Using another PC to include devices

[Corvl1]

Greetings,

I bought homeseer last week ( moving from Vera). The zwave stick I bought is aeotec gen 5 initially excludingzwave devices from my vera and inlcuding them with the button and holding it closely to the device worked very nice. Than came some battery operated devices ...... no luck.
I found out that including them via the GUI of homeseer with the stick still in the desktop did work.
Now , how to solve this with my 50+ devices all scatered around the house.

The desktop I want to use for homeseer does not have wifi, is bulky , in short , that will be a mess carrying around the house with display, power cord, ethernet cable etc ( still doable though).
An easier option will be via my laptop, I expect this will be very quick and easy , no power cord , has wifi , screen etc.

But can someone give me some more information on the technicall side.

-I have a trial version of homeseer on my laptop. ( the licenced version is on the desktop).
-I did some trials with plugins and "virtual devices" on my laptop.

How will this work when the laptop is only used for excluding and including the devices. Just plug the zwave stick in , exclude a device from the vera , include it than re-insert the zwave stick on the desktop computer and import the nodes. ?

-Is all data from the zwave devices stored on the USB stick in this case?
-will I have any issue with plugins/ virtual devices which I played around with on my laptop?
-will I have any issues with plugins wich are on mt desktop , but not on the laptop?


If the setup needs to be exactly the same, can I just use the backup function of Homeseer and import this on the laptop.

Many thanks for your help,
Cor

[Rupp]

I used a 50 ft powered USB extension cable when I reset my network a few weeks ago. It worked very well in my 2700 sq ft home.

[sparkman]

I would copy your HS installation to your laptop, then do the exclusion/inclusion thing, and then copy the installation back to your desktop. The z-wave node information is on the z-wave stick, but the devices that are generated will be in your HS database file.

[Stuart]

Also a tip for the future, when I take a new zwave device out of the box I hook it up with jumpers on the test bench and add it to Hs without having to run upstairs and downstairs and run cat5 extension cords. Then if needed I take the old switch and remove it from Hs on the bench so as not to kill a bunch of events.

Stuart

[Corvl1]

This week I used my laptop to include all my devices. Made a backup , stopped the Zwave-usb stick, installed HS on the desktop machine, copied the whole homeseer directory with an USB stick to thedekstop computer and all worked.
The only thing which went wrong is the registration on the desktop. Since this was now the third time I registered the licence , I received an authentication error. In hindsight it was not neccesary to authenticate on the new machine , the USB-stick with the whole directory structure also took the registration code. So all was good anyway.
Homeseer support was very quick to reset my licence as well.

Thanks for the help ,
Cor

[RoChess]

Technically you can charge the battery on the Aeotec Gen5 controller, unplug it, walk over to a device, push button on controller to begin inclusion process (LED will flash), and push action button on device to include it.

Then wait for inclusion to finish, walk back to PC, plug it back in, and tell HomeSeer to do a quick scan on newly added devices.

Big con is that device won't know best path to take if controller isn't within direct connection range once repositioned at PC. Z-Wave+ can auto heal itself via packages it sends, but original Z-Wave devices might require an optimization boost to reacquire the mesh network structure to discover best path between device and controller, and vice versa. You can view this info on node information page, and even manually force network paths via the "Set Route" option.

Got an open question on that on another thread, because it is unknown to me if 12,35 differs from 35,12 but for less complex networks that shouldn't matter and Z-Wave is fine sorting that out automatic.

The other option is to buy a $10 WiFi router, replace the non-WiFi router you are using and connect to your local HomeSeer PC on a mobile device via http://192.168.0.123/ or whatever IP your LAN uses. Ideally configure the router to use static IP assignment based on MAC address, so it'll always be the same IP. Or configure NetBIOS names, so you can do things like http://homeseer/ on your LAN, or one of many other approaches.

Then you walk towards Z-Wave node/device, and have full control over HomeSeer via web GUI, or use Z-Tool to include or remove. You can even have Vera control the same way, and make it easy.

The other alternative is that you could have done a Z-Wave controller shift directly from Vera to HomeSeer without any need to exclude/re-include nodes. Battery nodes can be frustrating then though, but repairable afterwards.

Many options, good luck.

[Corvl1]

RoChess : When I bought the zwave stick , the battery, that was a very big plus .... untill I tried it . Some devices worked fine , including them with the stick-battery only, but other devices just refused , or were "partially" included ...... even not talking about battery operated devices.
For me the easiest-fastest way was to use my laptop to exclude/include all, having a screen with me to know at which stage the including is.
For future bought devices , I will most likely include them near the zwave-stick anyway and install them later at their final place.

Thanks,
Cor

[RoChess]

RoChess : When I bought the zwave stick , the battery, that was a very big plus .... untill I tried it .

Started on an Aeonlabs S2 stick myself, then went with Vera3 that has it included, and now on HomeSeer with a SmartStick+

Including near controller and then re-allocating the node to its final physical location is fine, but can introduce weird issues as well. If the node is Z-Wave+ then as stated it can sort itself out automatic over time, but you won't have a direct insight into this, except to manually force an optimize. Unless of course the node has a strong direct connection to the controller then there is no issue, but the key is that whenever there is a networking issue to go direct, the node must have the ability to pick an alternative route via a neighbor node, and when it is unaware what number its neighbors are to reach the main controller, that is when your Z-Wave network could start freaking out

Including at final spot gives you quick insight if communication could be an issue. Maybe the area is full with metal objects, or electrical wiring with high capacitance interference, or dozen other reasons.

Maybe look for a nice Black Friday deal on a WiFi router and a mobile device, routers go for as little as $10, and I've seen older 4" Android phones go for $20 already. Perfect to control HomeSeer while you walk through the house.

[Michael McSharry]

A number of years ago I acquired a low-end smartphone with intention of using only WiFi for HA things. Lesson learned was the phone was locked and needed to sign up for a plan to activate it and then gain access for WiFi. The activation cost was much more than the $20 phone so never did. If you get one for this purpose assure it is not locked.