My Aeon Labs 4-in-1 Multisensor is USB powered all the time. What wakeup and polling intervals would you recommend for optimal use?
Since nobody has responded but several people have viewed this question I figured I would contribute the answer supplied by Aeon Labs Support. From my noob perspective it contains some insights I haven’t seen elsewhere. Note that when I posed my question to Aeon Labs I had already gotten the impression that “Wakeup interval” is either ignored or irrelevant when the multi-sensor is connected to a full-time power source.
To answer your first question, yes, when the device is USB powered the wake up interval is not relevant.As far as polling goes ask yourself some questions. What is the information that you want to observe? If you simply want to check on the values the multi sensor measures, I would suggest using the parameters dedicated for reporting those values instead of polling all the information. The interval time for that information can be changed through parameters 111 to 113. The most information you can get is a report every 4 minutes.
If you do need to poll the information you can set the value to as low a number as you wish. That, however, is highly not recommended as it may overload the network. In addition, sending information too often might raise the temperature of the chip, which would lead to inaccurate temperature readings. Because of all these possible problems I would recommend a poll interval of at least 4 minutes.
Again, being a noob here I have to do a lot of assuming and guessing, but it looks to me like the Parent Device’s Polling Interval is a global value that causes all climate and light sensors to “report in”, whereas the individual parameters 111 through 113 enable the user to specify the interval at which individual sensors report in.
All of which seems irrelevant to my goal, which I’ll post in a new thread: what’s the best approach to using the light sensor in combination with the motion sensor, so that the motion detector will turn on an outdoor light only if it’s dark outside. I say “irrelevant” because polling intervals seem applicable for getting timely reports from the climate and light sensors, but not to the motion sensor. If armed, the motion sensor is always available to trigger an event, and is not subject to wakeup or polling intervals, right?
I apologize if the foregoing was obvious to everyone else.
The device reports changes, polling doesn’t affect that.
Temperature, light, motion, humidity are all pushed out of the device on changes.
So, if you are USB powered, you should be ok.
By the way, I cannot confirm this but I believe it sets it’s default settings different based on wether you have it on battery or USB when you created the association with vera. Someone else may know that for sure.
I realize it seems like I’m talking to myself here but to make this a possibly useful thread I’ll add it.
During a chat with Alex at Micasaverde support he suggested creating a scheduled scene with the following luup code instead of messing with polling intervals.
luup.call_action("urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HaDevice1", "Poll", {}, 61)
The “61” is the device ID, which needs to be changed to the specific sensor device ID available in its Settings.
[quote=“Bulldoglowell, post:3, topic:180864”]The device reports changes, polling doesn’t affect that.
Temperature, light, motion, humidity are all pushed out of the device on changes.
So, if you are USB powered, you should be ok.
By the way, I cannot confirm this but I believe it sets it’s default settings different based on wether you have it on battery or USB when you created the association with vera. Someone else may know that for sure.[/quote]
Thank you for replying! Are you suggesting that every change in temperature or light level will cause the sensor to push out some data on the network? That would seem to cause a lot of traffic and preclude the need for polling. Or maybe I misunderstand what you’re saying.
A few hours after finishing the 4n1 installation I checked the Vera’s GUI at around 9pm – when it was truly dark outside. The light level showed ~500, which struck me as odd since during the day it reported 1000. But then I polled the sensor and the displayed value immediately changed to 0. That suggested to my noob brain that the default polling interval is too long to be useful if your goal is to check the Vera GUI. The “500” value must’ve been when it had last been polled.
Or it may not have had a good network connection as the changes happened.
You can bring your polling down as low as you like. At the end if the day, you want motion reported when it happens, not when the next poll happens. Thus the two-way capability of zwave.
These communications happen in milliseconds. Changes in humidity and temperature don’t happen so quickly as to flood your network.
I have three of these on battery using default configuration. All work fine.
Hi Timmy2…i’ve had my aeon 4 in 1 battery powered for about 6 months now but i’m ready to usb power them. Were you able to find the correct settings for usb power?
I found this website http://www.vesternet.com/resources/application-notes/apnt-31#.VG6cgIvF-f4
but wanted your take on it?
Thanks