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Vizia RF 4-button scene controller - total confusion

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    Vizia RF 4-button scene controller - total confusion

    Hey all,

    I'm having a heck of a time trying to get my Vizia RF 4-button scene controllers to do what I want them to do, and I thought I'd check in here for some help.

    My needs are super-simple: when a button on a switch is pressed, I want Homeseer to respond by running an event. I've set up each switch by going into the Configure screen on Homeseer, giving each button its own scene number, and adding Homeseer as a device to control.

    But I'm experiencing all sorts of gotchas, mainly:

    1. Counterintuitively, at least to me, the buttons on these switches are toggles -- they have on/off status. For the most part, I'm not using the switches for lighting. So, when I receive an "on" event in Homeseer, I run the event and delay 5 seconds and then send an "off" command to the switch. This is a total hack and not at all reliable. Sometimes I press a button, wait 30 seconds, then press it again. I have to go to Homeseer and look at the log to see if the button press even registered.

    2. Response time is very slow: sometimes 30 seconds or more.
    I've run Z-Seer and the network appears to be fairly robust. "Regular" Z-wave light switches adjacent to the scene controllers work just fine and respond quickly.

    3. It seems like the switches lose their configuration, or maybe Homeseer is losing it. I've had to reprogram them twice now. I'm not sure if this is a bug or just some one-time snafu happened to me.

    So, either I just bought the wrong product for what I need, or there's some other way to make these work better for my needs. Any ideas?

    Thanks!

    Pete

    #2
    Maybe I can help you a bit.

    If the button are toggles (left is on, right is off) then you do not have a Scene Controller. Your have a Zone Controller. The main difference is the button style AND a zone controller is designed to only turn lights (or groups of devices) ON or OFF.

    A Vizia RF Scene Controller will engage scenes, various lights at different intensities.

    If you are seeing long latency issues, there are many causes, but almost all of them are a poor installation of the mesh network. How far away is the closest node? How is the node density in the home (Too many nodes too close, or not enough)? Since you are running RF, sometimes wall and flooring materials (stucco, brick, rebar, stainless steel, etc) can effect db power.

    In a mesh network, here are some important things to remember:
    1. More devices spread around the building are better than many devices in a small area. Typically one per room is fine.
    2. A Vizia RF system will benefit from using the Vizia RF Handheld Remote controller as the Primary controller in the network. There are additional system optimization routines built into the remote which can work wonders on poor performance.
    3. In a Z-Wave system, if you reset a device manually (using the air gap) without also removing the device from the Primary network, you are creating phantom nodes in the system. A phantom node will create latency because it thinks there is a route to follow-- but that route has been disabled by the resetting (air gap) of the device.

    Not sure how much HomeSeer iseffecting performance since I running a straight Vizia RF installation.

    Try some of those things out to see if you can cut the latency issues.

    PS. I'm running a 34 nodes system with not detectable latency, so I know it works reliably.

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      #3
      Hi gws,

      I appreciate your response. I definitely have the scene controller (buttons are NOT rockers -- just single buttons).

      For the record, I have used the ViziaRF scene controller as a direct scene controller for lighting, and that worked *fairly* well and with little latency, but unfortunately, one light in the scene was not responding well to the scene commands. (Maybe 50% of the time, more on that below.)

      My network is about 30 nodes, almost all of them ViziaRF light switches. On the whole, it works very reliably and with little latency. The whole thing is controlled by Homeseer and Z-Troller -- I do not have additional controllers.

      The marketing schtick for Z-Wave claims that the more nodes you add, the more reliable the network should be. I'm not so sure that is accurate, especially when the nodes get too dense. You allude to this too -- in my kitchen/family room area, maybe 500 square feet, there are 10 switches. 5 of them are in one gang box. In theory, these switches should be "super-connected" but I do have troubles with them from time to time, especially when used with the Scene controller. (3 switches in this 5 gang box were in a scene -- and one of the switches was not responding to the scene controller reliably. The Scene controller itself was across the room -- 15 feet away)

      I run Z-Seer, which helps a bit. I can run 10 test packets to the aforementioned controller in 3.35 seconds, which I think is fairly good. (BTW, I've optimized all the nodes a number of times, so I don't think there are gaps in the network mesh config.)

      I'll keep trying some things and check back here with updates. Thanks!

      Pete

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