Scene controllers without Vera

Community Playground General Discussions
1

I used to set my controllers using method #1 to ensure they all work independently from Vera, i.e. even if Vera is completely down. Since both ‘methods’ have been merged, are controllers capable of sending commands directly, or it has to be routed through Vera?

Could anyone clarify this for me?

2

@325xi, the “merger” resulted in Scene controllers driving if the elements of the Scene were all Scene-aware devices. In this case, Vera pushes the associations down to the Scene Controller, and they’ll run indep of Vera.

My Scene controllers and Light switches & dimmers are all Leviton, so they work without Vera even being on.

I have one [GE Outdoor] Appliance Module that isn’t Scene aware so if I involve it in a scene, Vera has to control it and be actively involved.

You can probably search back for “method 1.5”, which is what I called the merge (when we had Method 1 and method 2)

3

Great, thanks!
And my guess is… there’s no way to know what this or that button does - i.e. any screen/view of what devices or scenes are triggered by this or that button on a remote, right?

4

Fundamentally, you build the [named] Scene using the normal editor, then use the Event Button to assign it to a specific Button on the Scene controller as the “trigger” to start the scene.

So you know what the Scene is composed of using the standard UI’s, but it’s not obvious which components natively support ZWave Scene associations (but each device will list “44” as one of it’s capabilities, apparently)

5

Well that’s not what I meant. One can create a scene, and assign it to the button one on the controller.
Later he creates new unrelated scene and assignes it to the same button by mistake, simply because he couldn’t see that the button is already taken. Then, he wants to check what other scene is also triggered by this button, and he has t go over all events in all scenes one by one…

6

Oh sorry, yes. I name my scenes specifically, so my workflow has just avoided the problem. :slight_smile:

ie. Living-Controller-{1|2|3|4}, Master-Controller-{1|2|3|4}, etc.

But yes, in general it can be a problem. It would be handy if they also hung “below” the relevant Scene Controller in the Devices view, so you could see the [ordered] attachment.

7

[quote=“guessed, post:4, topic:165946”]Fundamentally, you build the [named] Scene using the normal editor, then use the Event Button to assign it to a specific Button on the Scene controller as the “trigger” to start the scene.

So you know what the Scene is composed of using the standard UI’s, but it’s not obvious which components natively support ZWave Scene associations (but each device will list “44” as one of it’s capabilities, apparently)[/quote]
Is support of ZWave Scene associations requird to make it work? What if scene has one z-wave and one Luup device in the Commands? How is it propagated into the remote?

8

I’ll leave the formal answer, and hopefully some clearer documentation, to the MCV team.

I have Leviton’s, and only include Leviton lighting in the Scenes, so Vera’s just a closet-mounted Scene programmer to me, in terms of my lighting. This scenario definitely works whether Vera is running or not, as the Scene associations are all “pushed down” to the Scene controllers and/or switches and/or outlets.

For a while there I had one “non” Leviton Appliance Module in a Scene. Vera was definitely required to make it work (at all, as far as I can remember). I have since hard-wired that [outdoor] Socket to an [indoor] Leviton light module to avoid having to perform “Configure Right now” on a regular basis… but that’s another story.

From what I can tell, and I could be wrong, if one device is not “Scene-aware” (capability==44) then the whole shooting match is executed by Vera’s Scene engine. If they’re all “Scene-aware” then it’s all pushed down to the Scene Controller. I don’t recall seeing any hybrid behavior, but also didn’t test that use case much.

9

An official response would be nice…

For what it’s worth, I have a ‘goodnight’ scene that shuts off all (Leviton) lights in my house, while turning on a plug-in dimmer for a nightstand light. It then delays and turns that nightstand light off. This works about 90% of the time, but occasionally the plug-in module doesn’t turn on or off. The Leviton stuff all seems to work every single time, and all simultaneously. This makes me think that Vera is “smart” enough to associate what can be associated, and handle the other devices separately (and sequentially?) itself.

I am using UI2 with the latest and final build.