Ok, please bare with me, I'm new to the world of automation and still learning a lot. I recently purchased 3 WD200+ switches to work with my Smartthings hub. My goal is to have the switches speak to each and avoid the hub delay. I believe this can be done through grouping or associations. I just need to know if it's possible to link all three together so the all work in tandem, regardless of what switch is being used. Any assistance with this and how to do it in the Smartthings environment would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
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Are all your WD200+s on the new 5.11 firmware? If they're using the older 5.9, you're out of luck. HST have not yet released 5.11 for OTA updates but if you recently purchased WD200s, they now ship with 5.11 already installed.
If you DO have 5.11, in the Z-Wave configuration, add the other switches to each switches association group 2. So for three switches you'll need to 2 switches to group 2, and repeat the process 3 times on each individual switch. You should then probably also configure an event to poll the other switches for status any time a switch has it's state set, this is because switches activated via association group 2 may not push their new status to the central controller.
I can't provide screenshots for you sorry as I use HS3 and you're asking about instructions for Smart Things, all I can give you is the concept. -
Michael - thanks for the quick reply! I just checked and all three switches are on 5.11 firmware. So my next question is HS3 the only software that will let me configure the switches as you suggested above? I don't see any options in ST to group switches.Originally posted by Fellhahn View Post
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What you are looking/googling for is "Association Groups", this is a core aspect of the underlying Z-Wave technology and is not specific to HomeSeer. Anything which claims to be a Z-Wave controller should be capable of configuring association groups in some way.
In the case of WD200s, you want to configure association group 2.Comment
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Its been a while since I used SmartThings, but it used to be the case that SmartThings did not allow you to set the Association Groups (unless you did a manual customization of SmartThings device driver code). So setting Association Group #2 on the WD200s might not be possible from SmartThings. Its one of the reasons that I eventually switched to HS3.Comment
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Michael -Originally posted by Fellhahn View Post
Appreciate all your help. After some trial and error with the Smartthings Z-Wave tweaker, I was able to add the correct associations and now everything works better. I just need to find a way to generate a polling call as you are correct, it does take some time for the Hub to see the updated status of the switches. Nevertheless that is minor, thanks again for all your assistance!!Comment
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I am in exactly the same boat, got a few questions for you:Originally posted by mboarman View Post
1) I am hoping the ST association works as well as the HomeSeer one demonstrated in their videos ... can you operate the circuit from any switch, and have the status update the other switches in real time, so the LEDs all show the same status?
2) Can you provide details on how you did the association? I'm also new to ST and still learning how to do the more technical stuff.
Thanks in advance ... if I can get this working like the HomeSeer video showed I will be super-psyched!Comment
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Hey Joe - Happy to help out, if you are familiar with the Smartthings IDE interface, you have to login to the Smarthings from a PC and add the Smartthings Z-Wave tweaker devicer handler to your WD200 device. Once you do this you can than adjust the associations of the switch. Once those are saved you can reapply the original device handler and all should be good. Note there is a slight delay in the switches reacting to each other but for the most part they stay in sync and work MUCH better than trying to trigger them directly through the hub.Originally posted by joecool View Post
Also worth noting, this only works when the switch is manually activated. If triggering the switch through the hub they will not talk to each other through the created association.
Z-Wave Tweaker DH:
https://community.smartthings.com/t/...-tweaker/81558
Good luck!Comment
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Cool, I have messed w/the IDE interface a little bit and installed the tweaker so I will try that out. Is it obvious how to set up the association? Sorry to hear it doesn't work when triggering the switches thru the hub ... this seems like a big hole in this method. Do they "catch up" eventually through polling or some such, or are they out of sync until you use the physical switch again?Comment
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Actually it's really not that big of a deal, if you need to turn them on through the hub just send the trigger to all of them at once through a routine or webcore piston. If you are using them manually through the association, they work pretty darn well and I haven't seen them get out of sync yet. Like I said there is a slight delay but it's pretty insignificant.Originally posted by joecool View Post
As far as the association, once you have the tweaker assigned to the dimmer, just click on the gear icon and scroll down to assosciations. You'll want to assigned the device ID's of the other switches you want to associate. You'll need to do this for each dimmer in the chain. Hopefully that makes sense.
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Crud, I was able to switch the DH and set up the association, but then I accidentally hit the "delete" box in the IDE instead of the "update" box! Since I'm away from home I can't add the switch back into the network right now. Have to try it out when I get home this afternoon.
I use Alexa a lot to activate the switches so that's actually a big deal for me. Sounds like the best thing would be to have Alexa run a routine that turns them both on rather than having it just activate one switch, right? What if I want to set it to a level besides 100% through the hub.Comment
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Ok I got home last night and added the missing switch back in and got the associations working - very cool! There may be a slight lag in the response of the lights from the slave switch (the one that isn't actually connected to the load) but it's absolutely minimal. The non-coordination of the switches when using the app or voice commands is a bit annoying tho as I will be doing that a lot. I understand how to make a routine that would activate them both at once for on/off, but what about dimming? How do I make a generic routine that would sync them for any dimming level?
BTW as an interesting side note, since I made the association at the slave switch first, even when it wasn't in smart things, it still worked to control the circuit. I guess this is because the association is local and doesn't use the hub? That is actually pretty nice, so switches will still work even if you lose internet.Comment
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