upstatemike

I had a similiar issue with a continuous on/off loop. Turns out I had some direct association set up that was in conflict with my programs. I complained to Zooz about how hard it was to get this device to do what I wanted and they were at least very receptive to trying to understand the details even if they can't really do much about it until a future firmware update or next hardware generation release of the product. I suggest you contct them because the more people they hear from the higher the priority they will place on fixing it.

I agree. I want to focus my time on configuring cool integrations and automations, not configuring devices just to get basic functionality. Flashing hardware is a non-starter for me. I also agree that in an installation you need to install, configure, test, and leave. I have always had an issue with the amount of time it takes Z-Wave to optimize itself after setup. You need to confirm things are in their final state before you walk out the door so the thing needs to be in its final configuration within hours, not days. You certainly can't keep going back to the site because you have to let things settle as you slowly build out the mesh from the controller. I also don't know what kind of network equipment you would need for bulletproof IP based lighting and automation. A home with 70 lights and devices is also likely to have multiple TVs streaming 4K content plus IP based multi-room music like Sonos, plus a bunch of IP voice assistants, and maybe even a home office running Zoom meetings and a VOIP phone system. What consumer infrastructure router will support this? What consumer is going to learn to manage a commercial product, expand their domain address space, manage a huge DHCP table, etc. etc.? I have to say I am a little surprised that the mesh networking offerings are so poor. None of them seem to support basic features like multi-WAN, POE power (or battery backup on each access point), CPU enough to manage large DHCP tables, and other basic features required for a large scale network environment. Consumers trying to base their Home Automation on Wi-Fi will quickly outgrow any easy to set up "consumer grade" infrastructure currently available in the marketplace.

Well Eric claimed back on September 21st that a former employee/partner made some false claims to their manufacturer and screwed both them and the manufacturer, so that put a stop to the keypad until they covered the debts and came up with new capital to make it. Supposedly on March 14th of this year the board agreed to a partnership (aquisition?) with/by another IoT company which should give them the capital needed to move ahead. They are also supposedly honoring refund requests from those who don't want to wait but without a phone number or email address I don't know how you do that. Submit an online service ticket I guess? Definitely a "believe it when you see it" situation.

Maybe but the last post on the forum was 28 minutes ago. The CEO says we will be able to start preordering Blue Series (Zigbee) switches from the main web page within a couple of days with expected shipping in June.

Maybe but I had an extended email exchange last week with somebody at Zooz and they remarked on how things were moving more toward Wi-Fi. I wonder if they are also considering adding some products using other protocols besides Z-Wave? Homeseer also added a self branded Wi-Fi plug to their store recently. Seems like even the most hard core Z-Wave suppliers are looking at ways to hedge their bets around the future.

Interesting comment by Eric at Inovelli: "This brings up the question – why do you sell Z-Wave then? This is one we’re wrestling with internally – and we’ve landed on the strategy of selling Z-Wave to security companies who require the security that Z-Wave offers and then if the home automation enthusiasts want Z-Wave, they can certainly have them. However, our focus from a consumer standpoint is going to be ZigBee/CHIP/Matter as that’s where the big dogs are playing and where we can fill more of the gaps in the industry."

It just seems like Zigbee based products like Hue and Control4 are better positioned to integrate with the unsophisticated mass market products to create a natural and incremental upgrade path that new users can follow over time.

Who will be the next to fall? I expect Z-Wave because their implementation of keypads and virtual 3-way switching is kludgy and they are in direct competition with the Apple/Amazon/Google vision for Matter/Thread/Zigbee/Wi-Fi.

Still curious why Zooz designed this device the way they did. It really needs 11 separate registers to track the state of the 5 buttons, 5 LEDs, and the load relay. Depending on the controller to keep track of things is bad design practice. If your controller has to reboot for some reason it can't just query the switch to get the current state of everything because there is no persistent place to store all the state values in the device.

Did something similiar in Homeseer except instead of the buttons controlling a fan they control a set of Hue bulbs and set them to a specific color. As a bonus I set the LED color for each button on the Zooz switch to match the color the lights will go to when that button is pressed.

It would also be good to note that IoP is not exactly the same as ISY on a 994i especially if you use Elk integration. I am a heavy user of Elk connected motion sensors and use my ISY as the bridge to trigger Alexa routines with them. I also use Elk voice responses to Insteon actions quite a lot. I probably can replicate all of this with an Elk Node server but I don't know that for sure or what kind of time investment would be required to reconfigure everything if it is possible.

Direct association only works between two devices that are in range of each other to talk directly. The feature that you need to replicate Insteon functionality is "Assigned Association" which allows communication between two devices to be routed through the Z-Wave mesh without needing to be in direct range of each other and without needing to pass through a controller. Do Smartthings and Hubitat support that configuration?

I wonder if the mythical Nokia switches will have this feature? It would be a logical thing to add if you were doing a modern product redesign.

I think the root of the problem is using routing for automation communication in the first place. If you use broadcasts and have each neighbor repeat everything instead of calculating where to send it you have faster response, a more robust mesh, and avoid isuues like popcorn effect or the main controller not being aware of status chages made by local actions or direct associations. I hope the up and coming new protocols avoid going down the routed communication rathole. I haven't seen anything specific about Lutron RadioRA3 communication specs but the setup instructions, ensuring each device is in range of at least two others, suggests it is using repeated broadacsts rather than routing.

This website creates more questions for me than it answers about the complexity of the Z-Wave protocol: Why are there "routing slaves" and "normal slaves"? Why aren't all line powered Z-Wave devices capable of routing? Why have Direct Associations? Even battery devices should be able to be associated using the routed network to reach the destination device. What exactly is a "static controller"? Does that mean there are also "dynamic controllers"? It looks like Z-Wave implements scenes by sending a routed message to each device in the scene as to what setting it should change to. This sounds very slow and inefficient. Why not simply use a broadcast to trigger a scene number and have each device already know how to react to that scene number and adjust itself accordingly? It seems like 1 broadcast message would make a lot more sense than many sequential routed messages.

I'm assuming in this conversation that "ZWave native scene" refers to scene capability as defined within the ZWave protocol and "ZWave Scene" refers ISY scene capability as applied to ZWave devices... have I got that straight?

I haven't set this switch up in Polisy yet but I have used it in Homeseer and it pointed out to me the baffling and unnecessary complexity of the Z-Wave protocol. It is pretty basic and the expectation is that it would provide 11 devices to work with; 5 buttons, 5 LEDs, and 1 relay, and that there would be a register that tracks the status of each and allows for control of them. Instead only the relay is available for status reporting and direct association. For some reason not adequately explained, the 4 small buttons just change the value of a single Central Scene register and do not maintain any status of their own. The LEDs toggle when the associated button is pressed but that state is not exposed any place so you have to track status in your controller logic and use parameter commands to force the LEDs to reflect the actual state of the scene, load or whatever. I have never found any documentation to explain why Z-Wave is set up this way but it makes it a lot more complicated than it should be both for end users and for anyone trying to design a home automation controller with an easy to use rules engine. I know this doesn't help Robert in setting it up in Polisy but if in the process of resolving his situation somebody could explain why Z-Wave is designed this way in the first place it might provide some perspective on how come things that are simple with Insteon can become so challenging when translated to Z-Wave.

Not having any trouble doing green with Hue A19 bulbs. How can I reproduce the problem you were seeing?

Maybe they will remain PG2. There will likely be several things that don't get moved to PG3 so I think we need to plan on running both.

All my bulbs show maximum Wi-Fi signal so I don't think that is the issue. All have reserved IP addresses so no contention there. They just drop for no reason. With Hue if I change the color of the room all 8 bulbs change at once. With Lifx six maybe seven will change. I'm not saying Robert would have the same issues as me but just making him aware that this stuff happens with Lifx bulbs and probably other Wi-Fi bulbs as well.

Just checked my Dining Room bulbs and they are at firmware 2.80 which it says is "up to date". All 8 bulbs show Wi-Fi strength at 5 bars and bulb 4 just keeps dropping and reconnecting every 10-15 seconds... Now bulb 3 just dropped off. This is just too fiddley to live with. I like the colors with Lifx but I like the reliability with Hue better. I don't know how to force an update to 3.70 if the app says they are already current at 2.80?

I am curious about your color concerns with Hue as I have had many color issues with Wi-Fi bulbs. I tried a few like Philips Wiz and some others and found that most of them had no color saturation and could only do pastel shades. They also seem to struggle with deep purple and indigo colors and try to use magenta in place of purple. Can I get the deeply saturated Indigo colors from MagicLight bulbs? If so I might try some.

Different people have different experiences with Wi-Fi bulbs. A lot of folks use Lifx because there is an API to operate them locally and they have been rock solid. I on the other hand have 8 Lifx bulbs in my Dining Room AND a Wireless Access Point in the same room. Whenever I go to adjust the Dining Room lights there is always one or two of the Lifx bulbs offline so they can't be controlled. They do the same from Polisy, Home Assistant, and Homeseer so I know it is the bulbs. I usually have about 60 Wi-Fi devices online at any given time (across 8 WAPs) so maybe the environment is too busy for the Lifx bulbs to handle but in any case I will never again mess with Wi-Fi bulbs. Good news is somebody on Ebay is going to get a bunch of Lifx bulbs for a cheap price as soon as I can budget money to redo the Dining Room with Philips Hue bulbs.

I think DevonSprings is trying to set it up so he can turn the switch on to keep the light on or turn the switch off to have the light only come on when there is motion. Settings on the motion sensor will disble daytime operation. I don't see any problem with the wiring diagram posted except there probably needs to be a neutral connection to the motion sensor. I have used similiar setups with no issues.

If you remove the paddle from a Switchlinc doesn't that pretty much make it into an In-Line Relay? Remove four screws, problem solved.