and running.</p><p>So it's a Silicon Labs USB controller. The firmware and SDK is showing as well. So looks good. And you can give it a name if you want. Check the firmwares and check the events. You see it's a live debug info and so on. So far so good for our controller.</p><p>Now that our controller is up and running, let's add the actual devices and discover them. So, let's head back to Home Assistant. And this time, we are going to use the Z-Wave integration. So, go to integrations, add integration, search for Z-Wave custom installation. Uncheck the supervisor add-on. Click submit. And here we will give the websocket URL. We need to get this host name from the Z-Wave JS UI add-on. So copy this one and let's go back to integrations again. Custom installation uncheck and then change the local host to the host name and then submit. This is the controller.</p><p>Okay. So now we will add devices on top of the controller or via the controller. So search for device. Here I have my siren. So, I'm going to triple tap to get it to pairing mode. And then the integration will auto find it, auto discover it nice and easy. And this is depending on which device you have, of course, for the pairing instructions of that.</p><p>Okay, <strong>it found it smoothly, nice and easy</strong>. Add device. And perfect. <strong>We have the device onto Home Assistant via our controller and no issues whatsoever</strong>. Let's test it. Okay, looking good. And we have couple of sensors that are disabled by default. You can enable which ones you want in the siren for example, you can change the melody, you can change the volume and things like that. Yeah. And that's about it. <strong>No issues at all. Smooth and fast prototype Z-Wave radio test for the MRW10</strong>. And this is again a Z-Wave Plus device and it's working fine with our controller.</p><p>Now let's finally go to the Z-Wave JS UI and find the device. It's alive. Check extra configurations. See Z-Wave Plus it's on. You can see here all the values for all the extra entities that I was talking about. Here we can again trigger the alarm. You can change the melody and things like that. Okay. So, yeah. And again, all of these you can change from the JS UI, but you wouldn't want to do that. Of course, this is just for testing, but the entities in Home Assistant are the ones you want to enable to get them into your Home Assistant dashboards and digital twin in my case.</p><p>And that's it folks for episode one, Z-Wave of the <strong>MRW10</strong>. And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.</p>