Confusion with device status

[Keoni]

Hi all,

I have a Cooper 5-scene wall controller with those little z-wave toggle toggle LEDs. I use the buttons to trigger events for turning on the A/V system as well as whole-house music system (among other things).

Both of these devices I also can/will start up with other methods of control (like my Harmony remote or Sonos app). I got the idea of creating an event to monitor for device changes and toggle the LED on the controller on if it was turned on from somewhere else. This works well. However, the controller button itself still thinks that it is off if I turned on the device from the other source, even though the toggle LED is now lit. Makes sense I guess...

But the result is that I now cannot simply use the wall button to turn off the device that it thinks is already off. What I am looking for is a way to set the controller button to "Scene On" (as well as turn on the LED) when these other states are detected. All this, without triggering the event that the button is programmed to trigger.

Hope that makes sense... if so, any thoughts on a approach?

Thank you,
John

[Timon]

I've got one of their scene controllers in the house and they can really be a royal PITA to get working well. You just have to be persistent and think outside the box but you can usually get things working the way you want.

That said I really wish there were a scene controller that you could program to disassociate the buttons from the LEDs so you could let HS3 do all of the heavy lifting. If you want to toggle a scene or some other device you just press the button and HS3 preforms the toggle function and sets the LED to the correct state. Basically the button just sends a "I've been pressed" message to HS3. In fact if Homeseer would make one it could have other messages like the current switches such as multi-presses and holds. Maybe Homeseer could work out a deal with Cooper to allow Homeseer to load their own firmware on the Cooper switches.

The only real downside is that nothing happens if HS3 is not running for some reason but that's not much different that the way most of us use them now.

[Keoni]

I've got one of their scene controllers in the house and they can really be a royal PITA to get working well. You just have to be persistent and think outside the box but you can usually get things working the way you want.

Indeed. These things are quite handy, but very cumbersome in ways.

Maybe a better way of asking my question is this...

Is there a way in HS to toggle the switch state on a scene controller button from "Scene Off" to "Scene On" without triggering the associated event (or having to actually push the button)?

[waynehead99]

Indeed. These things are quite handy, but very cumbersome in ways.

Maybe a better way of asking my question is this...

Is there a way in HS to toggle the switch state on a scene controller button from "Scene Off" to "Scene On" without triggering the associated event (or having to actually push the button)?

I don't have the Cooper scene controller, but I do have the Lutron one and it works really well, except the LEDs. Also the status hasn't updated since I installed the unit. I am thinking the controller part of the zwave plugin still is missing things for this all to work properly.

Question to ask you before I come up with a way to fix this for you. Can you go into HS and actually change the status manually?

[Keoni]

After a little experimentation this weekend, here is what I found...

I replaced the Cooper (Eaton) scene controller recently as my original one was flaky. The old one was version 1.8, the new one is 2.5. Whereas the old one seemed to have the indicator LED pegged to the scene state, the new one does not. This means that I toggle the LED using the ZWave command and only the LED toggles.

To address your question Wayne, I can use HS to both toggle the scene (which affects the LED) as well as the LED directly. The issue here is that when HS toggles the scene, it kicks off the related event.

I then tried to use a plugin to automatically disable the original event and then toggle the scene itself (via a trigger event) and then re-enable the original event... this did not work either as the system seemed to "remember" the state of the scene and then trigger the original even when it was re-enabled. Quite annoying.


Thank you,
John

[Keoni]

Hi all - any new thoughts on this?

[jmaddox]

This made me think of the homeseer setup video for the cooper 5 button controller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxXXf9IQgQI

I did not use this method, instead opting to have my 5 button controller directly control their scenes (which is what it sounds like you did as well). I use events to turn the button light on/off if the light was controlled from another source. This works fine for me since each button controls a single light and the controller behaves as expected regardless of how the light was controlled.

If you followed the video and let homeseer control the devices when the cooper buttons were pressed I suspect you could get the end result you were looking for.

[Timon]

I followed the video but never found where you turn off the scene.

I do wish that you had more control coming out of the scene controller. Maybe Homeseer could work a deal and OEM the scene controller then add their own firmware. Then we'd have a really good general and scene controller.