Light switch to control scene

Other Devices & Integrations Lighting & Load Control
#1

I am using a GE/Jasco relay light switch with VeraLite to trigger a scene when the switch is turned on and another scene when it is turned off. The light switch is not a scene controller. Sometimes this works just fine. But many times it takes a minute or longer for VeraLite to recognize the status change of the light switch. Other times it misses the change altogether. VeraLite and the switch are in two different rooms adjacent to each other. Range should not be a problem and there is another switch nearby that functions as a repeater.

It looks as if the VeraLite processing cannot handle any other requests when it is processing a request. That is very bad and makes it essentially unusable for any sensor applications. I have experienced it many times that when VeraLite is waiting for a response from one device it does not process any other events. In particular it seems that when VeraLite is sending a request it waits for a response from a device actively essentially ignoring anything else. That does not make much sense. VeraLite should be able to support asynchronous processing of requests, responses and events.

#2

The issue may be that the GE switches do not support an immediate update of its status (on or off). There are some patents protecting that feature which are owned by Leviton and licensed to a few others.

if you replace the switch with one that supports instant updates, you may see a major improvement.

Vera is very good at transmitting instructions, yet it still relies on the devices with which it works.

You may wish to search the forum, there is a lot of chatter on this.

#3

The Leviton devices implement something called “HAIL” or “Instant Status”, which are the keywords commonly used in this forum.

There are others also, see these table for a subset:
http://store.homeseer.com/store/HomeSeer-Z-Wave-Wall-Switch-Matrix-W7C37.aspx
http://store.homeseer.com/store/HomeSeer-Z-Wave-Wall-Switch-Matrix-W7C37.aspx

The Patents are from Lutron, not Leviton (in this case)

#4

Thank you for your responses. However, I am not quite convinced yet that the GE switch is the ultimate culprit of the issue. On several occasions when I noticed the problem of the scene not immediately responding, I operated the switch again. Essentially, I turned it on, nothing happened, then turned it off again, then turned it on again. Then all of a sudden the scenes got triggered multiple times: on, off, on in one sequence. So it looked to me as if VeraLite received the status changes of the switch and then acted upon them all at once. I do not believe that the switch itself stores the status changes and plays them back.

Is there a way to directly monitor the Z-Wave dongle and VeraLite? A log that monitors what happens with time stamps etc.?

#5

This has been answered countless times in this forum.

Lutron owns a patent relating to instant status, which is the ability for switches to notify the controller when the switch is manually flipped. Some companies like Cooper and Leviton license the patent so their products can use instant status.

The GE/Jasco switches don’t support instant status, and therefore do not report their status change to the controller when the switches are manually flipped.

Therefore, the controller periodically polls the switches to find out if they’ve been flipped. Depending on how many switches you have, this could range from minutes to hours before it cycles through and polls every switch.

There is a bit of a workaround that Vera controllers use with GE/Jasco switches, which helps the controller know sooner in some scenarios. Basically, the switch sends out a broadcast message when it’s flipped, and if the controller sees that message, it knows something happened, and polls the switch immediately, and sees the status has changed. However that only works when the switch is communicating directly with the controller, and isn’t routed through other devices on the z-wave mesh network, and it’s not always reliable.

You can’t expect your controller to be notified of status changes for switches that do not support instant status, such as the GE/Jasco switches. When it does happen to work, it’s because of the work-around mentioned above, but the behavior you are seeing is expected.

#6

It’s probably worthwhile making it sticky then.

I am still getting surprised what silly stuff gets patented. Where is the invention here? And I thought Apple trumps the charts with silly patents.

I would have thought that type of functionality is core to a modern protocol like ZWave. Apparently not. I hope that AllSeen/AllJoyn finally resolves the issues with these automation protocols.

[quote=“JamesDVB, post:5, topic:178912”]Therefore, the controller periodically polls the switches to find out if they’ve been flipped. Depending on how many switches you have, this could range from minutes to hours before it cycles through and polls every switch.

There is a bit of a workaround that Vera controllers use with GE/Jasco switches, which helps the controller know sooner in some scenarios. Basically, the switch sends out a broadcast message when it’s flipped, and if the controller sees that message, it knows something happened, and polls the switch immediately, and sees the status has changed. However that only works when the switch is communicating directly with the controller, and isn’t routed through other devices on the z-wave mesh network, and it’s not always reliable.[/quote]

I had already set a lower poll interval for that switch. That helps sometimes and somewhat. Thanks.