I just ordered the Vera - should be here in a couple of days. I have seveal Leviton switches and dimmers, a couple of Cooper Wiring tamper resistant outlets, an outdoor Intermatic unit for Christmas lights, a Schlage deadbolt, a Wayne Dalton Zwave garage door opener, a Home Settings scene controller and some other odds and ends.
I have a single story 3,800 sqft house with a pantry almost dead center in the house with a wireless router in bridge mode installed near the ceiling - there is an open plug and room for the Vera there as well, so a couple of questions - is the vera wall mountable or will I need a shelf? Do you ever need to do much with the hardware itself other than pull the Aeon Zwave dongle out to add item?
I appreciate any help in advance - I am sure I will have thousands of other questions, but can’t wait to get started!
To answer the easy question: yes, Vera is wall mountable.
Some of the devices you have in your Z-Wave configuration needs to be tweaked a little bit, but as long you read the documentation on our wiki: http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Special:AllPages and search this forum, every device you have will work with Vera. And to go well with your existing Z-Wave devices, you should add a thermostat, a motion sensor and at least one IP Camera. Just a suggestion.
As for access, yes, the dongle when you’re setting things up and then in theory you’re done.
I look at the lights now and again, to check Internet connectivity, but that’s about it.
Thanks for the verification on the wall mount! That will make it easier!
Also, thanks for the verification on the dongle - I’ll put it where I can reach the dongle.
I have a couple of Trend Net IP cameras - I saw someone mention how to get those working in another thread, I think. The interesting thing will be the scene controller and garage door integration - I hadn’t done anything with the garage door yet and was just using the scene controller to manually turn things on and off - I got the Schlage after I decided to buy the Vera, so this will all be awesome to get working.
Given the size of your house, on a single-story, you may also need a few ZWave devices “in the path” between Vera and whatever your controlling (like the Outdoor Intermatic). ZWave signals don’t travel too far/well through multiple walls… at least in my experience, YMMV.
I have a few Appliance Modules, and a Scene Controller, that were too far away from the nearest ZWave device, so I put other [ZWave] switches & appliance modules in between to act as repeaters to go the distance.
As you get more ZWave Light Switches (etc) in place, this problem goes away, but you might run into this when you’re starting off. There are some related discussions on “repeaters” folks have used for the Schlage locks, since they need something a little special if you run into problems there.
If you have problems during the deployment, just let people know and I’m sure they’ll chime in with help and experiences.
My Vera is in screw-mounted onto a plate in my Structured Wiring closet, with the Dongle “outside” the enclosure on the end of a 2ft USB-Extension cable. This makes it easy for access, and avoids radio problems with the Metal SWC.
For the most part, the Dongle is the only bit I need access to regularly, and really only as I add more ZWave Switches to my setup.
Guessed, great info. I just re-tooled everything yesterday for holiday lights - the house is only 6 months old, so I am quickly figuring out what makes the most sense for Z-Wave as we get to different events.
I setup the house with soffit outlets and ground outlets for landscape lights/holiday lights and just moved two Leviton switches to there, which put my back patio into a low density zone for switches, so I installed a Cooper tamper resitant outlet for a light to make the path connect to another switch way at the back of the house - that is something very cool about Zwave, while the radios may not be super long distance capable, being able to set a ‘repeater’ anywhere makes it super convenient!
If my builder hadn’t installed a Wayne Dalton opener with Zwave and some light switches and the Wayne Dalton remote, I wouldn’t have known about all this. Glad I stumbled across Vera… 4 more days!
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