Ok, I thought I had this working in 1.1.1234 but maybe not…
I am now on 1.1.1245. I have 2 GE Dimmers in a room. When either one goes on/off I want the other to turn on/off. I have a scene called sync on and sync off. I have in sync on two events (I assume the logic is OR not AND) one for each light on and another scene with with two events for when either light is turned off. I have the appropriate on commands in each tab. When I run the scene from Vera it works. WHen I go to my light switches it does not. I have waited the required 1-2 minutes and nothing… I played with the poll frequency (from 60 to 1). What am I missing here?
edit— to prove the OR v AND question I set the scenes up with only one event and one command (if light 1 is on turn light 2 on) etc…
In a Z-Wave network, some of your devices support what are called "Associations" (also called the Z-Wave command class association). This is how a device that sends messages knows where to send those messages. For example, motion sensors send messages when the sensor is tripped, thermometers may send messages when the temperature changes, and so on. Often times these devices have their own proprietary mechanism for setting associations, which is not standardized. For example, a motion sensor may provide instructions in the user's manual for how to associate it with a light switch so it turns the light switch on when the sensor is tripped. Generally, it's much easier to let Vera manage the associations for you. If you let Vera do this, Vera will associate all devices that send messages with Vera, telling them all to send the messages to Vera so Vera can process them for you. For example, Vera can tell any motion sensors and thermometers to send all messages to Vera, and that way, you can attach events to your scenes so Vera will run a scene, like turning on a light, when a motion sensor is tripped, or closing the blinds when the temperature is over 90 degrees to save energy. If these devices are not associated with Vera, Vera will never get the messages. The catch is that if you have previously set up associations, those associations will be lost when Vera configures the device, because Vera will manage the associations. The recommended solution is still to let Vera handle the configuring, but just tell Vera what extra associations you want as explained in the 'Associations' section below. Then Vera will set her own associations, and will also add whatever associations you specify. You can also disable automatic configuration, either for an individual device or globally, with this check box, and then Vera won't do anything with the device's associations.
Basically, you would associate dimmer 1 with dimmer 2 and vice vera - the association group is manufacturer-specific, please check your manual for association groups supported by your Z-Wave devices.
Not sure if the GE devices support Associations. You may have to set the polling on the two devices that you want to sync to a lower level so Vera updates faster.
[quote=“aschwalb, post:1, topic:168176”](I assume the logic is OR not AND)[…]
edit— to prove the OR v AND question I set the scenes up with only one event and one command (if light 1 is on turn light 2 on) etc…[/quote]
All triggers (i.e. events and timers) are OR’d.
I thought Vera polls your nodes in sequence, one node at a time every x seconds, after y seconds of Z-Wave idle time. So the time for a total refresh scales with the number of nodes. Not sure how the current settings map to this. Perhaps x=60 by default and y=10. So if you changed x to 1 and didn’t touch y, she may still only do a poll every 10 seconds.
But an (updated) explanation of the various polling settings (there’s more than just x and y) would be great. I haven’t played with it to try to figure it out.
This can also be a hardware issue. I installed three identical GE Duplex receptacles for undercabinet lighting at my son’s home. Because there was no switch box available, we used the button on one of the receptacles to activate the on/off scene for the other two receptacles (bearing the lights).
For whatever reason (never solved), only one of the receptables would trigger the other two and neither of the other two would trigger the third but they would trigger each other. All fired fine in every configuration when the scene was activated through Vera. Since we had a configuration that worked, we went with it and did not need to dig any deeper, but it still baffles???
Thanks I will look into that. But just as an order of principle shouldn’t it work with scenes as I mentioned? I did set the polling
Poll this node at most once every [1] seconds (0=never poll, blank=default). No matter how long I wait it does nothing. If I trigger either light from Vera it works correctly so I know my logic is right. Vera is also correctly reporting the status of the lights so she knows whats up… Somehow Vera is missing the event trigger. These are the GE Dimmers I am working with FWIW
Yep, you are correct. It should work regardless if it is triggered from Vera or through the devices. I will try to set up some testing scenarios tonight and will let you know more if it can be reproduced or if another work around is possible. In the mean time, if you have another switch or even a plug-in module to throw into the mix, you may be able to track down if one of the switches is to blame (faulty).
Mmm, yeah that does not sound right if the status in Vera updated, but your scene didn’t trigger.
I do believe I experimented with this and it worked. At the same time though, I’m not sure through what mechanism Vera knows about the state changes of the GEs. It does seem to be reasonably fast, so I never thought it was through polling.
It was a while back that I played with this, probably .1147. Have been on .1245 for a bit. We’ll see what @raskell reports. I’m not sure I can get to it tonight.
I did a stress test on a GE Dimmer that is near Vera and got:
Starting stress test of node 7
Sent 10 direct pings, 10 were ok, average 100ms Sent 10 pings, 10 were ok, average 100ms Sent 10 polls, 10 were ok, average 200ms
Then I did the same test on one of these 2 lights.
Starting stress test of node 12
Sent 10 direct pings, 0 were ok, average 200ms Sent 10 pings, 10 were ok, average 100ms Sent 10 polls, 10 were ok, average 100ms
The lights in question are further from Vera directly but are within a few feet of another several zwave devices.
It was a while back that I played with this[…] I’m not sure I can get to it tonight.[/quote]
I actually did get to it. It seems to work. Not an exact copy of your setup, but I had a GE 3-way trigger a scene that controls 2 Leviton dimmers.
The scene works fine whenever I turn on or off either light within Vera. But when I actually turn either light on or off nothing… I set the poll to 5 seconds… Nothing… 2 GE dimmers… just want them to stay in sync. What am I missing? I could not get direct associations to work at all.
Edit: this is a poll frequency problem. Even when I manually turn on or off the light it takes 5+ minutes to update Vera. When that happens the scene fires. I tried setting the poll rate in the devices to 1 but that makes no diff?? What can I adjust to make it realtime ish.
There’s a bunch of poll settings. It appears that the last one (“Unless specified otherwise …”) controls the time between polls…
Still, polling is a slow business, and the update for the GE’s seems to come way quicker than that (if it works), so I feel there is another mechanism in play.
How close are these dimmers to Vera? Have you tried this with dimmers close to Vera / Vera close to the dimmers?
I’m still picking up a status change from my GE dimmer real-time-ish.
These are the furthest from Vera. I do have appliance modules/plug in dimmer modules in between to ensure a good mesh. Also they reliably see the neighbor nodes (10-12 of them). I will try it with two that are immediately under Vera (she is on the second floor) and I only have switches replaced in the first floor yet. I tried a heal on the network last night as well just incase.
That describes what I am seeing as well. If I turn one light on from Vera the other fires correctly immediately. And as soon as the status is updated when I do this manually the scene fires, this is just a polling issue not a scene issue.
I see. I suspect these are not a single hop / within direct radio reach of Vera. The real-time-ish updates, I think, rely on a workaround that only works with Vera in direct radio reach, as these frames don’t get relayed. They are not true status update frames, such as the Leviton’s send out. So for GE’s out of direct reach you’ll have to rely on regular polling; which is slow (by design).
BTW, if these are 3-ways, this will probably only work from the primary switch, not the aux.
