I have been able to setup my fob to work with my Veralite without much difficulty. The problem is that it does not work in half my house, and I live in a small house. The guy at Aeon told me that in scene mode the Fob must communicate directly with Veralite which limits the range. In group mode it communicates directly with the nodes. He was not able to help configure it in group mode.
I am including our e-mails below helping that some smart people on this forum can help.
FROM ME
I recently purchased a Aeon Labs key fob remote. The range of the remote is disappointing. I have to be in the same part of my house as the Vera unit, if I am in a different part of my house, the fob does not work.
Can the fob only communicated directly with the Vera unit, or should it be able to repeat the signal through other z-wave devices around the house?
FROM AEON LABS
You are using the Key Fob in scene mode which allows the key fob to control scenes that you have created on your Vera unit.
How this works is that you are sending a signal directly to your Vera unit then to the devices related to the scene that you set the button to control.
Signals will follow this flow in the Key Fobs Scene Mode (Control 8 Scenes)
Key Fob → Vera/Scenes → Devices
Depending on your application, this may not be what you want to do but control your lighting directly with the key fob. You may want to use group mode where you program the scenes directly into the key fob, but this gives you only the ability to control 4 scene buttons instead of 8 scenes (2 scenes per button).
Signals will follow this flow in the Key Fob Group Mode (Control 4 Scenes)
Key Fob → Devices
There are pro/cons of both styles. The Pro’s of scene mode gives you far more control over your devices and you can use it to trigger scenes, the con of it is that it needs to be in range of the Vera device and has a small delay.
The Pro of group mode, you can program devices to be controlled directly by they keyfob button and you just need to be nearby the devices you programmed. The Vera is no longer needed as an inbetween to control your devices. The Cons, you have less control and you can only turn lights on/off/dim and you can only control 4 different scenes.
FROM ME
Right now the aeon fob is useless to me because it does not work in much of my house, and the house is not that big.
Right now the fob is working in scene mode and is funtioning well when I am close to the vera.
I have spent hours searching the intenet to try and find how to use the the fob in group mode because of the range problem. I have not found any explination or instructions on how to do this.
FROM AEON LABS
I hope this helps. I don’t have experience with the Vera interface, so i can only provide general guides for you.
I’m just going to go through this step by step and i hope that it will work for you:
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remove the keyfob from the network, put your vera into exclusion mode, then press the learn button on the key fob.
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Make sure that you use regular inclusion instead of the controller inclusion when you add the KeyFob into the Vera network
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Disable Automatic configuration on Vera, if you don’t know how to do this, i suggest sending a support ticket to Vera support on how to do so.
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Make sure that you set Parameter 250 (1 byte) to 0.
I would follow the instructions on the manual on how to create scenes directly with the Key Fob or refer to the sections below.
Directly tying a slave device to a scene
0) Put the Key Fob into group mode (make sure that it isn’t in setup mode)
- Press and hold one of the scene buttons (and make sure you keep holding)
- go over to the device that you want to control and tap the button on it
- Let go of the scene button after the keyfob returns to blinking.
3.1) When the device is on, the button will toggle the device on/off
3.2) when the device is off, the button will toggle the device off only - repeat the process for the other devices that you want to control
You can control multiple devices on a single button if you wanted to.
Directly removing a slave device to a scene (Must be the same device on the same scene)
-Hold down a scene button for a few seconds (keep holding), the green LED will continue to blink while holding down a scene button until you let go. If you tap a switch device z-wave button that is tied to the scene button, the blinking green LED will alternate to a red LED for a second to indicate a successful removal, then continue to blink until you let go.
(Same effect as adding a slave device, you can still walk around to include other devices, or remove them, i prefer to let go to save batteries).