I am developing a 24v LED lighting system using z-wave controllers I’ll call it the ‘device’ (Single Color Z Wave Dimmer For LED Lighting SR-ZV9101FA-DIM) and I’d like to tie each device to physical dimmers either as a 1-1 link, or 1-many, many-1 as the situation dictates. I’d prefer not to use z-wave ‘Associations’ as it limits the physical dimmers we can use I’m not sure the device ca n do associations but I know the dimmer I’m using can’t. As this is all in a HUGE (to me) remodel my budget is tight and supporting Levetron licensing just isn’t going to happen.
So I’m currently using GE 12724 switches which don’t support ‘Associations’, but I can use something else if it helps.
Here’s the scenario: I’d like to be able to walk up to a dimmer and have it control the device in the background. i.e. on/off AND dimmer level and also via scenes. I can do this with scenes as far as on/off, though that too presents ‘out of sync’ issues if I use a scene to turn on the device and a switch to turn it off. I end up having to turn the switch on before it’ll turn it off, but I suspect I can ‘fix’ that with luup to set the dimmer switch to on and at the same setting as the device so it’ll respond to ‘off’. As it stands now, since Vera thinks the switch is already off, it doesn’t push the scene triggered by ‘off’ of the switch till I turn it on first…, but I’m a definite "Bart Simpson’ when it comes to programming and already have 4 scenes that get things even further from what I want…
Can someone point me in the right direction of some help/sample code that would tie the two (or more) dimmers/devices together regardless of which/how dimming level is changed? I know it has to do with reading the current dimmer (or device) level and adjusting the other accordingly. But how to do it and how to make it close to ‘instant’ is well beyond my pea brain. ???
You can use PLEG to link multiple dimmers or a virtual one and multiple physical ones together.
I posted an example over a year ago.
I did find this a week or two ago, but the ‘virtual switch’ content made my head spin a bit, is this what you refer to or is there something more direct you’re referring to as I don’t need the virtual switch as the condition always exists?, I confess to being a very green noob with vera/PLEG/etc, I’m not quite keeping my head above water… (yet)! so any nudge in the right direction is greatly appreciated. I discounted PLEG when I tried it and device trigger event type didn’t have any ‘dim’ conditions. Couldn’t figure out where to input this example!
[quote=“RichardTSchaefer, post:2, topic:184659”]You can use a PLEG instance to control your Dimmers.
Inputs Trigger:
Linked Virtual Switch to Enable Linking the dimmers
Input Device Variables
DV1 Dimmer1 LoadLevelStatus
DV2 Dimmer2 LoadLevelStatus
DV3 Dimmer3 LoadLevelStatus
Conditions:
D1Change Linked and (D1Change;DV1)
D2Change Linked and (D2Change;DV2)
D3Change Linked and (D3Change;DV3)
The Actions for D1Change will set the Dimmer DV2 and DV3 to the current value of DV1.
You do this by setting DV2 and DV3 to 50%
Then go into the Advanced tab and change the value of 50 to {(DV1)}
Do something similar for D2Change and D3Change
Once linked … you can change any dimmer and the others will follow.
If you change the dimmer manually (i.e. not from Vera) the others may follow after a noticeable delay.
You need dimmers with Instant Status to make this quicker.
But changing a dimmer from the Vera UI or a 3rd party app should be close to instant.[/quote]
Well, I got this working… sort-of. ???
logic report attached in hopes someone can assist.
From the UI and smart-anything it works flawlessly.
Any change to one immediately changes the other, the UI takes a second or two to update, but the change in light level is immediate.
However, when adjusted from the physical wall switch GE #12724 as stated earlier, I get some reaction, sometimes, but it’s clear theirs some conflict/logic problem with the ‘instant’ change while I’m still holding down the up/dn button. A feedback loop of some sort? Any help greatly appreciated!
On the GE switch (and pretty much all other instant status switch) only the off/on is instant, dimming up/down is polled unless it is a true direct association, so the delays when physically dimming is probably the best you are going to get.
But the behavior is erratic, not delayed… and even for on/off. Occasionally both ramping up/dn and on/off is less than the blink of an eye, other times no change >5min.
GE switches don’t support true instant status, they will only work if they are close enough to the Vera to talk directly to the Vera, and the Vera isn’t too busy to process it… Greater than 5 minutes doesn’t sound right however if it is falling back to polling the switch, unless you have a really, really large z-wave network. How many z-wave devices do you have? Have you altered any polling settings? (That usually makes things worse). Have you made sure Vera isn’t restarting or crashing a lot or is otherwise unstable?
Appreciate the help @shallowearth!
The switch is about 10ft (no walls) to vera edge, which is stable and I haven’t changed any polling. I’ve got about 15 z-wave devices.
I suspect it’s related to the PLEG device that’s doing the ‘logic’ as when that is bypassed the switch state updates reliably to either the webgui or smart-anything ‘instantly’. No delays or erratic behavior, so I think that means the GE switch is updating vera with any state change virtually instantly…
of coarse it’s possible the PLEG device is having a fit of some sort occupying vera when it’s active. I’ve no idea how I could figure that out, just not a very sharp programmer.