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    Small Controlled Switch

    I have some battery operated led lights which run on AA batteries. I have the idea to add a controllable switch and have them come in by motion via Homeseer. What has this capability? What am I looking for? An IO switch? Contact switch?

    #2
    If the lights are going to stay battery operated then you probably don't really have a solution, anything you use will draw current, which will drastically shorten the life of batteries and end up being unpractical. You can control them with just a relay spliced in the wires and then bringing that relay back to HS and something like an Arduino/ESP8266 if they are just a battery set of lights but if you are going to that length you may as well just power the lights from HS directly.

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      #3
      Ok, so you're saying instead of two battery packs, I should just have one that powers the Leds, and the relay device. That makes sense. I know 4AA Batteries can power my door locks for a few months. I don't know how long the leds can run on the 2AA batteries, cause they're never on because it's a pain to turn them on. If I automate them, I can use them for night lights. Anyways, I'm not familiar with Arduino in general, or ESP8266 particular. How would I get this to speak Z-Wave?

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        #4
        Originally posted by tome10 View Post
        Ok, so you're saying instead of two battery packs, I should just have one that powers the Leds, and the relay device. That makes sense. I know 4AA Batteries can power my door locks for a few months. I don't know how long the leds can run on the 2AA batteries, cause they're never on because it's a pain to turn them on. If I automate them, I can use them for night lights. Anyways, I'm not familiar with Arduino in general, or ESP8266 particular. How would I get this to speak Z-Wave?
        The door locks will have firmware that is heavily optimised to save battery life, that will probably be one of their most important things when they develop it...when you come to a situation like this there is usually no off the shelf solution that can be readily adapted.

        The issue is for Z-Wave or any solution really is that you have to have power, Z-Wave battery devices usually work in reverse in that the device like a motion sensor is usually in a deep sleep until it needs to wake up (when you are drawing microamps so battery life is drastically improved), then when it senses something to tell HS it will wake up, send the signal very quickly and then go straight back to sleep conserving current. That's how they last so long.

        I don't know any readily identifiable Z-Wave solutions that are output and battery operated, the issue you end up having with output devices is they have to listen for incoming commands, that listening means current, that current means no battery. The lock probably has been designed very specially to still listen but not drain the battery too much. Even something like a 433MHz remote solution I don't think will work as the receiver (which in your case is connected to the lights) IIRC usually do just sit there drawing current. I've just looked at a basic one that draws 4.5ma (http://www.futurlec.com/Radio-433MHZ.shtml), catering for the rest of the components needed I've doubled that to 9ma. Average figure for some AA batteries of 2000mAh? That gives you nine days of battery life per unit just if it is receiving data not necessarily when the LED's are on! - that is going to be frustrating to replace!!!

        That's my take on it anyway, may not necessarily be correct...

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          #5
          yea, i'm beginning to think it's not very feasible. For the record, my kwikset locks have a circuit card that is removable. I mean if I was 'smart', i could fenangle that card to work. It's only a momentary switch, so it would have to trigger something else. an awful lot of trouble for a couple of lights.

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