potential new Vera user - questions on usage

Community Playground General Discussions
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Hi MCV forum. I am a new homeowner researching Z-wave-based home automation and the Vera system. I have a pretty good idea of the capabilities of Vera, and I’ve also developed some ideas for how I want to automate my home. However, without ever having used the device I’m unclear on some things. I’m sure you guys can help me out. Here are some of my questions.

  1. I want to turn outdoor lights on when it gets dark and turn them off at a constant time. Does Vera know when it gets dark at my location?

  2. We have expensive musical instruments in the house that prefer to be in an ideal humidity range. I want to trigger a humidifier ON or OFF based on a room’s humidity. This one should be easy using an appliance module or controlled outlet in conjunction with a humidity sensor or a multisensor, right?

  3. I am always leaving my garage light on, because I can’t see it once I’m inside. I want it to turn off after a few minutes if no motion is detected in the garage. This should be simple.

  4. I want the bathroom exhaust fan to turn off 20 or 30 minutes after it’s turned on. This way I can take a shower and leave the bathroom (or even the house entirely) shortly thereafter without having to turn the fan off before the bathroom has been adequately ventilated. Is this possible?

  5. I want to get an email (not a TXT) if there is water detected in my water heater drip pan. Is this possible?

  6. I want to have a “go to bed” function that does the following (I know some of these might be tricky):

  • turns off lights
  • sets back the thermostat
  • checks to see if the doors are locked and locks them if they are not
  • checks to see if the garage door is closed and closes it if it’s not
  1. I want to have an “I’m leaving the house” function that does the following:
  • turns off all lights if it is light out
  • turns off all but selected lights if it is dark out (or maybe even if it is close enough to darkness)
  • checks 5 minutes after I leave the house to see if the doors are locked, and locks them if they are not
  • checks 5 minutes after I leave the house to see if the garage door is closed and closes it if it’s not

  1. I want to be able to tell Vera, on a daily basis, when to turn the thermostat back up. My wife and I often return home at different times each day. Ideally I would like to schedule this a week or so at a time, but if it’s something I can’t do until, say, lunchtime on a daily basis, that’s fine (i.e. get to work on Monday morning, use my work computer to tell Vera when to turn up the heat or turn on the AC that afternoon based on that day’s family schedule, repeat on Tuesday, etc.).

  2. I want to have an “I’m home” function, perhaps triggered on the garage door, that:

  • turns on the lights for the room next to our garage if they are not already on
  • turns them off in 5 minutes if the room is not occupied

Some of these capabilities hinge on the ability of Vera to know when switches are absolutely in an ON or OFF state, not just send a “toggle” command to change the state. I believe that Vera can do this, but I’m unclear on exactly how that logic works.

I want my door locks to automatically throw the bolt (I am in the camp that thinks “otherwise what’s the point?”). I know that the Schlage Zwave locks cannot do this, and I know that the Black&Decker supposedly will, when it comes to market.

Thanks for your assistance.

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That’s a lot of questions but I’ll give most of them a shot.

  1. Yes, it knows your timezone and city location so it has a sunrise / sunset function.
  2. It can do it if you can find a sensor that will tells it what level you want it at. I don’t know of one.
  3. Yes, simple to do.
  4. Very easy to do a timer function.
  5. It will email or txt or call you if you want.
  6. You can do all that but you would have to have the door handle Schlage not the dead bolt or wait for the black and decker.
  7. You would probably just have the outdoor lights on a dusk to dawn setting but you can do it as a global scene like you’re saying also with all the other lights going off. Garage door?
  8. No problem with all the thermostat settings.
  9. As in 7. the only issue may be the garage door unless it’s on a switch because it’s not a normal on off switch I’m not sure but it would probably work. I just wonder because if you hold down the button too long it opens back up or just stops. I’ve read somewhere about making things work with a remote but that may be a lot more work to figure out.
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Re: #2, the Home Manageables HM-TS001 will monitor humidity and if properly supported by Vera could do what you seek, full support has been promised but is not current (you can only get a reading but not trigger events yet) hopefully it will be included in the upcoming Beta software release

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Yeah, I know the garage door can be tricky because the switch(es) controlling it are momentary.