I’m looking for recommended ways to switch Modes on my vera at a few locations through the house.
Geofencing would be great if it worked reliably. It has gotten way better, i no longer have my lights turning out every 20 minutes while i’m sitting in my living room only to come back on in the next 5 minutes, but it still sometimes takes an hour or more to recognize that i’ve entered or left the fence. So i’m giving up on geofencing being a solution to this problem.
What i would like are some simple buttons at a few locations in the house that switch my vera to a different mode. e.g. a button by the main door to switch the house into “Away” mode. Another button to switch to “Home” mode. And a similar set of buttons in the bedroom to switch to and from “night” mode.
Scene controllers seem to be the answer (i’m open to other ideas if anyone has them e.g. Amazon Dash buttons?) but I haven’t found anything on this forum the wiki or anyplace online about scene controllers that work well with my veraedge, only lots of reports of controllers that don’t work well.
What controllers would people recomend to look at? Brands?
Just something to consider. I used to have several Leviton controllers, and found them to be finicky. But worse (for me)… was the $200-ish price tag for a 4 button controller. Lots of folks went the tablet route. You can find great deals ($50-100) on 7-8" android tablets that allow you to do all sorts of stuff. Put them where you want… hard mount them to walls for less than $50 and you are still under the Leviton price.
I like the tablet ideas but it would be fugly to have a tablet on the wall and a usb cord dangling down to a wall plug below. What solutions have people come up with for powering these devices?
USB power seems to be the best option for lots of Zwave devices in order to get them to function best (looking into some multisensor issues, and some thermostat issues) but short of some rewiring work there aren’t very great options to wire these things in permenantly.
I think you need to think outside the box a little buddy
I’ve just added a wall mounted tablet in my hall, I ran the per
Power cable inside the wall. Will be putting a modified picture frame over it to finish the job.
There are many alternatives when it comes to switches.
I’ve got a keypad in my porch to change the house from home to away, it has rfid tags too but I’ve not tried them.
Gives you 2 buttons for modes and the panic button you could use for its purpose if you setup an alarm
My personal new favorite though is using auto voice, auto Vera and tasker to use voice commands. You most likely carry your phone with you anyway, any command is a single push and a spoken sentence away.
I’m exactly with you regarding geofencing and controllers around the house. So far, I’m testing a new setup that seems to be working. I have the following controller/remote:
This small remote works with a battery and has a magnet, which is very convenient to put it on the fridge or other places. I have its base at my entrance door and when I leave home, I leave it there (even though I may change this in the future).
I also have a fibaro 3-in-1 sensor (but any door sensor would work). When I leave home I setup my alarm (which is independent from Vera) and I press a key on the remote to arm sensors and to put the house in Away mode. When I return home, the door sensor changes the house to “Home” mode.
When I go to bed, I have another button configured for “Night” mode. I just press it and leave the command/remote by my side. When I wake up, I press another command that changes me to “Home” mode again.
It’s been working niceley so far. My only complain is that Vera says it can not contact the remote anymore after a certain amount of time. This is certainly because of battery saving reasons. However, my Fibaro 3-in-1 sensor does not suffer from that. Eventually there is a way to fix this with the NodOn remote, but I didn’t look at this yet - maybe as easy as specifying a parameter or something.
In the future, I would like to make the Sleep/Morning mode change to use the same button to togle from one state to the other. The remote has 4 buttons that can be configured to operate as 16 buttons but I have not did that yet. Those extra buttons would be nice to setup some aditional scenes
I do the same, except instead of Auto Voice, I use my Android Smartwatch (and Auto Wear, same author as Auto Voice and Auto Vera).
There is also a watch face making program called WatchMaker that can send commands to Tasker. And the scripting language that WatchMaker uses is the same as Vera’s - our beloved LUA.
For scene controllers, I like the tablet idea but haven’t implemented it yet. There are far too many cheap android tablets out there and I haven’t seen enough recommendations to point to one particular one over another.
As far as wired controllers, I agree that the Leviton controllers are finicky, I have a four scene with one load switch, a four scene with no load and a 2 scene with 2 load. All were a pain to set up. The four scene with load I bought for cheap off of eBay, probably because the previous owner couldn’t get it set up. I spent at least 4 hours trying to initially set it up. With my limited experience I think the trick with setting up the Leviton’s is to have the switch as close as possible to the controller. By that I mean essentially touching each other, even one foot away is questionable. Just a guess but I believe when the Leviton’s are put into pairing mode they reduce their RF sensitivity. You also need to leave them “together” for awhile until the controller fully programs them. And they need to be included twice, once for the scene controller and once for the load.
If you want a good wired scene controller, check out the Enerwave ZWN-SC7. I have 4 of these and they are easy to include, program and use. The downside is that the lights that are paired with each button aren’t useful. They can not be used to indicate if a scene is active or not. The way they work is the light is illuminated next to the last switch pressed and they stay illuminated until a different switch is pressed. It makes a nice night light, switch locator, but otherwise are useless. If they can make one with useful scene active indicators it would be a run away hit.
I have alot of things based on me and the wife being home and away. And nothing will work right if you don’t first get home and away setup and working right. Seems like everyday I base something new off that.
porch light turns on when I pull up, doors unlock, outdoor motion sensors pause from sending me notifications when I pull up and many other things that are based on my home and away.
Geofence works depending on what app your using. I use Vera Proximity.
Having more then one variable is better also. Use a ping sensor or such on top of geofence to help improve even better.
I’m not sure if your looking to get your geofence working better vs. just a scene controller, but If you are I would be more then willing to help out or direct you to other posts to help fix that. If your using an Apple Product I can understand your frustration, but there maybe be other solutions also.
Another cheap option for a scene controller is the MiniMote, you can pick up the v1 version of these for less that $25 usually and are way less finicky than wired controller models, then just use a command velcro strip to stick to the wall. You will need to pull it off to recharge it every few months.
If you set the polling on these to 0, they are pretty stable re-liable (however enrolling them for the first time can take a few tries and requires that you sit them right next to the Vera, after that you are good).
Cooper Aspire makes a battery powered z-switch that works through direct association, works great for the situation you described. They can be associated to both switches and dimmers (they cannot however be used to trigger a scene to my knowledge, only direct association so they only have a set, set of behavior).
Very much appreciate all the great feedback and suggestions.
I think for now I’m going to get a few of the Minimote v1’s and keep watching this market to see what makes the most sense based on how much the minimotes are used etc.
I like using Geofencing, but I use only the VeraMobile app to do Geofencing. It just doesn’t work that reliably. Sometimes i’ll be home for an hour before it will recognize that i’m in the fence and activate the scene… same with when I’ve left. If anyone has info on making it work better, I’d be interested to read about it.
I could see using voice commands for some things but I don’t know that I would like it as much as a physical button. Maybe I just need to try it though.
Seems like a simple thing, a few buttons to activate a scene, but nothing seems to check all the boxes quite yet.
Using only vera mobile is your problem. I would recommend using a program designed around geofencing and one that allows more then one person to be used.
What type of phone are you using Android or Apple?
[quote=“Chrisfraser05, post:11, topic:190806”]Do the lightwaveRF battery switches work reliably?
Been tempted to get a couple myself for rooms with multiple lamps.
I take it you just see feedback on Vera and use them as scene/pleg triggers?[/quote]
I have not had any problems with them. I have a few of them around the house.
