Has anyone tried associating a Leviton Zone controller (1 or 4 button) to a Leviton Dimmer light?
I cannot seem to make it work! I am on 988 firmware, Vera is primary, dongle is the old original one (2.40)
I had this problem from the beginning and because of that had to run Vera as secondary all the time to make the Leviton associations work (done through Leviton primary controller). I thought Vera’s Leviton zone/scene associations were fixed some time ago…
Since I now needed to run Vera as primary for some other reasons, I decided to rebuild my network (Leviton remote can only shift roles one way, so have to rebuild), reset everything and re-include my devices with Vera. But now I can’t make my Leviton Zone controllers work properly with Leviton lights.
I tried associating controller with the light in Group 1 through Custom Z-Wave Settings → Associations.
Also tried creating scenes with “A scene is activated/de-activated”.
Nothing seems to work. What am I doing wrong?
Is it because of the old dongle? Please help.
I haven’t used associations for any of my 4-button Levitons. I Just create a scene and assign it to a button on the controller. A few of them control a single Leviton dimmer, but most of them are more complex scenes with multiple devices involved. They all respond very well, although I am still hoping MCV can fix the problem of the button remembering what its state is. For now, with the scene active, I must hit the button once to wake it and the second time turns the devices off.
Are you referring to scene controller or zone controller?
I’m trying with zone controllers, but they shouldn’t be very different… Although, I need the dimming levels to be working as well as the on/off.
I know there were successful reports here of setting up Leviton’s scene controllers with Vera lately. I’m just not sure what’s the culprit in my case - is it a difference of a Zone controller or an old dongle?
I have both VRCS4-MR and VRCZ4-MR. The buttons are a little different, but they act the same. The dimmer (button #5) works well, but I have to press the scene button I want to dim right before adjusting the brightness level so the controller knows which button I want to control at the moment.
So, you can successfully add the controller to Vera, but can’t assign scenes to the buttons?
Ok, the VRCZ4-MR should be very similar to my VRCZ4-1L (w/o local load though)… So, are you saying you have not made any associations through Custom Z-Wave Settings? You have setup Scenes for buttons and that worked well, right? Do you have 2 scenes per button (activated/de-activated) or just one “activated” scene?
Yeah, the controller is added fine. I tried doing manual associations. I also tried setting scenes for buttons (I’m trying with 1-button zone controller for now) and nothing seems to work. I’ve added my Leviton remote controller as secondary and was able to do associations with it… Although the HAIL doesn’t work properly this way
Speaking of HAIL - are the lights you control with the zone controller also Leviton? When you turn the zone ON, does the LED on the controller’s button comes ON and stays this way?
Also, if you turn the light ON or OFF manually at the switch, does it properly change the corresponding button’s LED status on the controller? Thanks.
Yes, I just use scenes and let Vera handle the associations in her own mysterious way. I have some scenes that are just a single lamp module or wall dimmer, but most of my scenes include 3 or 4 devices. I prefer Leviton devices (everything but the high price) so that’s what most of my dimmers are. But I also have Act and Intermatics that work okay with the controllers. At first I used two buttons - one for an “on” scene and one for an “off” for the same devices. Now I just use the “on” scenes because the buttons, when pushed the second time, will turn off the devices. So I can control 4 scenes per gang.
I don’t know what the HAIL you’re talking about, but I assume it’s the missing functionality I’m waiting for MCV to implement for Leviton devices. The buttons’ LEDs don’t remain lit very long and I think this is why it’s necessary to do the double-press to turn a button off. It doesn’t remember its state. Maybe. It’s a little annoying, because if you’ve dimmed them or turned them off at the lamp, say, then the first button press re-activates the scene (the lights come on to programmed levels) and the second turns it off. So I think there’s some HAIL stuff that’s not happening.
Ok, thanks. I’m still not sure why my scenes don’t work at all with the zone controller. All I can think of is an old dongle…
On the other hand, since you are saying the LED won’t stay ON when you press the button it means HAIL is not working. Basically, HAIL is Leviton’s way to send device’s status back to the controller, when controller turns the device ON or OFF. W/o it, the controller state for a scene or zone will not match the actual state of devices, thus you’d need to press the button twice to deactivate the scene.
It sounds like Leviton support is still not complete in Vera and the only way to use Leviton zone and scene controllers properly, is to use Leviton master controller as primary and put Vera in secondary mode… Back to how I used to run it for 1.5 years
But unfortunately, then I can’t use Vera’s scenes from other scene controllers, like RF9500, as Vera cannot seem to configure RF9500 to activate a scene. Or maybe it’s still the dongle issue and I just need to upgrade it…
It’s important that MCV fix this, but it’s certainly less urgent than what they’re working on right now.
On a positive note, once you assign scenes to the controller buttons, Vera creates an association so that the buttons continue to work even if Vera is down.
Are you referring to UI4 or improvements of UI3 or something else?
That’s my understanding, but unfortunately I don’t see it happening with my Vera. BTW, do you see the new associations Vera creates on its own in the device’s Custom Z-Wave Settings?
No, there are no associations or groupIDs showing in Custom Z-wave Settings the way they would if I created an association. The controllers show AssociationNum 4 and all the devices show AssociationNum 1.
I’m pretty sure Vera accomplishes this using voodoo.
On my two Leviton controllers (one zone and one scene), only other Leviton devices are directly controlled by the controller (after being programmed by Vera 1.0.979). The other Intermatic devices are still being controlled by Vera itself.
I created Lua code so that I can simulate how the scene/zone buttons should work. But having Vera control the Intermatic devices does introduce a time delay.
Because of Vera’s inability to support “Hail”, I used Think Essential’s to re-associate my scene and zone controllers. Or you can use the Leviton remote
Do you use Vera as secondary and ThinkEssentials as primary?
I’ve been using Leviton master controller as primary for long time, keeping Vera as secondary, to be able to do associations and HAIL for my Leviton controllers. But as I said, I’d like to now setup RF9500 to control a scene in Vera, which is not a simple light device. And that doesn’t seem to work when Vera’s secondary…
I believe Intermatic devices are not scene-capable (from Leviton’s perspective) and thus cannot be directly controlled by Leviton controllers.[/quote]
I can confirm that this is true. I have a scene assigned to a button on my scene controller that turns on a Leviton switch and a Intermatic module. When the scene is activated, the Leviton switch responds immediately, but the Intermatic module takes a few seconds to respond. Also, I need to make a separate scene that turns off the Intermatic module and assign that to another button, but if I deactivate the scene that turns on both lights, the Leviton switch turns off, but the Intermatic does not.
Do you use Vera as secondary and ThinkEssentials as primary?
I’ve been using Leviton master controller as primary for long time, keeping Vera as secondary, to be able to do associations and HAIL for my Leviton controllers. But as I said, I’d like to now setup RF9500 to control a scene in Vera, which is not a simple light device. And that doesn’t seem to work when Vera’s secondary… :([/quote]
Yes, Vera is secondary and I use the low power “include existing devices” to add
Does Think Essential recognize the cooper device?
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