I’ve been rebuilding my network and found that 2way and 3way switches/accessory switches aren’t associating. The first set always associates fine but subsequent ones won’t associate and the “view” field is always “-1” instead of the number of the device I’m associating with.
I had been making a unique groupID for each set of switches.
So the 3way set of switches in the kitchen was groupID 1, hallway 2way set was groupID 2 and so on.
Kitchen works fine, hallway fails to associate as described above.
I found that if I make all the switches in all the sets groupID 1, everything works fine.
I’m I misunderstanding the purpose of groupIDs? What exactly is their purpose?
Confusingly, group IDs do not uniquely identify device groups within the overall system. Rather, the group ID identifies a “group” controlled by that particular switch. Some switches, for example, could activate one group with a single button press and the same switch activates a second group with a double button press.
The group IDs allow association of two of more devices. The actual group ID used with each associated set(note how I avoided saying group) is dependent on what group IDs the devices will support and this is stated in their manuals. In most cases the supported group ID numbers will be 1 sometimes 2 and rarely 3.
Re-using group ID 1 for multiple sets of switches may sound likely to cause conflicts with one switch activating more than it should. Though counterintuitive, this will not happen. One can easily and reliably have three master switches, all associated with their own remote switches and all configured as group ID 1 and they all work as you would hope, activating their independent loads, without interference. Or you could have a master switch with 4 remote switches, configured in a single group and all five switches activating the same load.
I’ve done a poor job explaining, but basically you need to use group ID 1 for your various associations and it will work as you wish.
The group numbers and their functionality are manufacturer/device-specific (and thus not arbitrarily chosen by the user). The notion of the group only lives inside the device, not Vera. (If condition X is met, then send message Y to every node listed in group Z) So: same device, same group number. And as said, more often than not, group 1 is a logical choice for manufacturers to start.