I have just started adding some battery powered devices to my Vera3. I have a Schlage lock and some CA9000 motion sensors. I’m definitely struggling a bit to get things happy now. At first, the door lock paired fine and I was able to set up SMS alerts when codes were entered. I was having some problems one day and decided to try and “heal” the network. After that, my Schlage device showed up red in the UI5 interface and I no longer got any logs or sms messages from it. I have at least one zwave plug in lamp module less than 6 feet away from the lock.
I decided to exclude it and add it back and all seemed well again. Then I started to add the motion sensors. It looks like the CA9000’s are a bit finicky to set up as noted on other sections of this forum. I don’t think I waited long enough for the device to configure and one would then show up in red. I decided to try the heal again and the lock and both motion sensors went red.
I’m starting to think that once a battery powered device has been configured, you don’t ever want to do something to configure it again, like a heal, unless the device is very close to the Vera unit. Perhaps it’s related to the wake up period? This is obviously a problem if you can’t bring devices close to the vera like door locks. And while I could bring the vera near one lock, I couldn’t do this if had a door lock on the front and back of the house.
Has anyone else notice this too and if so, what is the best practice for adding battery powered devices and healing the network?
Hi,
the heal (manual or automatic) should and will not break your connection.
I am assuming that your lock is simply too far away from Vera and that the lamp module you have does not work because it does not support beaming which is necessary for the locks to operate.
Can you post which lamp module you are using?
Flo
I am using a Schlage lock and the closest zwave device is an Intermatic HA02 appliance module. I was able to exclude and re-include the lock. It appears to be communicating but I’m not getting any SMS messages tonight. I have also noticed I can’t log into my micasaverde account tonight either so perhaps there is a problem with the server?
Hi!
Your intermatic appliance module is not capable of beaming.
Beaming is necessary to talk to locks. Your intermatic module will not help Vera talk to the locks.
I recommend Evolve dimmers / light modules as they are capable of forwarding encrypted information (which is vital when it comes to locks since locks use encrypted information!)
Hope this helps!
Flo
Thank you Flo! I will look into adding one to my system.
As a side note, I think my motion sensors are working ok. I was a bit confused because of the icon in the sensor. When it’s active, it shows the icon of a running person with a red background. When inactive, it’s a person standing with a green background. Since green is used to represent good transmissions and red reflects an inability to communicate, I misinterpreted the interface. I think a different icon would really help here. Now that I understand it, I’m ok with it, but it was confusing to someone new to using sensors.
Mark
EDIT:
I just wanted to update this post so that it doesn’t confuse anyone. Many with sensors will already know this but to clarify on the sensor icons: they show red when tripped. As least with the CA9000, this will show whether they are armed or not. Now, how you handle this data is up to you. You might want to log ALL trip events, or only log or send an sms message when the device is armed.
I have had problems with battery devices when “healing” the network. If I do it at all I always uncheck “reconfigure” devices and this seems to eliminate most of the problems, unfortunately there is no way to make this setting stick for the automatic heals that occur at night if one has checked “use mios routing” and vera thinks it needs to run a repair.
[quote=“simdude, post:5, topic:172260”]Thank you Flo! I will look into adding one to my system.
As a side note, I think my motion sensors are working ok. I was a bit confused because of the icon in the sensor. When it’s active, it shows the icon of a running person with a red background. When inactive, it’s a person standing with a green background. Since green is used to represent good transmissions and red reflects an inability to communicate, I misinterpreted the interface. I think a different icon would really help here. Now that I understand it, I’m ok with it, but it was confusing to someone new to using sensors.
Mark[/quote]
No problem Mark!
I had the same issue and once I got one of the evolve dimmers and changed the manual routing my locks have been rock solid 100% of the time.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
Flo