IVB
Senior Member
Two words: Woo (almost) to the Hoo!
Got my zWave stuff in from AO, mounted it. Had 1 bad switch out of 5, but the lamp module & external screw-in thingey were fine. I've now got 6 functioning zWave lights. And, get this: They work natively via CQC (ok, not that big a deal, just hadt to make sure to get the ACT controller known to work fine with the CQC driver), and, in the case of my Entry Light, through my Elk Kepad! Wife is very juiced b/c in order to overcome some horrific wiring, we had to leave power on all the time to the entry fixture and use a FUGLY pullstring fixture on it. So ugly so ugly so ugly. I setup the F6 button on the Elk Keypad to be a toggle for the entry light, setup a rule to turn an output one, and setup CQC to trap changes to that rule and turn on the light.
I am having a pretty serious issue with stability of the system in that 1-2 of the switches are constantly losing it's connection to CQC, but I suspect that I don't have enough installed given that it's a mesh network thing with a 4 limit hop. Now that I know that this can work, i'll order another 8-12 switches tomorrow and install them. That should greatly enhance the performance of my setup. Only time will tell what the mid-term stability of this is, hopefully it's good enough to last and be operational for at least 3-6 months or so.
Don't get me wrong - I still want to put in HomeWorks, it's just that I need to show the wife that you can use a lighting control system for both ease of use (overcome bad wiring design, turn off all lights upon security arm, etc), and for security (Turn on & off all lights upon intrusion, do not allow the blinking to stop unless, well, i'll think of someting). We had another mugging last week, not much an automation system can do about random stuff, but at least we can bring attention to the house when it's unoccupied if folks try and break in.)
Here's the screen I came up with. Given that this is a temporary solution, I'll probably limit myself to 20-ish switches & appliance control modules. That's only $700-$800 from automatedoutlet, so it's a good investment in learning what I'd actually want from a robust platform like Homeworks. Each of the grey/yellow buttons are actually on/off buttons, plus there's the "all-off" in the middle of the screen. I can fit 14 dimmers at the bottom. The up&down buttons change the level by 10% per shot, with a halt at 0% and 99% given those are the zWave bounds.
Furthermore, I used the cool if-then logic in the V2.0/CQC to take whatever the current value is and extend that. This means that if someone manually changes that level, I don't care.
IIRC, determining current dimmer level isn't possible in RadioRA, so that ability immediately makes me glad I didn't go that route. Either go long or go home...
Here's the code, again all entirely done with point&click, I just had to type in the variable names.
Finally, here's that screenshot. BTW, I'll be putting this in it's entirety into that non-art downloadable CQC template pack I got given that there's nothing copyrighted in it. (just ripper's awesome Insteon image, which I photoshopped to fit)
Got my zWave stuff in from AO, mounted it. Had 1 bad switch out of 5, but the lamp module & external screw-in thingey were fine. I've now got 6 functioning zWave lights. And, get this: They work natively via CQC (ok, not that big a deal, just hadt to make sure to get the ACT controller known to work fine with the CQC driver), and, in the case of my Entry Light, through my Elk Kepad! Wife is very juiced b/c in order to overcome some horrific wiring, we had to leave power on all the time to the entry fixture and use a FUGLY pullstring fixture on it. So ugly so ugly so ugly. I setup the F6 button on the Elk Keypad to be a toggle for the entry light, setup a rule to turn an output one, and setup CQC to trap changes to that rule and turn on the light.
I am having a pretty serious issue with stability of the system in that 1-2 of the switches are constantly losing it's connection to CQC, but I suspect that I don't have enough installed given that it's a mesh network thing with a 4 limit hop. Now that I know that this can work, i'll order another 8-12 switches tomorrow and install them. That should greatly enhance the performance of my setup. Only time will tell what the mid-term stability of this is, hopefully it's good enough to last and be operational for at least 3-6 months or so.
Don't get me wrong - I still want to put in HomeWorks, it's just that I need to show the wife that you can use a lighting control system for both ease of use (overcome bad wiring design, turn off all lights upon security arm, etc), and for security (Turn on & off all lights upon intrusion, do not allow the blinking to stop unless, well, i'll think of someting). We had another mugging last week, not much an automation system can do about random stuff, but at least we can bring attention to the house when it's unoccupied if folks try and break in.)
Here's the screen I came up with. Given that this is a temporary solution, I'll probably limit myself to 20-ish switches & appliance control modules. That's only $700-$800 from automatedoutlet, so it's a good investment in learning what I'd actually want from a robust platform like Homeworks. Each of the grey/yellow buttons are actually on/off buttons, plus there's the "all-off" in the middle of the screen. I can fit 14 dimmers at the bottom. The up&down buttons change the level by 10% per shot, with a halt at 0% and 99% given those are the zWave bounds.
Furthermore, I used the cool if-then logic in the V2.0/CQC to take whatever the current value is and extend that. This means that if someone manually changes that level, I don't care.
IIRC, determining current dimmer level isn't possible in RadioRA, so that ability immediately makes me glad I didn't go that route. Either go long or go home...
Here's the code, again all entirely done with point&click, I just had to type in the variable names.
Code:
[OnClick]
LocalVars::SetVariable(LVar:CurVal, $(sample-zwave-ACT.LivRm))
LocalVars::Add(LVar:CurVal, 10)
If System::GrThan(%(LVar:CurVal), 99)
LocalVars::SetVariable(LVar:CurVal, 99)
End
Devices::FieldWrite(sample-zwave-ACT.LivRm, %(LVar:CurVal))Finally, here's that screenshot. BTW, I'll be putting this in it's entirety into that non-art downloadable CQC template pack I got given that there's nothing copyrighted in it. (just ripper's awesome Insteon image, which I photoshopped to fit)
...Regardless after this my Z-wave reliability went up 10x or more...no more of the earlier communication problems I had..while using the usb and serial version I was using Homeseer and haven't tried with CQC just yet...soon.
