So I have a set-up where I have a normal outdoor flood light, controlled by a Leviton Z-wave switch. In order to make it a motion light, I have a separate, non-zwave motion sensor mounted outside. Up until recently, I have been using the motion sensor +/- with the dry-contact on an old Hawkings HRDS1 sensor. That sensor has become unreliable and goes offline very frequently, and I’m tired of messing with it.
Literally, all I need is something that has a dry-contact sensor that can recognize open/closed like from an alarm sensor, and be used to trigger scenes, ideally hard-wired so I don’t have to worry about batteries (I hacked my HRDS1 to run off a 4.5v wall wart.)
When searching for something better, I came across the MimoLite. I installed the MimoLite yesterday, and I saw the Mimo “Appliance module.” It works fine, and I can trigger the relay on the MimoLite.
I then installed the MimoLite Plug-in, and followed the steps on the wiki…I added the MimoLite Appliance Module device number, and it created the child devices. My problem is that no matter what I do as far as the dry contacts, the status on the child device don’t change. Anybody have any idea what could be going wrong? All I need is the dry contact, and that’s the 1 part I can’t get to work.
If there’s a better, more reliable option for a dry-contact sensor, please let me know. I’m shocked at how hard it is to find something so basic.
If you find something, would love to hear about it. I’ve purchased two of these mimolites and driven myself crazy trying to get them consistent and reliable. They have been THE most frustrating part of my system and ended up significantly eroding veras SAF (well, this and some wonky geofencing/bad pleg issues that led to the lights all going on in the middle of the night non stop when I was traveling, but that was mostly my own doing).
I wonder if you could modify the door/window sensor to be hard wired?
Heck, I’d settle for wonky…the dry contact doesn’t work at all. The whole thing appears to be set up in Vera, it just doesn’t work other than the relay, which I can trigger and hear switch.
Simple question for the forum - Does ANYBODY have a MimoLite set up on a Vera Edge on the latest UI that functions, both for the relay and the dry contact sensor?
Re. hardwiring the door/window sensor - I actually have done that. It’s not that hard. My “old” set-up used an old Hawkings HRDS1. It took 3 AAA batteries = 4.5 volts. I just found an old cell phone charger that put out 4.5v DC, and soldered it to the battery contacts and plugged it in. The powering has worked perfectly on that. The issue I have is that the HRDS1 would drop off my system every few days and required manual intervention for me to re-connect. I might try and move it closer to the unit and off the exterior wall of my garage. That might help.
Jumping on this one as well. Using a Vera 3 now but will likely be using the MIMOLite on an Edge soon.
The problem with my MIMOLite is identical as discussed here. Setting and resetting the relay is a no-brainer but getting the binary sensor to trigger from a make/break short of the input terminals nets nothing.
I purchased this unit to use the input and couldn’t care less about the relay output at this time.
I now have my input configured correctly with the help of Vera tech support. Here is the trap into which I fell.
When the Mimolite app is loaded another step is required to associate the app with the physical device. In the WIKI instructions the following line appears: “You can find the Device #ID by clicking on the wrench key on your physical MiMolite device and you will find it under Settings tab.” If I follow that direction the information I see is in the Mimo ID 1 attachment. As you can see it shows ID17 but that really isn’t the case. Heading deeper into the “Advanced” tab for the physical device I find two more bits of information. The ID 17 is listed as an “ALTID” (Mimo ID 2 below) and further down you will see the actual “ID 38” shown in Mimo ID 3 below. Once the correct ID of 38 was added to the “Advance” tab for the Mimolite App the input function began to operate normally.
To some of you the ALTID of 17 that is shown under “Setting” might make sense. To those of us who have to follow directions to make thing work, we will continue to have to call tech support to get these issues sorted out.
With that said, thanks again to Vera tech support.
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I now have my input configured correctly with the help of Vera tech support. Here is the trap into which I fell.