ZigBee and Z-Wave functionality for automation?

[pandaym]

Hi!

I have been having a really bad time with home automation till now, I gotta be honest. Been through a ton of different systems already, and did not really like any of them. Basically, what I need to do is super simple, but everything just falls short one way or another. Therefore I would like to ask you all if HomeSeer can do what I need.

So what I got is a ton of Philips Hue bulbs everywhere in the house, that are currently paired to deCONZ along with a bunch of Xiaomi sensors. Furthermore I have Z-Wave wall switches in the form of Logic Group ZHC5010, Fibaro Dimmer 2 and Fibaro Double Switch 2 depending on my needs for the various locations they are installed. Lastly I have a Qubino 0-10v dimmer I use to control my ventilation system by input from the Xiaomi sensors. All this is currently done in Home Assistant, but I never got the full functionality working. Previously I been through a ton of other platforms like Homey and also just tried Hubitat.

My problem is usually with the lights, where I cannot seem to find a system that handles everything I need. I need the following functionality to be present:

1. Be able to use ZigBee scenes, so that various configurations for each bulb can be stored on the persistent storage of the bulb, and therefore be called by a single ZigBee command. This seems like the only way to avoid the light from flickering around and popcorning, when turning on to another scene than it was turned off at. (This works in deCONZ, but cannot in any way be done in Homey and Hubitat).
2. Be able to easily configure my Z-Wave connected wallswitches to turn on/off and brighten/dim my ZigBee bulbs. (This works in Hubitat, where they have a "StartLevelChange" that sends the bulb smoothly towards either 1 or 100% depending on a up/down drop-down. This comes along with a "StopLevelChange" button. These two commands can then easily be assigned to the hold and release events from any given button. This however seems completely impossible to achieve with deCONZ/Home Assistant, Homey, etc.).
3. Be able to have my Philips Hue lights and Xiaomi sensors on the same ZigBee mesh, to ensure the little battery-driven sensors have connectivity without the need to fill my house with other useless ZigBee routers.
4. Of course be able to set up my ventilation system, so I need the Qubino 0-10v dimmer to work as well.

Hope someone can let me know if this is easily doable in HomeSeer

[Guest]

There is a deconz plugin for Homeseer . It is called Jowihue. Take a look at it. I believe it would be the solution for # 1 #2 # 3.

Not sure for z wave side of things. maybe others can help.

[simplextech]

Hi!

I have been having a really bad time with home automation till now, I gotta be honest. Been through a ton of different systems already, and did not really like any of them. Basically, what I need to do is super simple, but everything just falls short one way or another. Therefore I would like to ask you all if HomeSeer can do what I need.

So what I got is a ton of Philips Hue bulbs everywhere in the house, that are currently paired to deCONZ along with a bunch of Xiaomi sensors. Furthermore I have Z-Wave wall switches in the form of Logic Group ZHC5010, Fibaro Dimmer 2 and Fibaro Double Switch 2 depending on my needs for the various locations they are installed. Lastly I have a Qubino 0-10v dimmer I use to control my ventilation system by input from the Xiaomi sensors. All this is currently done in Home Assistant, but I never got the full functionality working. Previously I been through a ton of other platforms like Homey and also just tried Hubitat.

I've seen your posting on Hubitat community. Here's the low down answers...

My problem is usually with the lights, where I cannot seem to find a system that handles everything I need. I need the following functionality to be present:[LIST=1][*]Be able to use ZigBee scenes, so that various configurations for each bulb can be stored on the persistent storage of the bulb, and therefore be called by a single ZigBee command. This seems like the only way to avoid the light from flickering around and popcorning, when turning on to another scene than it was turned off at. (This works in deCONZ, but cannot in any way be done in Homey and Hubitat).

To use ZigBee scenes use the controller the lamps were made to work with. Period. Hue lamps are ZLL and the Hue Bridge is optimized to work correctly with the ZLL and scene capabilities. Same for other ZigBee lamps. The thing about Zigbee and the incarnations is it's very specific to each manufacturer's ZCL that they produce. Yes ZigBee lamps generally provide the basic functions through any ZigBee controller with ZHA 1.2 functionality. BASIC FUNCTIONALITY.

[*]Be able to easily configure my Z-Wave connected wallswitches to turn on/off and brighten/dim my ZigBee bulbs. (This works in Hubitat, where they have a "StartLevelChange" that sends the bulb smoothly towards either 1 or 100% depending on a up/down drop-down. This comes along with a "StopLevelChange" button. These two commands can then easily be assigned to the hold and release events from any given button. This however seems completely impossible to achieve with deCONZ/Home Assistant, Homey, etc.).

You can use the Z-Wave switches to turn on/off the ZigBee bulbs with events but this is a long debated item of why use "Smart Switches" with "Smart Bulbs" as the lamps need constant power. So it's a waste to wire of the Z-Wave switches and not have them connected to a load and most Z-Wave switches don't have a software switch to disconnect the load.

The dim up/down again is not likely with Z-Wave switches and ZigBee lamps without a lot of effort. You will have to use Switches that are scene controllers and be able to reconfigure the dim up/down functions of the switch to correspond with events at the controller. This is not typical of interactions even with Z-Wave to Z-Wave lamps let alone going to another ZigBee bulb.

This is possible (I do it today) with Insteon Dimmers and the Hue nodeserver running on my ISY. The caveat here is that Insteon has native scene capabilities built into everything and I'm using the Hue Bridge with the lamps and so the nodeserver (aka plugin) is translating the native Insteon dim/brighten commands to Hue dim up/down commands and the Insteon scene maps to the Hue device group. There may be others on here that have gone to the effort with Z-Wave switches to get this functionality from Hue lamps or other Zigbee Lamps. I looked into it and messed with it a bit. It was not going to be easy to create or maintain.

[*]Be able to have my Philips Hue lights and Xiaomi sensors on the same ZigBee mesh, to ensure the little battery-driven sensors have connectivity without the need to fill my house with other useless ZigBee routers.

Not going to happen. You need routers of some form and lamps are not good routers. You could buy in wall receptacles to replace existing ones to be the routers though. Currently the only ZigBee receptacles (outlets) I'm aware of are from Smartenit. Otherwise you will need ZigBee switches/dimmers or plugin units to be routers.

[*]Of course be able to set up my ventilation system, so I need the Qubino 0-10v dimmer to work as well.
Hope someone can let me know if this is easily doable in HomeSeer

No info on the Qubino... can't help there.

[logman]

Not going to happen. You need routers of some form and lamps are not good routers. You could buy in wall receptacles to replace existing ones to be the routers though. Currently the only ZigBee receptacles (outlets) I'm aware of are from Smartenit. Otherwise you will need ZigBee switches/dimmers or plugin units to be routers.

Unlike Sylvania and Sengled bulbs, I have found Hue bulbs to be excellent routers. The caveat of course is they have to share the same controller as the battery powered devices that need the routers. I have a few cheap ambient white Hue bulbs on my deCONZ network in places where I don't care about using scenes or color, such as closets, upstairs bathrooms, etc. I leave them powered on all the time and let motion sensors turn them on/off as needed using the JowiHue plugin.

The other really strong router I found is the SmartThings plugin switch outlet. Those little guys seem to find every Zigbee device on the network, and at around $20 the price is not bad. However, I'm not sure if they are offered in a configuration for Denmark.

--Barry

[pandaym]

There is a deconz plugin for Homeseer . It is called Jowihue. Take a look at it. I believe it would be the solution for # 1 #2 # 3.

Not sure for z wave side of things. maybe others can help.

I'm pretty sure the Z-Wave part of things is fine. So if Joweihue can in fact do this, that would be great. Are you running it, and can test the functionality for me? Or should I ask in the Jowihue community?

[Guest]

w.vuyk Maybe the plugin autors can help. I am not using scenes.

[pandaym]

I've seen your posting on Hubitat community. Here's the low down answers...


To use ZigBee scenes use the controller the lamps were made to work with. Period. Hue lamps are ZLL and the Hue Bridge is optimized to work correctly with the ZLL and scene capabilities. Same for other ZigBee lamps. The thing about Zigbee and the incarnations is it's very specific to each manufacturer's ZCL that they produce. Yes ZigBee lamps generally provide the basic functions through any ZigBee controller with ZHA 1.2 functionality. BASIC FUNCTIONALITY.


You can use the Z-Wave switches to turn on/off the ZigBee bulbs with events but this is a long debated item of why use "Smart Switches" with "Smart Bulbs" as the lamps need constant power. So it's a waste to wire of the Z-Wave switches and not have them connected to a load and most Z-Wave switches don't have a software switch to disconnect the load.

The dim up/down again is not likely with Z-Wave switches and ZigBee lamps without a lot of effort. You will have to use Switches that are scene controllers and be able to reconfigure the dim up/down functions of the switch to correspond with events at the controller. This is not typical of interactions even with Z-Wave to Z-Wave lamps let alone going to another ZigBee bulb.

This is possible (I do it today) with Insteon Dimmers and the Hue nodeserver running on my ISY. The caveat here is that Insteon has native scene capabilities built into everything and I'm using the Hue Bridge with the lamps and so the nodeserver (aka plugin) is translating the native Insteon dim/brighten commands to Hue dim up/down commands and the Insteon scene maps to the Hue device group. There may be others on here that have gone to the effort with Z-Wave switches to get this functionality from Hue lamps or other Zigbee Lamps. I looked into it and messed with it a bit. It was not going to be easy to create or maintain.


Not going to happen. You need routers of some form and lamps are not good routers. You could buy in wall receptacles to replace existing ones to be the routers though. Currently the only ZigBee receptacles (outlets) I'm aware of are from Smartenit. Otherwise you will need ZigBee switches/dimmers or plugin units to be routers.



No info on the Qubino... can't help there.

Thank you for your thorough reply. I'm not sure if I completely agree with you on everything, as my experience says otherwise for parts of it.
- For ZigBee scenes, I can tell you that these also do in fact work great with deCONZ, so that it only works with the original hub is not my experience.

- About only supporting basic functionality, that might be true, but is that not just an interpretation? I mean, all the functionality on the original hub must also be simply how they use the ZigBee commands, that are also available for all other systems to use? For deCONZ, as far as I know, the only limitation is Hue Entertainment is not working.

- Regarding smart switches, all my bulbs are in fact wired with permanent power. So there is nothing actually connected to the relays on my Fibaro Double Switches, as these cannot decouple the relay from the wall switch inputs. For my Fibaro Dimmers, the lights connected obviously needs to be connected, as the Fibaro is handling the dimming etc., and those ar enot smart bulbs. For my ZHC5010, the Hue bulbs are connected to the relays, but the relay is set to decoupled so I can only turn off the relay through software. This is only to be able to change bulbs or similar without turning off the power to the whole segment of the house.
This all seems to be the only way to actually be able to get controls for smart bulbs on the walls, if you want to keep the original looks with normal wall switches. Does not seem like a waste in my eyes?
Dim / up and down works fine with direct association between these things and a Z-wave light, but the problem is when it goes over a platform(like Home Assistant) to ZigBee bulbs. I get events for all button presses, like hold, release etc. and can automate that towards the brightness of the bulb. The problem is this floods the zigbee network with a gazillion little steps of dimming up/down, and when the button is released, it will still jump 5-6 steps, because of commands that are still waiting. So that all does not work well. However the Hubitat has a function/command that will start dimming a ZigBee paired bulb in a direction, either up and down with a single zigbee command. That coupled with a single command to stop the process, looks like the best way to automate with the button presses. This must be generic ZigBee functionality that could be done with any platform basically?

So what you are saying about having to be able to configure the dim up/down etc of switches, I guess I pretty much am in the clear with? Since they aren't actually doing any dimming, they are just "dumb" button presses.

Can you tell me how you do it with Insteon? I know nothing about them, so I don't know if they are ZigBee (and you have them on the same mesh) or they are wifi or...?

- About lamps being bad routers, that is not what I have heard from most people. In fact, it is commonly said that Hue bulbs are some of the best ZigBee routers that you can actually buy. Unfortunately, no zigbee wall switches exist for our international standard. In fact, the Logic Group ZHC5010 is the only wall switch on the market we can use, so I really have to work with that.

[pandaym]

Unlike Sylvania and Sengled bulbs, I have found Hue bulbs to be excellent routers. The caveat of course is they have to share the same controller as the battery powered devices that need the routers. I have a few cheap ambient white Hue bulbs on my deCONZ network in places where I don't care about using scenes or color, such as closets, upstairs bathrooms, etc. I leave them powered on all the time and let motion sensors turn them on/off as needed using the JowiHue plugin.

The other really strong router I found is the SmartThings plugin switch outlet. Those little guys seem to find every Zigbee device on the network, and at around $20 the price is not bad. However, I'm not sure if they are offered in a configuration for Denmark.

--Barry

Can you tell me about the JowiHue functionality? You seem to imply that scenes does not work with it through deCONZ?

[simplextech]

Thank you for your thorough reply. I'm not sure if I completely agree with you on everything, as my experience says otherwise for parts of it.
- For ZigBee scenes, I can tell you that these also do in fact work great with deCONZ, so that it only works with the original hub is not my experience.

- About only supporting basic functionality, that might be true, but is that not just an interpretation? I mean, all the functionality on the original hub must also be simply how they use the ZigBee commands, that are also available for all other systems to use? For deCONZ, as far as I know, the only limitation is Hue Entertainment is not working.

- Regarding smart switches, all my bulbs are in fact wired with permanent power. So there is nothing actually connected to the relays on my Fibaro Double Switches, as these cannot decouple the relay from the wall switch inputs. For my Fibaro Dimmers, the lights connected obviously needs to be connected, as the Fibaro is handling the dimming etc., and those ar enot smart bulbs. For my ZHC5010, the Hue bulbs are connected to the relays, but the relay is set to decoupled so I can only turn off the relay through software. This is only to be able to change bulbs or similar without turning off the power to the whole segment of the house.
This all seems to be the only way to actually be able to get controls for smart bulbs on the walls, if you want to keep the original looks with normal wall switches. Does not seem like a waste in my eyes?
Dim / up and down works fine with direct association between these things and a Z-wave light, but the problem is when it goes over a platform(like Home Assistant) to ZigBee bulbs. I get events for all button presses, like hold, release etc. and can automate that towards the brightness of the bulb. The problem is this floods the zigbee network with a gazillion little steps of dimming up/down, and when the button is released, it will still jump 5-6 steps, because of commands that are still waiting. So that all does not work well. However the Hubitat has a function/command that will start dimming a ZigBee paired bulb in a direction, either up and down with a single zigbee command. That coupled with a single command to stop the process, looks like the best way to automate with the button presses. This must be generic ZigBee functionality that could be done with any platform basically?

So what you are saying about having to be able to configure the dim up/down etc of switches, I guess I pretty much am in the clear with? Since they aren't actually doing any dimming, they are just "dumb" button presses.

Can you tell me how you do it with Insteon? I know nothing about them, so I don't know if they are ZigBee (and you have them on the same mesh) or they are wifi or...?

- About lamps being bad routers, that is not what I have heard from most people. In fact, it is commonly said that Hue bulbs are some of the best ZigBee routers that you can actually buy. Unfortunately, no zigbee wall switches exist for our international standard. In fact, the Logic Group ZHC5010 is the only wall switch on the market we can use, so I really have to work with that.

deCONZ is a great implementation of a controller for Lamps. Ok with other things but great with Lamps. They also have put in a lot of effort to get full functionality out of Hue and other lamps so they get a lot of respect for that. Other controllers are not as fully implemented and do not work as well. So the caveat still stands. If you are comfortable running with deCONZ and can integrate it with whatever top level system you choose (Home Assistant, Hubitat, HomeSeer, etc etc) then the only limit is the integration point and whether or not that integration fully supports deCONZ functionality. JowiHue is great BTW.

Great your Fibaro inline's can disconnect the load. That's great. Most regular switches don't provide that feature which is where the whole debate stems from. Now that you have that back to your question of how to use a switch to control the Zigbee lamps and you know your problem that it's a lot of little steps (single commands) that don't work out well. Yes Hubitat has a couple of functions for the start/stop dimming which work and you could add into a "rule" to use them. Press button start the process but it's not a tradditional press-hold to dim up/down type setup either.

Insteon is it's own protocol it is not z-wave or zigbee. Insteon is a dual tech protocol that uses power line signals and RF signals to communicate from device to device and does not require/need a master controller as every device is also a controller.

Lamps are bad routers in general. Hue are the exception according to some. I don't have a lot of Hue so I can't say for sure.

[w.vuyk]

Hi!

My problem is usually with the lights, where I cannot seem to find a system that handles everything I need. I need the following functionality to be present:

1. Be able to use ZigBee scenes, so that various configurations for each bulb can be stored on the persistent storage of the bulb, and therefore be called by a single ZigBee command. This seems like the only way to avoid the light from flickering around and popcorning, when turning on to another scene than it was turned off at. (This works in deCONZ, but cannot in any way be done in Homey and Hubitat).
2. Be able to easily configure my Z-Wave connected wallswitches to turn on/off and brighten/dim my ZigBee bulbs. (This works in Hubitat, where they have a "StartLevelChange" that sends the bulb smoothly towards either 1 or 100% depending on a up/down drop-down. This comes along with a "StopLevelChange" button. These two commands can then easily be assigned to the hold and release events from any given button. This however seems completely impossible to achieve with deCONZ/Home Assistant, Homey, etc.).
3. Be able to have my Philips Hue lights and Xiaomi sensors on the same ZigBee mesh, to ensure the little battery-driven sensors have connectivity without the need to fill my house with other useless ZigBee routers.
4. Of course be able to set up my ventilation system, so I need the Qubino 0-10v dimmer to work as well.

Hope someone can let me know if this is easily doable in HomeSeer

The JowiHue plugin uses its own local scenes to control lights. If you want this to be smooth working, it is best to use the JowiHue scenes on groupw, controlling through groups is always the best control to have synchronous control. The JowiHue scenes are bridge independant, so using multiple bridges can share a single sceneset.
JowiHue uses deCONZ and presents the REST Api in the HS3 system.

When you use ZWAVE dimmers and switches but I guess also for Zigbee swtiches, you will need events in HS3 to catch the dimmers actions and translate this to JowiHue actions. You can set a 'standard' dimmers jump in the configuration page of the plugin, for brightness, Hue and Saturation values. So you could also use a dimmers action for changing color or saturation. Multibutton switches are nice for this. Also, check the Philps Hue dimmer or the IKEA remote, they perform very well in this area. There are also some Friends of Hue switches available since this year(no battery or connections needed) that seem to perform perfectly.

As a confirmation, most bulbs can be used as routers, except Sengled bulbs that do not support routing at all, or Sylvania, which are just not trustworthy as routers. Philips bulbs are excelent routers, IKEA is doing ok (need to cycle power every now and then) and I believe there are several specific US bulbs that as doing fine too (CREE?). And of course most plugs are doing well too.

Ask any question you like, maybe in the JowiHue forum?

Wim

[kriz83]

It's not clear to me what problem you are trying to solve with HS that you can't solve with HA.
Your controller will have to do the translation from ZWave to ZigBee, there is no way around that. In HS you could try with 'this event cant retrigger with x seconds', but then your dimming will get very slow.

FYI, I am investigating the switch from HS to HA.