set up GE45601 remote control

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

This is dumber thant dirt.

I want to set up my GE45601 remote control. It can have 18 scenes, 18 “lights” and 18 groups. I have a 14 devices I’d like to control.

First off, I haven’t figured out how to control devices directly with the remote control. But you can set up one scene to turn on the device and another to turn it off, then assign the respective buttons to the “on” and “off” scenes. Tell me there is a better way.

I gleaned this information from other posts, but it needs to be put in many times so people can find it.

First, you have get your remote control to be seen by the Vera. This step will wipe out the information in your remote control. This so you can create events in scenes associated with the remote control.

  1. In the web browser (I’m using UI4) click on “Add/Remove devices” Oh, you don’t see it? Well duh! Of course everyone knows it’s the little tiny “+!” icon near the top of the page.

  2. Click on the [Next] button in the “z-wave” box.

  3. Click on the [Add One] button in the “For battery operated …” box. Pretty cool graphics, eh? Ya think they could have spent some time on documentation? Naw, a waste of time, the pissed off users will write it for them.

  4. Oops! Damn! Your remote control wasn’t ready yet. But, hey, you love to futz around. Click on the [Close] button in the “Success” box.

  5. Get your remote control ready by pressing and holding the [SETUP] button. (why isn’t the button [SHIFT] with a secondary [setup]?). “LIGHT SETUP” will appear in the display.

These next three steps are only for the first time you link to the Vera
6) Six [–>] to get it to display “NETWORK”
7) press [OK] to get it to display “RESET”
8) Get the remote control within a meter of the Vera

  1. use the [<–] button to get back to “TRANSFER”

  2. Then pres [OK]

  3. Now you have about 30 seconds to get back to the computer which should have a [RETRY] button on it (from step 4). Click [RETRY]

  4. While the computer is displaying “SUCCESS”, the remote control is displaying “RECEIVING”. The remote control will, if you are lucky, display “SUCCESS”, too, but only very briefly.

Now go make up your scenes, test them out with the [RUN] button and see how cool things can be. OK, that was fun. Took you a freaking long time, didn’t it? But it’s still pretty cool, eh? Now you’re ready to link your scene to a key on your remote.

  1. Click on the little icon [spanner] of your scene.

  2. Click on the “EVENTS” tab.

  3. From the drop down box, select your remote control. Frik! It doesn’t have a name, just a number. Well, you can name it later. Now that’s a totally intuitive task. Oh, all right, in your unamed device box, click [spanner], ADVANCED tab, in “name” box put in some note worthy name for your remote control, something link, “Remote Control”.

  4. Then appears the “What type of event is the trigger?:” drop down box. You have two choices, “A scene is activated” or “A scene is de-activate” Well off course you knew immediately that these refered to the “on” and “off” (respectively) of the button you’re about to enter. You’re a genius!

  5. “Name for this event” is anything you’d like it to be; how about “Remote control button pressed”?

  6. Ah! “Which scene number” The clever marketing toad at MiCasaVerde thought it was so obvious. I mean, like, you’ve been working with scenes in the UI4 and it’s one of those. Well, no, here is where you’ll enter in the number of the button you’ll push to run your scene of the UI4. Our GE genius’s numbered the buttons 1-18, where 1-9 is the actual button and 10-18 is the 1-9 button (respectively) but the shift button needs to be pressed first to get to numbers 10-18

  7. After the button number is entered, press tab or click somewhere, then click on [Back to events]

  8. Close the window by clicking on the [X] in the upper right corner.

  9. Not done yet! CLICK ON “SAVE”! Huh? WTF is that? Remember the frickin’ “Add/Remove” button? It’s on the same bar over on the right. You’ll remember to do it automatically, eventually.

Whew! All done.

Well you are if you only used buttons 1-9 and only chose “Activate” Ask your Green Little house frau’s why you’re not done yet.

For some f**king reason you have to go back and do steps 1,2 (wait, don’t do 3 yet) 5, 10, 11, 3, and 12.

So you got it? Set up a scene for turning things “on” and assign it to the upper half of a key with “activate” and the key number (add 9 if the key is shifted) Then set up a scene for turning things “off” and link it to "de-activate and the key number (add 9?).

#2

Hi gferry,

Thanks for the note; I would never have figured this out without your instructions! (forget deciphering those other multiple forum posts).

I do have a quick question though: I had to (after adding the scenes in Vera) to go back to the remote and hold Setup, then “Transfer”, then “Receive”, and then go into Vera and hit “Add” for a battery-operated device. I presume this is what you meant when you said to repeat a few of those steps?

Also, it seems like you got the “off” buttons on the remote to trigger scenes based on “A scene is deactivated”. I couldn’t get this to work: the only thing Vera will respond to if an “off” button is pressed is “A scene is activated” and the button number is “0”. This seems to jive with the other posts describing the “hack” that vera uses for scene control, but from reading your posts, it seems that you got your vera responding to “A scene is de-activated”? Can you confirm that?

#3

Veezer,

No, I didn’t go back to “add”, I went through those steps of clicking on the “add device” (+!) on the browser UI4. So far, once, I’ve gotten the remote to be recognized, I’ve done everything from the UI4. I used those steps "1,2 (wait, don’t do 3) yet) 5, 10, 11, 3, and 12. " to get the buttons to work like one would expect.

Rightly or wrongly, I follow the encantation of using “de-activate scene” to use the “off” of a button number. Here’s my thinking, the nomenclature is FUBAR (maybe SNAFU is more appropriate) "What type of event is the trigger?: " should be something like, “button function label” and a simple “on” or “off” would suffice over “activate/de-activate”. You and I, the user, can use the button for whatever we want.

See my post on the Wall Plate GE ZW5302/45631 for more fun and games

#4

oh yeah! If I “re-function” a button, I’ll make the change in the browser UI4 and then do the “new device” dance steps and various encantations previously described. Some times I have to kill a goat at midnight on a blue moon of February, but eventually it seems to work.

well, with the exception of the noticing a quirk about the Remote Control; sometimes an “on” or an “off” will be pressed and the display will say -EMPTY-. I don’t know what this is all about but you have to “new device” the Remote Control (and then the Wall Plate).

#5

I tried an experiement. I assigned the scene “Deck On” to button 1 on of the GE45601 Remote Control assuming that “A scene is activated” refers to the “on” of a button and "A scene is de-activated is the “off” of a button. This would be the entry in my table “Deck on → 01on”

scene
Deck on → 01on
Deck off → 01off
Deck off → 02on
Deck on → 02off

taken from the advanced the device “#2-off=Deck On, Button #1-on=Deck On, Button #2-on=Deck off, Button #1-off=Deck off,”

After setting this up, I did the “add device” (+! icon) routine I figured out in a previous post.

I found that 02off did not work. This is odd because I had set up 04off to turn off everything and it worked.

Another thing I noted was that there was a 6 second lag between the time I pressed the “on” to when the lights actually came on, but the lights started to go off within 100mS of pressing the off.

Well, I’m off on a year bicycle adventure starting now, so I can’t fiddle with this any more. It’s been fun. I hope the management of MiCasaVerde gives the engineers time to do a good job instead of forcing them to put this marginal software out.

#6

What am I doing wrong if every time I add the 45631 wall plate it doesn’t update the existing scene controller icon, but it creates a new instance of the scene. Then it doesn’t seem to trigger any of the scenes that I have assigned to its buttons.

Should I delete the extra instances of the controller and use the latest one to assign my events to? It says it is copying scene information when doing the second include, but nothing happens when I push the buttons.

Any help would be appreciated.

#7

I’m also not able to get any of the “off” commands to trigger anything from my remote. Has anyone done any more work on this and had any success?

Alternately, can someone suggest a better set of remotes to purchase?

#8

I own two of these GE 45601 remotes. I use one in the living room and another in the master bedroom. I don’t have any experience with higher-end remotes, but I can say that these remotes are working great for me. In the living room, I use the remote to control seven lights, some different groups and a few scenes.

It’s important to note a few things about the remote. First, when you issue a “RECEIVE” command, it allows Vera to send updated network information to the remote, so that the remote is aware of what devices exist on the network, since the remote is not the primary (it will need to know device IDs, etc). Second, every one of the features within the remote must be configured from the remote itself, and not from Vera. Last, there are 18 usuable Scene buttons on the remote, nine without the SHIFT button and nine with the SHIFT button. There is now way, that I’m aware of, to use the ON and OFF buttons to do different things, for scenes. I’ve read the manual a few times to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

The only thing I’m a little upset about, and it has nothing to do with the remote, is that my Trane thermostat does not let anything other than Vera control it. I’m pretty sure it’s a limitation of the termostat and not the remote.

#9

Vito,

In order for you to control the lights from the remote. After pairing the remote with Vera, do you have to include each light separately with the remote or when pairing with Vera, they automatically get sent to the remote? I have the remote paired with Vera, however it shows up in Vera as a scene controller. I would also like to have the remote controls lights around the house with out using scenes. How did you get this to work correctly with Vera being the primary controller?

  • Garrett
#10

Garrett,

Once you “pair” the remote with Vera, it’s basically getting a list of all the devices in your network - and that’s it. In other words, if you add new devices to Vera and don’t pair your remote to Vera after this, your remote will not be able to control those devices at all. It just won’t recognize them.

Now, once you pair your remote to Vera, it will erase any settings you’ve previously setup. Just be aware of that. After pairing, you need to take your remote to each device (light, etc) and follow the instructions in the manual. It’s very simple and quick once you get used to it (I’ve done it quite a few times). You just go to the light, hold SETUP on the remote for a few seconds, it should already be on “LIGHT SETUP”. Then choose “ADD”, the “TO A KEY”, then press the number you want to represent the light. Once you hit “OK” after that, the remote should be reading something like “SETUP AWAITING”. Then press the light (on or off). It should quickly say “SUCCESS” and then go back to “LIGHT SETUP”. You’re light is now set to that number.

The same thing goes for Groups. Just hold SETUP and go to GRP SETUP. Hit OK each time (choosing ADD and TO A KEY), and then choose a number for the group. Then once it says “SETUP AWAITING”, just hit the light on or off. That light is now added to the group.

The only difference for setting up scenese, is that once you add a light to a scene, you can adjust the brightness level within 30 seconds, and the remote will store this setting.

I hope that helps!

Vito

#11

Good to know that you can use the remote as a secondary controller. I got confused as Vera was reporting it as a scene controller and was not sure if I could still pair the lights to the GE remote while they were paired with Vera. Ill have to give it a try sometime this week. As for adding new devices and having to re-pair the remote with vera and then loosing the settings does suck. But hopefully adding new devices wont become a regular thing.

Thanks again for the info!

  • Garrett
#12

Ok, played around with it for a while today and you do NOT have to reset the remote control in order for you to pair new individual lights with it. Instead, hold down Setup, then select Network, then select Update. Hit ok.

Was then able to go to individual lights and add them to the keys as the instructions describe.

#13

That is great to hear! I will have to mess with mine this week. Just have to figure out how I want to layout the buttons for each light.

Thanks again for the updated info.

  • Garrett
#14

HilH,

Thanks for the info, I hadn’t tried that!

-Vito

#15

I’ve paired my GE45601 with Vera2 successfully. Activate works fine. However, I don’t seem to get de-activate messages from the off-buttons.

I have two scenes defined - light-on and light-off. I have light-on connected to an event when scene #1 is activated. It works fine, and the light goes on when I press the “on” side of button 1. I tried to connect the light-off scene to an event when scene #1 is deactivated. But, when I test it by pushing the “off” side of button 1, nothing happens. If, instead, I connect it to an event when scene #2 is activated, it works fine - the light goes off when I push the “on” side of button 2. I also tried connecting to scene #2 de-activate, but no joy there either. Only activate seems to work.

After looking through the forum, I’ve tried re-adding the device after making the mod, and I’ve tried updating the network from the remote setup. Neither has any effect.

Should the off buttons work? Any ideas of what I should try next?

Thanks.

#16

OFF buttons explained:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=1960.msg7383#msg7383

#17

[quote=“Ap15e, post:16, topic:167062”]OFF buttons explained:
http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=1960.msg7383#msg7383[/quote]

Thanks, Ap. That explains what’s happening. I’ve confirmed it by attaching the light-off scene to activation of scene 0 and, indeed, every off button now turns it off.

This brings up some questions for me.

[ul][li]Others seem to have gotten the scene-off buttons to work, by re-adding the remote and other weird games. How can those work? Does anybody have the scene-off buttons working properly, generating the appropriate scene de-activate event?[/li]
[li]What is the “de-activate” event? How / when is it ever triggered? Based on that thread, and what I see happening, I don’t see what can trigger it.[/li]
[li]The referenced thread is from September 2009. It’s now 1.5 years later. Is micasaverde working on a solution? I can think of several workarounds that would do the trick, some of which are suggested in the thread.[/li]
[li]Is there any remote that gets this right, or even can get it right?[/li][/ul]

#18

Thanks - this was so helpful I am a 20+ yr x10 user

#19

[quote=“Vito, post:10, topic:167062”]Garrett,

Once you “pair” the remote with Vera, it’s basically getting a list of all the devices in your network - and that’s it. In other words, if you add new devices to Vera and don’t pair your remote to Vera after this, your remote will not be able to control those devices at all. It just won’t recognize them.

Now, once you pair your remote to Vera, it will erase any settings you’ve previously setup. Just be aware of that. After pairing, you need to take your remote to each device (light, etc) and follow the instructions in the manual. It’s very simple and quick once you get used to it (I’ve done it quite a few times). You just go to the light, hold SETUP on the remote for a few seconds, it should already be on “LIGHT SETUP”. Then choose “ADD”, the “TO A KEY”, then press the number you want to represent the light. Once you hit “OK” after that, the remote should be reading something like “SETUP AWAITING”. Then press the light (on or off). It should quickly say “SUCCESS” and then go back to “LIGHT SETUP”. You’re light is now set to that number.

The same thing goes for Groups. Just hold SETUP and go to GRP SETUP. Hit OK each time (choosing ADD and TO A KEY), and then choose a number for the group. Then once it says “SETUP AWAITING”, just hit the light on or off. That light is now added to the group.

The only difference for setting up scenese, is that once you add a light to a scene, you can adjust the brightness level within 30 seconds, and the remote will store this setting.

I hope that helps!

Vito[/quote]

I have two of the GE 45601 remotes, #1 has been set up as a secondary controller to Vera, it is listed in Vera as a Scene Controller. and the #2 remote has not been paired to Vera and I wanted to know if I should add it to Vera as a Secondary Scene Controller or can I transmitt the information from the #1 remote, to the #2 remote?

By the way, after I paired #1 to Vera as per your instructions, I then added each light and outlet to the #1 remote and assigned each to it’s own key on the remote. I found out that I can change the dimmer levels by holding the “on” button, till I had the level of light I wanted. As for the Scenes, the scenes are controlled by the remotes scene button, through Vera. I am hoping to control a group of lights ( landscape lighting) by adding those lights to a “Group” key on the remote. as well.

Thanks a bunch for your help, I have had these remotes for three weeks and was scared I’d wipe out Vera if I tried to add the lights to the remotes!! EVEN though Vera showed it as battered powered Controller

#20

If you want to be able to trigger scenes from #2 than you must include #2 on Vera. If you only want to control lights from #2 then you could copy from #1 to #2. If you’re looking to ‘clone’ #1, then you could also include #2 on Vera and then copy #1 to #2. That way you don’t have to set up the key assignments on #2.