What's the best way to get open/close (on/off) converted into z-wave?

[Person]

Just to clarify - if using the microswitch with a device's NC/COM outputs (like a motion detector or a magnetic reed switch type device used in doors), what should parameter 120 be? 255 or 1?

I normally use switch on the micro-switch itself to change mode. You hold it for 6 seconds if I remember correctly and rotate from regular to momentary mode. Once set you never need to change this.

Notice that regular mode is quite interesting - it toggles on switch change, very much like 3 way system. It does NOT map open/close to ON/OFF. This is not a problem unless you additionally control it thru z-wave and have real switch somewhere on the wall - then it becomes non-positional light switch, again just like in 3 way system, even if you have only 1 switch in your circuit.

[Person]

Excuse the slightly grainy photo but today I have put an Aeon Labs Micro Switch module in my doorbell, the aim being to get the status of the push switch into HS. I did contemplate doing this with a battery module but it was about the same money and there is no messing around with changing batteries.

.... I have left the load floating (I may connect it to the bell later I don't know yet) and it does to appear to have a sort of buzz/hum to the device that is noticeable, I am not sure if it expects something to be connected to it and this is why or it buzzes regardless.

Thankfully it just fit right in...

That is interesting - I would not expect it to buzz but you might hear it switch from on/off (there is relay inside). How exactly did you wire this? You have 120V in your doorbell or you are using 24V (typical in US) to power it? And you are connection door bell button to the switch input (which would mean it is not lit? again in US normally 24V is supplied to the button to light it up)?

[mrhappy]

That is interesting - I would not expect it to buzz but you might hear it switch from on/off (there is relay inside). How exactly did you wire this? You have 120V in your doorbell or you are using 24V (typical in US) to power it? And you are connection door bell button to the switch input (which would mean it is not lit? again in US normally 24V is supplied to the button to light it up)?

It is more of a high pitched whine, I'm going to disconnect the transformer as it is now redundant in any case just in case that is causing some sort of interference.

There is 240V coming into the doorbell at the top (brown and blue wire), the grey square is an 8V transformer and then the bell push is on the white bell wire at the bottom (that was connected to the screw terminals at the bottom). I've just eliminated that being connected to anything and put it straight into the switch inputs of the Aeotec module and powered the Aeotec module from the 240V. No lit doorbell for me anyway, they built my house with the cheapest button they could find and then used more silicone sealer than you can think of to seal it to the bricks so I have just left it.

[randman]

When using an Aaron Microswitch as open/close sensor (so it won't actually be in a junction box behind a switch), any suggestions on how to power it? Are folks just using a replacement lamp cord? Also, I suppose some means to put in a box to keep fingers out of the 120V? Just wanted to see what folks were doing to keep things safe.

[Person]

When using an Aaron Microswitch as open/close sensor (so it won't actually be in a junction box behind a switch), any suggestions on how to power it? Are folks just using a replacement lamp cord? Also, I suppose some means to put in a box to keep fingers out of the 120V? Just wanted to see what folks were doing to keep things safe.

I bought lamp replacement cord in homedepot (even fredmeyer has it in our neck of the woods). I bought plastic project box in radioshack and mounted on the wall (did not use aluminum plate). Drill 2 holes for power cord and cord from the sensor and created knots inside to prevent someone from pulling it out.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Westingho...0300/204836009

http://comingsoon.radioshack.com/pro...l#.VW_EtB3bIoc

Here are some more details w/ pics:

http://board.homeseer.com/showpost.p...4&postcount=13

[randman]

I did some bench testing with the Aeon Micro Switch. If the switch loses power and then regains power, its on or off state reverts back to whatever state it had before it lost power, even if the actual state of its wall switch inputs had changed while it lost power. Is there a setting so that when it regains power, it gets its state based on its "wall switch" input instead of whatever state it had prior to losing power?

This is the test that I did: my Aeon is configured as on/off (value 1 for the parameter mentioned earlier above). I connected the Aeon to a power cord. I connected two wires to its wall switch inputs and connected the two wires, so its status turned on (status value 255). I unplugged the Aeon so it had no power. Then, I disconnected the wires connected to its wall switch inputs (so now it's wall switch input is "open"). When I plugged the Aeon back in to give it power, its state was still on (red LED on and HS3 reporting On), even though the wires in its input wall switch were no longer connected. Ideally, upon regaining power, I would like the Aeon to set its state based on its wall switch inputs and not based on the state that it had prior to losing power. Otherwise, I may have to manually change its state whenever it retains power in order to synch its state.

I plan on using the Aeon with the BRK RM4 relay connected to a wired (with battery backup) BRK/First Alert wired smoke/CO detector. So, if the alarm activates, then I lose power, and then the alarm deactivates while power is lost, then once power is regained, the Aeon will incorrectly report an active alarm. Granted, I would expect that this scenario would be rare, but this is a general question especially if I plan on using this for other devices like motion detectors, etc.

Any suggestions if it's possible to configure the Aeon to have it get its state from its inputs (instead of last previous state) upon regaining power?

[randy]

I did some bench testing with the Aeon Micro Switch. If the switch loses power and then regains power, its on or off state reverts back to whatever state it had before it lost power, even if the actual state of its wall switch inputs had changed while it lost power. Is there a setting so that when it regains power, it gets its state based on its "wall switch" input instead of whatever state it had prior to losing power?

This is the test that I did: my Aeon is configured as on/off (value 1 for the parameter mentioned earlier above). I connected the Aeon to a power cord. I connected two wires to its wall switch inputs and connected the two wires, so its status turned on (status value 255). I unplugged the Aeon so it had no power. Then, I disconnected the wires connected to its wall switch inputs (so now it's wall switch input is "open"). When I plugged the Aeon back in to give it power, its state was still on (red LED on and HS3 reporting On), even though the wires in its input wall switch were no longer connected. Ideally, upon regaining power, I would like the Aeon to set its state based on its wall switch inputs and not based on the state that it had prior to losing power. Otherwise, I may have to manually change its state whenever it retains power in order to synch its state.

I plan on using the Aeon with the BRK RM4 relay connected to a wired (with battery backup) BRK/First Alert wired smoke/CO detector. So, if the alarm activates, then I lose power, and then the alarm deactivates while power is lost, then once power is regained, the Aeon will incorrectly report an active alarm. Granted, I would expect that this scenario would be rare, but this is a general question especially if I plan on using this for other devices like motion detectors, etc.

Any suggestions if it's possible to configure the Aeon to have it get its state from its inputs (instead of last previous state) upon regaining power?

There's nothing in the parameters of the microswitch that will do what you want. Why not use an ADIO100 or Arduino for digital I/O so that you can accurately reflect the state of the relay at all times.

I am using the Kidde CO and Smoke accessory relays which work similarly. I use an Arduino pin assigned to each relay, to trigger separate CO and smoke events.

[Person]

I did some bench testing with the Aeon Micro Switch. If the switch loses power and then regains power, its on or off state reverts back to whatever state it had before it lost power, even if the actual state of its wall switch inputs had changed while it lost power. Is there a setting so that when it regains power, it gets its state based on its "wall switch" input instead of whatever state it had prior to losing power?

I think the problem here is that on power restore, micro switch does not communicate back the state to HS. If you poll it, I bet you will get the right answer. Based on link below there is no setting to handle power restore. I think this is general issue with all zwave devices - when they come back from power outage, they go to some state (sometimes that state is configurable as ON or OFF or previous (Cooper has this option), sometimes not) but they don't send the message to gateway. I have hit few quirks like this in zwave protocol - it is not completely robust/thought thru when you have devices, secondary/accessory controllers and gateway all interacting.

My best idea is to have HS poll all devices on startup - not sure why this is not default behavior of HS ...


http://www.pepper1.net/zwavedb/uploa...5ba0aefe99.pdf

[randman]

I think the problem here is that on power restore, micro switch does not communicate back the state to HS. If you poll it, I bet you will get the right answer. Based on link below there is no setting to handle power restore. I think this is general issue with all zwave devices - when they come back from power outage, they go to some state (sometimes that state is configurable as ON or OFF or previous (Cooper has this option), sometimes not) but they don't send the message to gateway. I have hit few quirks like this in zwave protocol - it is not completely robust/thought thru when you have devices, secondary/accessory controllers and gateway all interacting.

My best idea is to have HS poll all devices on startup - not sure why this is not default behavior of HS ...


http://www.pepper1.net/zwavedb/uploa...5ba0aefe99.pdf

In this case, polling wouldn't have helped since the Aeon really was on.

[Person]

In this case, polling wouldn't have helped since the Aeon really was on.

Ahh yes Aeon handling is funky when external switch is on/off type (although this is exactly what you want in order for it to work seamlessly with z/wave control in virtual 3-way). I described that in one of the post above and promptly forgot about it. The reason this works OK w/ garage doors is that their state doesn't change during power outage unless you open by hand and not close before power comes back. I guess I never hit this case so I missed that fact .

In that case the best device to use would be ZFM-80 - it handles on/off switch in a fixed way: on maps to on, off maps to off (or you can reverse it if you want). That is why I use ZFM with momentary mode only - fixed mode is confusing when switch is controlled sometimes by z-wave, sometimes by hand.

I will probably move to ZFM for my garage door now that I realized the possible issue.

[randman]

Ahh yes Aeon handling is funky when external switch is on/off type (although this is exactly what you want in order for it to work seamlessly with z/wave control in virtual 3-way). I described that in one of the post above and promptly forgot about it. The reason this works OK w/ garage doors is that their state doesn't change during power outage unless you open by hand and not close before power comes back. I guess I never hit this case so I missed that fact .

In that case the best device to use would be ZFM-80 - it handles on/off switch in a fixed way: on maps to on, off maps to off (or you can reverse it if you want). That is why I use ZFM with momentary mode only - fixed mode is confusing when switch is controlled sometimes by z-wave, sometimes by hand.

I will probably move to ZFM for my garage door now that I realized the possible issue.

Well, the chances of my house losing power is low, and the fire/CO changing state while power is lost makes the probability of this problem even lower, although I suppose that if there's an actual fire, there might also be electrical problems.

I'm not sure I understand your post about the ZFM-80. Are you saying that it can be used in a manner so that it always gets its state from the state of what is connected to it (in my case, a relay)?

For my garage, I used to use an Evolve LFM-20 to control the garage door and an Everspring door sensor to get its open/close state. However, as part of my effort to get rid of as many battery operated devices as I can, I replaced the Everspring and Evolve devices with a MimoLite. MimoLite works great for garage door openers. I would use it for my fire/CO detector, but I prefer not to have a power brick in my ceiling, so a unit that can feed directly off 120v would be a cleaner install.

[Person]

I'm not sure I understand your post about the ZFM-80. Are you saying that it can be used in a manner so that it always gets its state from the state of what is connected to it (in my case, a relay)?

Correct, ZFM-80 can be set to directly mirror the state of the input switch. Aeon really only supports toggle-state on input switch change.

Now during power restore you would still need to poll it to get the right state since it won't communicate back any change to HS at power restore. This is general issues with all z-wave devices from what I can tell.

Yes I understand why mimolite is nice for garage doors but I learned about it after I did my setup :-) Even for mimolite I am suspecting you have to poll on power restore if you want to be 100% sure to have correct state assuming it could have changed between power being on to power restore.

[randman]

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I again have a need to detect when an external sensor (e.g. motion sensor, door sensor, etc.) has opened or closed. Since I want to minimize the use of batteries, I had used the Aeon Microswitch as discussed earlier in this thread.

The Aeon Microswitch has been replaced by the Aeon Nano Switch. Unlike the old Microswitch, the new Nano Switch doesn't have dedicated "Wall Switch" terminals. Instead, the Aeon switch has new terminals (https://aeotec.freshdesk.com/support...ch-user-guide-). I suppose S1 is where one wire of an external sensor would connect to. But not sure where the other wire of the external sensor would go to.

So, I'm wondering if I can use the Nano with external sensors. I'm not sure how an external sensor would connect (and I figured I'd do some research before "frying" my external sensor).

Other option is for me to use a MimoLite, but for this particular application (a wired smoke/co detector with a relay that can be connected to a Z-Wave device), I'd like a small Z-Wave device that can be embedded in the gang box, and doesn't need a power brick (i.e. one that can use 120V AC).

Otherwise, does anyone have other suggestions? I see that Fibaro makes a universal binary sensor but it doesn't look like it's available in the US.