After many years of using Vera Z-Wave I’m gradually migrating to a Pi running Home Assistant Z-Wave JS. I’m using an Aeotec Gen 5 USB stick compatible with the Pi.
But I’ve run into a problem with an Aeotec Z-Wave Smart Switch 6. I’ve included it with no problem but I note that under devices one Smart Switch 6 appears and clicking on that I see the following:
As you can (hopefully) see there are 2 Smart Switch entities - one with a lamp icon and the other with a flash icon. (And one set of power icons.)
The lamp icon is the only one selectable in an automation. And it does nothing. Even selecting through the GUI does nothing. The Flash icon one, when that is clicked in the GUI does turn the switch on; exactly what I want. But how do I select this in an automation? Looking at the Entities list I see the following:
One is the led on the device and the other is the actual switch. At least that’s how it’s supposed to be does the light actually work, do values update at all, does it update anything when you manually turn it on by using the physical button?
Thanks for the response. That makes sense. Clicking the device with the lamp icon seemingly does nothing other than the HA slide switch moving to the right then automatically moving back a few seconds later. The Aeotec Smart Switch has its purple LED ring lit and does nothing.
Clicking the device with the flash icon switches the Aeotec Smart Switch LED ring on (changes to green) and the power flows to whatever is plugged into the Smart Switch. Also, the HA slide switch moves to the right and stays there. Essentially, it is acting perfectly normally. No errors. All other similar Z-Wave switch devices (POPP, TKB, Everspring) work perfectly and each presents only one device selectable in an Automation which, if clicked, switches the power on to whatever is plugged into it.
For the Smart Switch I am only presented with the device with the lamp icon in an automation. And that does nothing. I’m wondering how Automation selects the items for its ‘pick list’ of valid devices to use…
Ps. None of the power values change, even when something is plugged into the Smart Switch. Although I don’t plan to use them anyway, I just want control the switch State from off to on and vice versa.
No Blueprint. Essentially I’m converting all my Vera scenes (which use LUUP coupled with LUA) to HA Automations. I haven’t touched HA Blueprints, Scripts and Scenes yet. I have a lot of various Z-wave devices (Fibaro & Aeotec sensors, in-wall relays, Domitech lamps, etc…) but the Aeotec switches are the only ones (so far) that are causing trouble! I’m not sure whether this particular class of device is treated correctly when using the Z-Wave JS integration or whether I’m completely wrong in simply continuing to use HA Automation and I should be focused on using Blueprints, Scripts or Scenes to correctly reference these switches. I’ve looked at length on the web and and through the forum but can see nothing that comes close to my problem.
After only a few days I’m very impressed with HA. Latency is minimal compared with Vera and the sheer depth of coverage and programming functionality is overwhelming. Conversion going extremely well up until I hit this problem. The Aeotec switches were expensive though and I don’t want to bin them, especially as I know I’m doing something stupid, but don’t know what!
This three screenshots may be helpful in explaining the issue further. I’m now beginning to think that there is an issue with the Z-wave JS integration module not correctly recognising the Aeotec Smart Switch as I’m not encountering the problem with other switches.
Can you rename the LED toggle to “Smart Switch 6 LED” for better clarification in the dropdown lists? And please provide a screenshot of the full dropdown list afterwards (all actions for the “Smart Switch 6” device)
Renamed for clarity. (Should have done this earlier.) Screenshots attached. HOWEVER… I have found a workaround (or maybe it’s the way it should have been done in the first place). If I write a scene rather than an Automation and select Device, as with Automation the Smart Switch 6 comes up again. But upon selection both entities - Smart Switch 6 and Smart Switch LED - appear in a dropdown. I can then select Smart Switch 6 and pick the state I want the device to be in after running the scene - i.e. Power On. It’s then a simple matter of calling the scene from the Automation. Not as straightforward as direct selection in an Automation but it does work. (Last two screen shots refer.)
THis is really helpful for me so thanks for the thread, I’m also a very long time user of Vera and now switching to Home Assistant. Originally my plan was to keep all the Zwave devices in Vera and use Home Assistant for the logic, however following an error message the my Zwave network can’t start I’m ordered up the Aeotec Stick (Pi 4B compatible version) so that I can start the switch over. The only thin that will stop me being fully Home Assistant is the RFXcom that we use to run our Somfy blinds, hopefully Vera can still run that until such time we can run native. I note there are a few Zwave controller options for HA, how did you decide on the one you picked ? (i.e. was it features etc or stability)
There’s really only two USB controllers I considered for my Pi 4b 4Gb. The Nortek one which has Z-Wave and Zigbee protocols and the Aeotec which is just Z-Wave. Because I’m in the UK the Nortek one was not possible as it operates on 908Mhz and I live in the UK where 868Mhz is the norm and all my devices are 868Mhz. Most other USB controllers are derivatives of those two. Had some initial problems with the Aeotec but more down to learning than anything fundamentally wrong. I have three Veras - a 3 which has some devices and runs all the scenes and 2 x Edges which have the bulk of devices. I link all Veras via HTTP calls. Reason for three is to spread the processing load and provide max coverage with lowest latency. If you haven’t already done so take a look at https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/rfxtrx/ for RFXcom, though I don’t use anything in that frequency range so have no experience. I have over 100 devices so migration to HA is not a 5min job. But once I’m over the learning hump it’ll be worth it. I may have to keep one Vera (range issues) but hope to eliminate the other two.
Thanks Peter all really Helpful. Im UK so also gone the Aeotec, and have probably 40+ zwave devices (all lights are zigbee) so whilst a bit of a task it wont be as bad as yours. Alot of the stuff that’s smart plugs should hopefully be an easy change over (once I’m past the learning curve).
I’ve always been happy with the Vera but its EOL status and the fact that the new hardware is not as capable means its time for something else as we’ve grown very dependant on it.
Thanks for the link, I’ll take a look and give that a go. That could be very useful for us!.
You’re referring to the Action Type drop down list? Starting with Condition and ending with the tenth item - Device? No, I was aware of the scroll bar and I did scroll down the list but on selecting Device I was expecting both instances of the Smart Switch that I saw in Devices to be listed. But only the LED one was shown and therefore selectable. as I now know, that was the wrong one. (I’ve now followed your advice and for clarity renamed both suffixing with LED and Power respectively.) What I hadn’t realised is the role Scenes could play in this. And consequently I skipped past the Activate Scene option in the drop down list. Still learning a lot about HA! When I started trying different things and realised that Scenes could set the required end state of a device property then the Activate Scene option for Automations came to mind. Still a bit unsure if this is the most efficient way to go about getting the required result but until I get heavily into scripting I won’t know. I also feel that the LED is a property of the Smart Switch and the Power is the main function. But I’ve now got the Smart Switch doing what I want to do and that’s great. Doubtless I will learn more as time progresses. Thanks very much for your help though. You put me on the right track.
Do you have a network key set for your Zwave network? Did you add the switch using add node or add secure node? What’s the value of parameter 80 on your switch?
I have 4 of these working for close to 4 years. The switch must be added securely for the power values to register/update. This requires a network key being set. Also parameter 80 sets the update mode. This must be set to basic. Hail has the ability to cripple your network and make nothing work because it is a work around for instant status updates before the Lutron patent expired a few years ago. And the third option of off means you must poll the device for any updates.
That should also contain the actions for the power switch, not just the LED.
The power readings also work in unsecure mode, but the parameters have to be set correctly (update interval for group 1 and group 1 meter report)
Ah! The light has dawned! Now here’s a strange thing though. I primarily use a MacBook Pro (late 2013) and access HA thru Safari. The dropdown list you specifically refer to opens up at the bottom of the page. No vertical scrollbar. Only three options available at the current zoom level of Safari. All LED. No Power. But based upon what you said I switched to Chrome. Scrollbar immediately apparent! And power options at the bottom of the list! I then reverted back to Safari. Exited. And reloaded. And the scrollbar magically appeared! Safari 14.0.3 running. (Latest version, as well as MacOS 11.2.3 Big Sur.) Go figure! (I do get the occasional glitch in Safari and typically switch to Chrome. In this case I had no idea that there were further options in the list so didn’t think to try Chrome.)
So after all that, it was there all the time. Excellent. THANK YOU! LEDs don’t work though nor updating but I’ll run through the device parameters now and set them to what you and squirtbrnr recommend. I have set a Z-Wave network key but have included devices in non-secure mode on the basis that (1) I don’t have any Z-Wave locks and (2) I’ve read that using the key significantly increases latency for devices that are included with it.
Once again, thanks Rick and squirtbrnr! I’ve learned a lot more about HA in the past few days that’ll help me in the future.
I upgraded my smart switch to firmware v1.4 and turned on basic CC as well as “Send Automatic Reports When Exceeding Thresholds”. I get frequent wattage reports without having included anything in the group1, group2 or group3 reports. I also didn’t have to include it in secure mode.
The necessary changes could perhaps be flagged as a ‘known quirk’ in z-waveJS. See also here: https://github.com/zwave-js/node-zwave-js/issues/2290#issuecomment-817162990
does the light actually work, do values update at all, does it update anything when you manually turn it on by using the physical button?
