Educate me on Z-Wave

Don't need a repeater. The zwave devices will work as a repeater.

I use a rapberry pi with homegenie (open source software). You'd need a zwave dongle. Recommend the zwave stick from aeon labs. I like homegenie. Simple to use interface but also allows to create code in C, python, or Java.

Wink/SmartThings/Iris, etc. are essentially all-in-one HA hubs. They have all the radios built in to them to work with the most possible devices regardless their connection type. Not just Z-wave. If you go that route, you wouldn't be looking at an open source solution.

Like mchias said, you shouldn't need a repeater in a home that size. You would only need a repeater if you are CAD wanting to turn on your pool pump that is on the back side of your property. If you get any devices that are battery powered, make sure you stock up on the battery it uses and make sure whatever hub you get can report and alert on how much charge the battery has.

Unless you know some programming languages, you may want to stay away from open source. Most will give you some basic functionality with the GUI but the more advanced things they can do are done with scripts and programs. I hear the newest version of OpenHab is more GUI based but I haven't played with it at all. I also second HomeGenie. It's has a really good, clean interface. Also, check out Domoticz. I've been using it for quite some time now and have found some really neat things it can do.

Yes you can group devices in a room. Gene (the guy who wrote it) has a lot of good info on his webpage. The forms are also handy. Unfortunately Gene has stopped development. He doesnt have time to devote to it. But being open source, the community is always looking for new modules.

I only know C, so I'm limited in what I can do. I haven't need to write any code as everything just works for me.

One cool thing I've added is echo support on my pi. You used to have to run a hue api on your pi and it would send json requests to homegenie. But one of the users integrated the hue api into homegenie. I haven't tried this approach as the other way works fine for me.

For my setup with homegenie, I've got my living room light and backyard flood lights on timers, a outlet in the baby's room attached to a lamp (use echo in their for voice commands so we don't have to hunt for light switch with baby in arms), and I have my garage door monitored and open/close control. To open it I wired a relay in parrallel with the manual button in the garage. The pi sends a 2 sec pulse to the relay to similuate a manual button push.

I got 120vac relay with 5v coil off Amazon. I'd recommend finding one with a 3v coil. The pi DO only output 3.3v for a high. I had to add a transistor in series with the relay coil to switch ground on so I didn't burn up my Pi outputs.

Also not sure if you need a relay that supports up to 120. I didn't measure the voltage on my door opener pins, so I just did 120 to be safe. Measure yours and you might be able to use a lower voltage relay.

Here is a relay you could use that easily attaches to the pi power output and it's DO. relay module

quote:

---

You would only need a repeater if you are CAD wanting to turn on your pool pump that is on the back side of your property

---

unnecessary. I have a zwave sensor on my mailbox that I measured is exactly 130ft from the wink hub in one direction and the good old zwave intermatic pool switch is nearly 150ft away and the only time I ever lost the connection was when I was laying my metal pool pole on the wall in front of it. Going on 3 years now no problems. I originally thought I'd need a powered zwave doodad between the hub and it but nope.


Eta and this is old school zwave. Most of the new stuff is zwave+ and the range is even further.

Eta2 I will point out both the mailbox and pool pump switch are downhill and in clear los of the hub which is on top shelf of built ins and there are huge picture windows in that room in both directions.

Yes! Great point. I have a Rubbermaid mailbox. Steel mailbox would block the signal.

So I've got my first few zwave light switch/dimmers installed this weekend and also built out a raspberry pi 3 with Home Assistant installed.

Home Assistant will take a little bit to get used too to understand how to actually make it do things that are worth while.

I haven't done electrical work in a while and I'm having fun relearning it rather than having to hire an electrician to install these simple switches.


All in all it has been fun and I look forward to starting a new hobby.

yes i am. i get a notification and an email going to my gmail account. gmail then sends that notification out to everyone in my house (6 people with mobile phones) so everyone gets notified at the same time.

then when any of us goes to get the mail, we all get a second notification saying the mail's been taken so nobody else bothers to check.

mailbox is 150ft away down a steep hill on the EXIT side of our circular drive so this is more useful than say a mailbox 10 feet away from the front door on a level drive.


eta i've posted pics along with the 4 robots i created in wink that make this possible. its probably buried in the big wink thread. the logic has been fine-tuned to virtually eliminate any false positives and very easy to set up once you realize what's going on.

@mchias1

Yeah I finally figured it out, at least the basics. Have my first "group" called living room. Agree with you. The learning curve is steeep with home assistant and their docs while numerous aren't really flushed out with great examples.

After thinking about it, I plan on writing my own home automation software using python-openzwave. For some reason if bugs me that I can't simply click a button to add a room, add my devices easily etc through a web GUI. None of the opensource automation suites have a great interface.