Battery Operated Equivalent Of Evolve LFM-20

Community Playground Getting Started & Initial Setup
1

Hello is there a battery operated equivalent to the Evolve LFM-20 product? I successfully installed the Evolve LFM-20 module for one of my home brew projects and love it, but another project does not have access to AC voltage and needs to switch an extremely low amp/53 volt AC voltage device (not enough to tap and power the Evolve LFM-20). I could hire an electrician to run an outlet there but that seems a bit silly when I see how well a battery operated device like my kwikset 910 zwave lock works. (actually for $90 I’m kind of amazed how capable that lock is, including working with either zigbee and zwave)

Thanks much!

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No … and there probably will not be one …
To drive a relay … to provide isolation … requires power … that battery based devices do not deal with that very well.

3

@RichardTSchaefer is correct, there is no battery operated Z-Wave relay on the market. It is also likely that there won’t be one.

But I think it can be done. I feel that a motorized Z-Wave lock proves that you can have a Z-Wave listening node with the ability to trip a latching or solid state relay operate on a battery pack for a year or more per battery pack.

I suspect that a lack of demand(limited market) will likely be what prevents such a device from coming to market. We can only hope.

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The lock is a two state device … it takes power to transition the state … but not to maintain it.

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Richard I understand what you are saying, but there are a few latching relay technologies that allow the relay to maintain its state, On or Off, yet only use an impulse current to change the state. Here is a magnetic latching relay for example. These relays use no further power after the state changing impulse has been effected. Such relays would use far less power per cycle than a motorized lock.

Edit: My Google Foo is failing me today. Here is a 2 coil latching relay that could also be used for battery operated Z-Wave relay controls.

6

Nice !! Would interface nice with Arduino for a battery powered solution.

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Thanks for the creative ideas, I’ve found a couple of relays that work well for this purpose – will report back on battery and reliability of setup after a few months.