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Hello,
I have a kitchen light that can be controlled by two switches, using either to turn it off or on. I have been slowly changing things over to be a smart home but this is the first switch I am attempting to install.
I am in a double wide modular home (mobile) that was built in 1994.
At first I thought I would need a 3 way switch but when taking the normal switches apart I realized that was incorrect because the wiring on my switches are different than anything I could find online.
For one a 3 way smart switch requires 5 wires and there are only 2 wires going into the primary switch with 3 wires going into the secondary switch from the primary switch (at least I think the 3 wires connect the two switches together). Images will be attached of the wiring.
There are two wires (one black and one white) going into the first switch and 3 wires (black, white, and red) going out of that and into the second switch (I assume). The odd thing is the red wire going to the second switch is connected to the white wire going into the first switch and the white wire going into the second switch seems to be a bridge wire or a traveler wire. Not exactly sure. You will see what I mean in the images.
I need to know what kind of smart switch I can use in this set up with one remaining a normal switch.
Note that for some reason the images got switched around when uploading them. The image with 2 wires on one side and 3 on the other is what I think is the primary and the image with just 3 wires is the secondary.
Primary.jpg Secondary.jpg -
Hi,
I am a student and recently i am working on smart home project and writing a seminar paper about the way users handle and manage IoT devices. I you have 3 min, please fill below survey. Its really short.
Thank you in advance, I really appreciate everyone's help. -
You lot are more likely to have a view than most I know. Our much used Logitech Harmony is (not so) slowly dying.
And Logitech have discontinued the entire line.
And no one else appears to be making something similar.
Was going for a Sofabaton X1, but no numeric keypad. Sofabaton U1, but no favourites.
Anyone got suggestions?
Needs to have those features, oh and not be only a phone app.....C
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Since one member asked at one point about the "front end" and "back end", I drew this showing the controller from the base to the tip along with what I have found to be the best options from my testing. Almost every controller will try to integrate all elements, especially commercial ones but... they all have strengths and weaknesses so if one can have a medley of the best ones...
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I was just going to add my support for a Update Button for the bare bones version of MSR and find the thread has been removed.
I'm wondering what was so provocative that required it's removal?
Have we become as paranoid as an owner of another forum?Anyway +1 for an Update Button.
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So, I think I'm in a bit of an unusual situation. I work at a camp & retreat center that has wifi throughout. I want to put a few switches in the office that can control outdoor lighting throughout the camp. We currently have switches in each of the buildings, but it is a particularly frustrating job to get all the lights on in the evening when it is brutally cold out or we are short staffed.
Most of our staff is not very tech savvy (my boss literally has his wife print out his emails for him each day!!!) so, I'd love to avoid having to set up any sort of raspberry pi or new phone app.
Is there type of 3-way switch that can connect to the wifi, turn on a light in another building AND turn on an indicator light in the office, without having any sort of wire running between the buildings? Hopefully looking for a simple solution without breaking the bank too.
I greatly appreciate any input that you can give. Thank you!
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I have a X10 wall switch system and I want to get rid of it. What would be the easiest transition to something more modern and easy to use with either wifi/homekit capabilities? My current X10 controls 3 zones in my bedroom. All zones are dimmable.
Zone 1 is 4 canister ceiling lights. LED bulbs
Zone 2 is 1 canister ceiling lights. Halogen Bulb
Zone 3 is 1 canister ceiling lights. Halogen Bulb
I have an old plug-in remote from Radio Shack and a wall switch with 3 buttons, each controlling one zone. (images attached)
My wall switch has one two wires from the wall. One black, one white.Is there any solution easy to install without the need of an electrician? Thanks for any feedback.
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Good morning all,
I'm working on weaning myself off of being totally Vera dependent. I've installed MSR on my Fedora home server, and I've been migrating luup Reactor rules over little by little. My hope is to use Vera as a bare bones z-wave hub, until I replace it either with Ezlo (not so sure about), or perhaps Hubitat. I'm just tired of zero new development in Vera, empty promises of native device integration, and cloud services that go down and leave my automation hanging.In any case, I digress. I've attempted to use Gcal3 on Vera to integrate Public calendars, such as Federal Holidays, School Calendars, etc. It use to somewhat work, but more often than not, all I get from Gcal3 is "token error code: HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request". The developer no longer is active, and it's effectively not working anymore.
I'd like to use these public calendars as Entity Attributes or Constraints in MSR. For instance, if it's a Federal Holiday, I don't have to work, and I may want to sleep in, which means lights may not come on as early, window coverings in the bedrooms may open later in the day, etc. Similar idea with a school calendar. If "closed" is in the event, my daughter may want to sleep in, and not want the window coverings opened as early.
I'm aware that Ezlo has integration through NuCal to all sorts of web based services, including Google Calendar, but as I stated earlier, I'm undecided on going down that path. Is there anyway to do this on MSR through any of it's abilities, such as HTTP calls or MQTT ( not experienced in MQTT, so I don't know now it works really).
Has anybody already done this?
Thanks for any advice in advance.
Unsolved Building a New Z Wave Network
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Hello all, I am finally ditching my Vera and moving to HA using a Zooz ZST10 Z wave stick. I have around 50 Z wave devices with a good mix of battery devices, locks, sensors and switches. The plan is to include all the AC powered devices first, starting from the ones closest to my Z wave stick then moving outwards. Once that is complete I will go back and include all battery powered devices in the same fashion.
My question is there any quick way to exclude all my Z wave devices from Vera, or should I just delete all devices without excluding them and factory reset each device before pairing to HA?
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Factory reset is faster (you’ll not need to wait for a luup restart for every device that’s removed), but there’s a link somewhere with a post by @rafale77 with instructions on how to clone Vera’s Zwave devices on an external key. ZwaveJS has the ability to specify a key and this route is maybe faster than re-pair everything.
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On a mission to automate everything. -
@therealdb said in Building a New Z Wave Network:
Factory reset is faster (you’ll not need to wait for a luup restart for every device that’s removed), but there’s a link somewhere with a post by @rafale77 with instructions on how to clone Vera’s Zwave devices on an external key. ZwaveJS has the ability to specify a key and this route is maybe faster than re-pair everything.
I'm aiming to migrate from Vera to Hubitat some day, but guess there's no cloning option - you'll have to factory reset (or re-pair) every single device?
Using MSR on Docker (Synology NAS), having InfluxDB, Grafana & Openhab, migrating from VeraPlus to Hubitat C-7
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@tunnus here’s the link to Rafael write up on some options.
@therealdb I was contemplating migrating using one of the mentioned options in the GitHub but ultimately decided to unpair each device and re add it, wanted a fresh start. Everything’s gone pretty well, got about 80% of my devices on HA. Some pesky Zooz ZEN22 switches left that refuse to include in the new network.
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Not to get off topic, but what are the reasons you are switching from Vera to either Hubitat or HA? More specifically, why did you choose one over another platform? I'm contemplating a switch now, having used Vera since 2016. Vera isn't really being maintained much anymore, and I'm tired of the lack of native device integration and cloud issues. They're putting all their effort into Ezlo, but I just don't know if Ezlo will be more of the same, and I might be better off with something completely different.
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@tamorgen I can only speak for my self, why I ditched Vera and turned to Home Assistent. Main reason was that almost every smart product can be integrated and is also easier to configure. HA is local, faster and can run on many hardwares. The UI aka love lace view, is fully configurable. The development is impressive and the forum is thriving compared to Vera/Ezlo. The users don't get banned for 150 years as well...
I started HA with my Veras still going side by side for almost a year. Slowly I transfered device by device until everything more or less had found it's way to HA. I still have a a handful of devices, all Philio PST02-A (a multisensor) - because they don't work that well in HA, at least when I tried last year. After the transfer to HA I'll never look back to Vera or Ezlo. -
@fanan said in Building a New Z Wave Network:
@tamorgen I can only speak for my self, why I ditched Vera and turned to Home Assistent. Main reason was that almost every smart product can be integrated and is also easier to configure. HA is local, faster and can run on many hardwares. The UI aka love lace view, is fully configurable. The development is impressive and the forum is thriving compared to Vera/Ezlo. The users don't get banned for 150 years as well...
I started HA with my Veras still going side by side for almost a year. Slowly I transfered device by device until everything more or less had found it's way to HA. I still have a a handful of devices, all Philio PST02-A (a multisensor) - because they don't work that well in HA, at least when I tried last year. After the transfer to HA I'll never look back to Vera or Ezlo.HA definitely looks like an option. My main concerns are:
- Envisalink/DSC integration (working)
- Geofencing/Presence detection (many options)
- Nest thermostat and Nest Protect integration (looks like they have it working)
I've looked at Hubitat as well, but what's always held me back is the Envisalink integration. The developer who had integrated it left in 2019, and it looks like it's been flailing ever since. Also, I'm not sure about Nest integration.
I may just take the HA plunge soon.
Thanks much for your feedback.
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@tamorgen well the reason why I switched was actually mainly for a better z wave network. My Vera’s network was losing devices daily and was slow. All the integrations I wanted were already supported through Vera.
HA allowed me to have way better control over z wave and also allowed me to use whatever dongle I wanted. Plus it has way way wayyyyy more integrations, I was able to automate soo many other devices that I wasn’t able to do before.
Also I have been using the Envisalink integration and it’s been working fairly well on HA.
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@pabla said in Building a New Z Wave Network:
@tamorgen well the reason why I switched was actually mainly for a better z wave network. My Vera’s network was losing devices daily and was slow. All the integrations I wanted were already supported through Vera.
HA allowed me to have way better control over z wave and also allowed me to use whatever dongle I wanted. Plus it has way way wayyyyy more integrations, I was able to automate soo many other devices that I wasn’t able to do before.
Also I have been using the Envisalink integration and it’s been working fairly well on HA.
Yeah, I get that. I've been having Vera loosing devices on me. I've actually got a troubleshooting call scheduled for this evening with them for one of my battery powered devices. It drives me insane.
You mentioned being able to use any Z-wave stick. I'm not really clear how that works with HA.
Are you running that on the same device that runs HA, or do have to run them on separate devices? I have plenty of overhead available on my home server where I could run HA, but I can't exactly walk around with my server and the dongle plugged in to pair my devices. At least with Vera, I could unplug it and move it close to the device I want to pair.
They make it sound as if a Pi 4 really isn't powerful enough.
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@fanan said in Building a New Z Wave Network:
I still have a a handful of devices, all Philio PST02-A (a multisensor) - because they don't work that well in HA
Still using MSR? I'd be happy to look at the Hass device in detail to see if we can do a per-devce exception to work around whatever issues you have. If it's an issue with Hass' integration, which happens sometimes, you can use MSR's ZWaveJSController to get even better access to devices that HA dumbs down too much or doesn't get right (Hass itself uses ZWave-JS, so you likely already have half of what you need running for MSR).
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@tamorgen you just basically plug the Z wave stick into your machines USB port. I only ever had to move my HA host once for pairing Z wave devices. Depending on the size of your home and the type of devices you’re pairing you may not need to move host around.
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@toggledbits said in Building a New Z Wave Network:
Still using MSR? I'd be happy to look at the Hass device in detail to see if we can do a per-devce exception to work around whatever issues you have. If it's an issue with Hass' integration, which happens sometimes, you can use MSR's ZWaveJSController to get even better access to devices that HA dumbs down too much or doesn't get right (Hass itself uses ZWave-JS, so you likely already have half of what you need running for MSR).
Yes - I'm still using MSR! I should try to add the multisensor once more to HA and see how it works. Last time everything seemed alright, but it none of it's entitys changed state. I read on the HA users forum that there could be a workaround if some parameters were changed - but that didn't work in most cases - and not for me. When I've done the transfer, and if the problem persists, I'll start a new thread/topic. Thanks for your sincere kindness!
/Fanan
