Full automation control of my home? Most important Lighting, lighting scenes, and two way communication between dimmers and vera.
Currently I have no automation system and to start would like to concentrate on my Hometheater and Basement area and then eventually expand to the rest of the house control. A couple of key questions for VERA.
Does vera allow two way communiation between controller and dimmers.
Can Vera be used with a Universal Remote Control (MX-980) to control the macros and scenes, via RF from any room in the house.
Will vera understand and adjust to wall plate changes during scenes (ie light manually turned on or dimmed down and then scene executed properly by VERA)
If I am starting fresh, what Z-wave dimmers, Remote or RF to USB or something controller might I need to add as well to be able to use the MX-980 to run the lighting scenes(macros) from Vera.
ie. hit play movie… lights gradually dim, and off. movie paused, lights dim up and full on, or half on. etc.
Thanks for any help
I am looking at 6 zones, 6 dimmers all in same area of house to start. Main concern is controlling the lighting scenes in my theater with the MX-980 to Vera communication.
Yes, Vera allows two way communication between controllers and dimmers.
Is this the remote control we’re talking about? http://www.universalremote.com/product_detail.php?model=135 . We are adding support for Logitech Harmony, Nevo Q series and a bunch of others controllers, so we will look also at this interesting IR/RF remote controll. Do you have a datasheet for this product? We are particularly interested in the commands and associations supported. Anyway, we will guide you into the setup of the remote if you encounter any problem.
Vera pools the status of a Device and if the device has a status that’s included in the a scene/event, it will trigger it. This depends on the specific device. A thermostat send its status when it wakes up (generally, on temp change). A motion sensor the same.
Regarding the purchase of specific devices for your home, please send us an email from http://micasaverde.com/support.php with a detailed description of your desired new Home Automation System and maybe we can help you choose.
Thanks for your repsonse. This system looks like it may be a real nice fit with my plans for Home Automation. Lots of work ahead of me, but with your help maybe it will be alot easier.
This is the correct link to the remote I would like to use to control VERA commands and lighting scenes from all over my house.
This remote is combined with the URC MRF-350 which is an RF to IR immiter controller, which allows the MX-980 to control all of my IR components in my home theater. I was think there may be a way to control the VERA via the MRF 350 IR and MX-980 combo to a USBIRT or some other connection to help VERA recieve commands from the remote.
Can you help explain if this is a possibility, or if there is another way to make the MX-980 communicate with VERA so that I could set up the following scenerio:
Walk into Home theater room and manually put all the lights on via a switch/dimmer/control pad on the wall at the entrance of the room.
Sit down on the sofa, and grab the MX-980. Hit the “watch a movie button” the lights slowly dim down from 100% to 50%, movie starts to play sound system comes on to the right setting, and then the lights continue to dim fully off.
Half way through movie, hit the pause button on the MX-980 the lights dim up 30%, the bathroom light comes on in the other room and the movie pauses.
SO on and so forth, I think you see what I am looking for in lighting control.
Not to hijack this thread, but what Harmony remotes are you planning on supporting? [I have the 1000 with the RF extender module…I should be receiving a 890 (hopefully Pro) due to the class action lawsuit against them shortly)
I was under the impression that Harmony only supported z-wave lighting as a primary controller?!?! Once Vera supports Harmony remotes, will it be possible for Vera to still be the primary controller? Any further commentary on this would be awesome, seeing how I am about to drop $100 bucks on Global Cache’ iTach IR controller box.
sacman11, I just wanted to throw this out there from a relatively new user of Vera. I have found Vera to be a great HA controller. Like you, this has been my first Home Automation attempt. In the past 5 months of having Vera, I have implemented Lighting, HVAC, and Door lock with the ability to control them via a z-wave remote, iPhone (Web app and currently beta testing the native iPhone App), and of course through the Vera Configuration page on any modern web browser. I would highly recommend this system, and between the great contributions of this highly active forum as well as the support from MiCasaVerde, you will have a pretty awesome home theater! Hope to see you around here!
Yes, you will need an IO (input/output) device, like a GC-100 to do the job. Another solution for the hardwired door lock and motion sensor is a compatible alarm panel that has an RS232(serial), Ethernet (LAN-RJ45), or USB port.
This too.
The only thing to see is if that remote control can be easily setup with Vera. We haven’t tested one yet.
Jacobly:
You’re right, for now, the Logitech Harmony series are indeed working only as primary controllers. We hope they will work as secondary controllers as soon as possible and setup Vera as the primary.
[quote=“sacman11, post:3, topic:165247”]MRF 350 IR and MX-980 combo to a USBIRT or some other connection to help VERA recieve commands from the remote.[/quote]At the moment it appears the Vera only supports transmitting IR via the UIRT. I have the same sort of desire - I want Vera to respond to commands from my existing universal remote. So, I’m hoping they add this eventually. The UIRT hardware definitely does support acting as a IR command receiver - I used to use it to receive commands from a Media Center remote. It’s nice that you can use an iPhone and all, but sometimes a good old fashioned remote is faster. ;D
Vera is a very nice, thorough system though. You’d get nickel and dimed to death trying to get all of these features out of PC based software like HomeSeer, and you’d still need a PC on all the time.
I plan to program all the macros for AV equipment in the URC, including sending IR from the MRF-350 to the leviton scene controller to activate a z-wave scene. I believe there are libraries for Vizia-RF in the URC software I use to set up my remote.
Just an idea I thought I would share. When I get around to setting it up, I’ll report back if it’s successful.