Econet Z-Wave AC Vent User Thread. Share setup, programming, etc.

Since a number of us are in the process of receiving our Econet Z-Wave AC Vents, I figured I would start a thread here so we can share information on our setup & programming with each other. This would also be a good place to discuss any problem you encounter. I will see if I can get Blake from Econet to join us here as well.

I will be installing 5 of these vents to start. I also plan on installing a barometric bypass damper into my AC to improve efficiency while also mitigating any potential pressure issues. While I probably won’t need the bypass damper, I figure it’s cheap piece of mind that can only improve things. I will document the bypass damper install and post the installation info here along with pictures. As a side note, there are a few vents in my home that are kind of important vents and unfortunately, Econet didn’t have the right size registers for those. I have to upstairs in my master bedroom that are 6x12" and another down stairs in the ceiling above my couch that is 10"x10". For the 6x12’s, I will likely look to get a 24v dampers which I will install inline within the ducting and route the power to an AC Adapter connected to a Z-Wave outlet that I will install in my attic.That should be a simple and cost effective work around for those vents and something I can easily do myself. I will likely try to do the same for the 10x10 vent assuming I can figure out which duct supplies that vent. I am sure that will be easy enough. I just need to find a decent damper. I’ve read that some of them have motors that heat up when power is applied to them. As such, I have some homework to do there. There are also inflatable dampers which go inside the duct work. That may be another option assuming I can connect the bladder pump to a Z-Wave outlet.

I am running an Ecobee3 thermostat which supports multiple temp sensors. I am waiting for the new Ecobee Vera plugin/app to be come available so I can dig deeper into programming my Z-Wave based zone system. Initially, I will just create 3 seperate scenes. One that closes the upstairs vents and opens the downstairs one. A second scene that opens the downstairs vents and closes the upstairs & a third scene that opens all Z-Wave vents. Once the new plugin is available, I will look at creating scenes that take room temp into consideration. Normally, I don’t run my AC all that often. We only turn it on when the house temps get above 80 or below 70 and never let it run in auto mode. We do this mostly to conserve energy and largely because the system is rather inefficient. Like most 2 story single zone homes, our tends to heat the upstairs too well and cool the downstairs better than the upstairs. Those are the key issues I am looking to solve with these vents while also being able to run the system for short intervals to cool or heat the desired rooms.

According to Econet, those of us that placed our orders over the weekend or early this week should be receiving our vents this week so lets share our setups so we can learn from each other. I am relatively new to Vera so I am looking forward to gaining knowledge and ideas from those of you who are much more experienced with Vera.

OK, powered up two of my devices, and joined them to my Vera Edge (latest firmware). To pair the device you have to press the “Set” button three times fast… like fast, was able to join them in place (where I plan to install them) no problem, didn’t need to bring them close to the Vera.

Device shows up as a Dimmable Light

One of my devices (that is far from the Vera, but close to other devices) seems to be having a little trouble with lost messages, and for awhile it would sometimes close halfway unless you pressed off twice, but did a network heal on the device and seems to be doing better now.

Will keep you updated as I learn more.

[quote=“shallowearth, post:2, topic:187541”]OK, powered up two of my devices, and joined them to my Vera Edge (latest firmware). To pair the device you have to press the “Set” button three times fast… like fast, was able to join them in place (where I plan to install them) no problem, didn’t need to bring them close to the Vera.

Device shows up as a Dimmable Light

One of my devices (that is far from the Vera, but close to other devices) seems to be having a little trouble with lost messages, and for awhile it would sometimes close halfway unless you pressed off twice, but did a network heal on the device and seems to be doing better now.

Will keep you updated as I learn more.[/quote]

Thanks for the heads up. I’m glad to hear they are working well now. Running a network heal makes perfect sense and probably should be done as a matter of practice regardless just to insure best connectivity. Please keep us posted.

If any of you have any issues or questions, feel free to contact Blake at Econet directly. His contact info (phone and email) can be found at: http://econetcontrols.com/index.php

Mine should be arriving today so my plan is to install them this weekend unless I just can’t contain myself and end up doing them sooner. Something that wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me!

Hmm, one minor bug, they are showing up in the device list with the plugged in repeater symbol, when they are battery powered, the battery level is displayed on the device settings but not on the main control or dashboard because of that.

I hope that is just cosmetic since it is using the generic light dimmer control and that the vent is not actually acting as a repeater, that would be bad for battery life.

Note instructions say batteries will last for 1 year with the average of two operations a day, up to two years if you use lithium batteries.

Also Note: there are tons of warnings in the instructions and on the device itself, but you are not suppose to force the fins open/close even though there is a manual lever to do that. Instead you can manually operate them (only fully open or closed) using the buttons where you also enroll for zwave.

I almost did this until I noticed the warning when I took it out of the box!

I’m anxious to see how your damper install goes. i’m hoping I’d be able to handle it too!

Once I get the vents installed, I will give my buddy a call to get me the bypass damper. I don’t expect that to happen before next week.

One observation which was probably obvious is that these devices are not instant status. So, if you ever use the manual buttons on the vent to open/close the vent, it won’t show up in Vera accurately. And since it’s battery powered, you can’t really poll too often.

My registers arrived yesterday. 4 of them were only available in brown so I painted them when I got home today. They came out perfect but are still drying so I will install those tomorrow once they are good and dry. I removed the motorized vent assembly from the register so I could put some paper between the metal register and the motorized flaps. I then snapped it back together so I could paint. Before painting, I hit the registers with some 1500 grit sand paper followed by rubbing alcohol. Then a couple light coats of Rustoleum semi gloss white. Once they are completely cured tomorrow, I will unsnap the assembly from the register and remove the paper and put them back together. There are power wires that run from where the motor is to the box that the Z-Wave module snaps into so there was no separating them completely for paint. Thus my use of paper between the metal register in the flaps. It was simple and took less than a minute to do as part of the prep work. If there was a good way to embed photos on this forum I would have taken some good pictures of the process but since photobucket doesn’t work here for embedding pictures, I skipped that step.

I did remove one of my registers and installed one of the Z-Wave ones that came in white. One thing I encountered is that the metel duct that the register is connected to is tapered inward where the round ducting attaches to it. These new registers are a bit deeper than the original ones and the taper interfered with the motorized vent flaps. It was a minor issue as I was able to “coerce” the duct with a hammer to reshape the taper a bit in order to provide enough room to clear the motorized flaps. Not a big deal since it’s behind the register and not even noticeable. Hopefully the rest of my ducts aren’t the same. If so, at least I know what to do and have the tool to fix it. ;D

As noted by others, setup was a breeze. Press the “set” button on the Econet controller 3 times in fast succession and add it to the network. Once I get the other vents installed I will work on some basic scenes.

Here is a cruddy picture of one of the painted vents. I had to crop it and reduce it’s size so I could post it.

I just finished installing my 5 vents. I have 2 downstairs. One in my kitchen and one in my office. I have 3 upstairs. One in the master bathroom and one in each of the 2 kids rooms. I would have installed more vents but my others are sizes that aren’t currently supported by Econet.

I am using an Ecobee3 thermostat and waiting for the new Ecobee plugin so I just created 3 simple scenes. One called “Heat Cool Downstairs” that closes the 3 vents upstairs and opens the two downstairs vents. I created another called “Heat Cool Upstairs” that closes the vents downstairs, opens the master bath vent 100% and opens the vents in the kids rooms 50%. They are both smaller rooms and tend to get too hot too quick. I may reduce them further if needed. I created a 3rd scene called “Heat Cool Upstairs Downstairs” that opens the downstairs vents and master bath vent 100% and the kids rooms vents 50%. I’ve tested them all seems to work well. I added the scenes to Homewave for my iOS devices and will add them to my Roomie Remote for easy access. Once the new Ecobee plugin is available, I will work on better programs that set a temp for different areas of the house and include the vents in that scheme.

I also sent a message to a moderator to see who I can get in contact with at Vera to get better support for the Econet vents. Ideally they should create a new device type for the vents so they aren’t classified as dimmable light switches. It would also be nice to be able get battery status notifications. Once I figure out who to contact, I will try to connect them with Econet and I will also try to get the Vera team a vent so they can offer better integration in the not so distant future. Regardless, I am pleased that they work and seem to work well. As it sits right now, I am not sure if I will even need the bypass damper but I will still pursue that and talk to my AC buddy next week.

I’m attempting to paint one of my 4x10’s to look like my wood floor… mostly winging it. stay tuned for pics. Or a tantrum :slight_smile:

I’m looking forward to seeing your faux wood paint job! How’s it coming?

Yep, installed my vents today and they’re showing up as dimmable switches and also repeater devices (hope they’re not doing so :-[ ). This is obviously something on the vera end so not sure if we can raise this issue with them and get any progress on it. It’d be better if they came up as something like window rollers at least instead of dimmable switches. Maybe I just don’t want to see a light on lol

Repeater? I didn’t notice that when I set mine up. Did you select Repeater under generic device Z-Wave devices instead of a Generic Z-Wave device when you added them? I almost did that once when I was setting mine up.

I spoke with Econet today and they are committed to working with the Vera team and will provide Vera what ever support is needed. I just need to find the right person to connect with. I sent a PM to Mark here but have yet to hear back. Once I find the right person at Vera, I will connect them with the right people at Econet and stay on top of it from there. I think there are enough of use Econet users now to warrant better device integration. Just monitor this thread as I may need you guys to apply pressure on the Vera team so they know that there are a bunch of us with these vents.

Either way, mine are working great. It 102f here today and my downstairs cooled right off with the 3 vents closed upstairs. As such, I have no complaints even if they are classified as lights. I rarely ever use the Vera interface anyways. All my Vera interactions are through the HomeWave app or Roomie remote unless I am doing an update, programming or adding a device.

I used generic Z-wave device. They’re showing the icon for it is what I mean. Instead of the battery level, it has the outlet plug looking thing with the R.

well… I got the “look” close… but the color is off. So hard to find the perfect paint to match a wood tone. This one won’t be in a highly trafficked area, so i’ll probably just leave it and try harder on the next.

Original on left.

[quote=“tomgru, post:15, topic:187541”]well… I got the “look” close… but the color is off. So hard to find the perfect paint to match a wood tone. This one won’t be in a highly trafficked area, so i’ll probably just leave it and try harder on the next.

Original on left.[/quote]

Holy cow!! Very very nice!!! I’m really impressed. Color aside, that really looks like wood. Have you done that before? I bet with a bit more time, you could figure out the right comination on the color and get a real good match. It seems like you just need to add some dark red pigment to the paint or a dark red layer in there somewhere.

[quote=“slief, post:16, topic:187541”][quote=“tomgru, post:15, topic:187541”]well… I got the “look” close… but the color is off. So hard to find the perfect paint to match a wood tone. This one won’t be in a highly trafficked area, so i’ll probably just leave it and try harder on the next.

Original on left.[/quote]

Holy cow!! Very very nice!!! I’m really impressed. Color aside, that really looks like wood. Have you done that before? I bet with a bit more time, you could figure out the right comination on the color and get a real good match. It seems like you just need to add some dark red pigment to the paint or a dark red layer in there somewhere.[/quote]

nope… just some patience, and a lot of layers :slight_smile:

Started with an espresso color to turn the white register dark. Then played with the color, and some brushes to get the look. the “wood” color i brushed on,… the espresso is a spray can. I would do that a bit from a distance, then sanded at the end.

i think you are right about the red pigment. I tried adding the espresso directly to the tan color, but that didn’t get there. good eye!

I just poked around and under settings it does report the battery level but battery level isn’t listed as a notification option.

I’ve installed two (out of six) of these so far… with no scenes yet. I will say, i must have pretty good pressure, because if i close a vent, the air still gets through pretty well. (and whistles a bit). i’d be curious to figure out how much air is pushed back per se. But that this point, i’m not so worried about back pressure :slight_smile:

[quote=“tomgru, post:17, topic:187541”]nope… just some patience, and a lot of layers :slight_smile:

Started with an espresso color to turn the white register dark. Then played with the color, and some brushes to get the look. the “wood” color i brushed on,… the espresso is a spray can. I would do that a bit from a distance, then sanded at the end.

i think you are right about the red pigment. I tried adding the espresso directly to the tan color, but that didn’t get there. good eye![/quote]
Maybe a light layer of mahogany on top of the base color or use mahogany as the base. Reradless, I think it looks great! Especially for a first go at it.