I’ve temporarily given up, and am going to be using Aeon Minimote’s at each door entry to our “large public room”. We have 4 entry doors, and want a scene controller to turn on all lights in the room (14 dimmers and two switches). I’ve gotten the Minimote’s to work with the scene’s I’ve defined (an All On, All Off, and 3 other smaller sets of lights). Short press on, long press off. However, we’re concerned about long-germ upkeep… as in the Minimotes are rechargeable, and we’ll have to setup a charging schedule. As such, I was going to use Velcro, and ‘stick’ the Minimotes to each outlet box ‘cover’. The ‘switches’ are 13 Aeon Smart dimmer modules, 2 Aeon smart switch modules, and one Leviton 1000W dimmer.
I’ve tried:
a Leviton Scene controller VRCZ1-1LZ Vizia RF)
a Leviton dimmer/switch that’s functioning as an actual dimmer (VRMX1-1LZ 1000W)
a Cooper 5 button controller (RFWC5AW)
To trigger scenes, and spend countless hours on the phone with Vera support (primarily with trying to get the VRCZ1 working).
I sort-of got the cooper to mostly work by setting the ‘IgnoreDirectScene’ variable for all my lights, but 1 out of 3 times one or more of the lights in the scene wouldn’t turn off.
Since this is a public space, and we have many users of the light switches, I need this to work 100% of the time.
Can anyone recommend scene controllers that work? That are wired and don’t require batteries?
Is it just two scenes (or do you need more?). If it is just an all on/all off scenario… you could just use a Leviton or Cooper Wired Switch that supports instant on status instead of a scene controller (though I have to admit I have never tried to by pass the load)
Just trigger your scene based on or off of the switch.
To create strong likihood of success…
Double up and do a direct association of near by switches to the switch you are mounting near the entry door (usually you can do up to 5), then also add a scene that turns everything on or off. Worst case scenario the instant on or off is lost, 5 of your lights respond and the rest respond in a second or two to the poll and scene trigger.
You might up the success of your Leviton Dimmer solution (looks like you have tried this before) by setting the ramp speed to 0, to make sure you are getting the instant on status more cleanly (instead of multiple updates about where the light is in the ramp state).
I had some of the same though process… I tried setting the Leviton dimmer switch, that works fine as a dimmer, and works fine in a scene controlled via a Minimote. But won’t trigger any scenes.
My original plan was to use a Cooper 5 button scene controller, and have different sections of lights come on/off with each of the 1-5 buttons. But, getting that to work was problematic, more importantly, getting all 16 of the dimmer/switch modules to turn off was not 100%. Plus, the only way any dimmer/switch worked was to set the IgnoreDirectScene variable.
I’m going to wait for more input, and/or for Vera to get back to me. Support ‘promised’ that they would email me with any scene controllers that they knew worked. Haven’t heard back after 6+ days.
Optimally, I could get the 5 button Coopers to work without ‘hacking’ variables… I’d probably set button 1 as all on/off, and then assign buttons 2 through 5 to be ‘zones’ of lights, so that only appropriate sets of lights could be turned on. My original ‘vision’ was that all 5 buttons would be needed to turn on all the lights, and the ‘all off’ button used to turn everything off, but I was ‘informed’ that the operators of the switches would usually want an ‘all on’ button.
So, for now, the Minimotes are what I’m going to be using. Only downside to these at all is that they need to be recharged occasionally. In a ‘commercial’ building, this isn’t ideal. I’ve though of trying to ‘imbed’ a 120 v to 5 v mini usb setup at each minimote (since I have 120V at each of the 4 places). But this is a ‘hack’ too…
So, is anyone at Vera monitoring these forums? How 'come scenes don’t work right with anything but a minimote?
I’ll try the ramp speed idea on the Leviton Dimmer, thanks.
Kirby
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