Apartment Main Door Buzzer Control

Hey there;

I’m right on the verge of getting a veralite - I’ve just installed a z-wave front door lock to my apartment and I’m thinking of adding some other light security/automation features to complete the system. One of the big things holding me back though is that I live in an apartment building that has a buzzer system, so even though my apartment door is z-wave, the main front door to the building is not and as a result I’m always going to have to carry keys, and there would be no way to buzz in service people unless I was home. But I’m thinking there must be some way to make the front door buzzer in to a z-wave enabled device - perhaps through some repurposing of a light switch or other device. Or maybe there’s a device that’s purpose made for this (though I have looked and haven’t found one).

Anyone have any thoughts on how this might be done?

I mounted a fibaro switch together with a relay behind the button I had to push, so now when this button is “on” the buzzer is active. I then used a scene to activate the buzzer for a few seconds.

Well, basically that is not fully zwave enabled, but it’s a nice and easy hack for an apartment and can be removed quiet easily without leaving any marks. Also you can continue to use the standard button.

Thanks for that - it sounds like it is just what I’m looking for. One thing I don’t understand though - how is it not “fully zwave enabled”? It seems like it works pretty well…

Well, in my personal opinion “fully zwave enabled” means bi-directional communication. In this setup you can only send commands from the vera to the buzzer, but the vera want get notified if you use your existing button, so you one could say “it’s not fully zwave enabled”.

But for me this works just fine and I have no other needs.

That makes sense. Full two-way control/feedback would be nice, but I suppose adding a door sensor or camera would be at least a partial workaround.

Where can I get these fibaro switches? Are they in the US yet?

Also, I ink the system I have is a 12v system. Will these switches work with that or do they need AC power?

I don’t know if the fibaro switches are us yet, but you can use any switch which can turn a device on or off.

Yes, I guess they are all 220v (or 110v) and they want work with 12v. This is also the reason you have to use a relay…

I’m not much of an electrician, so when the time comes I might ask for some more specifics.

I wrote to fibaro and they said they are currently in FCC testing, and are looking to be on sale here in the US by the end of the year.

There should be other ways to do this. If you check out the Garage door thread, I’d imagine its similar to solutions there using modified appliance module or Z-Wave relays such as the evolve LFM-20:

http://store.homeseer.com/store/Evolve-LFM-20-Z-Wave-Relay-Fixture-Module-P1007.aspx