Ok, so I got this new shiny fakro skylight, FVE version with remote.
Everything works great out of the box, how ever, how do I integrate it with my home assistant? How do I add both zrh12 remove and faro skylight to my homeassistant z-wave network?
I was able to make all it work so sharing what I’ve done, hopefully it helps others.
Since I can only put 2 links in my post I’m going to put them here and not inline:
UPDTE: I’ve migrated from deprecated z-wave HA integration to zwave-js and my fakro skylight seem to still work after upgrade as well as remote still seem to stay on the same z-wave group as skylight. No extra configuration most migration needed.
So first of all, prerequisite (only if you haven’t done it before):
This setup was done on deprecated z-wave HA integration.
You need to configure your homeassistant to read configuration from openzwave config files. Clone openzwave repo to where your homeassistant can read it from and specify path to /config folder(from openzwave repo) under zwave section in configuration.yaml to config_path property. See z-wave configuration in homeassistant documentation for more details
Ok, now on to setting up fakro skylight and ZRH12 remote.
Unlink Skylight and remote:
Since it is very likely both skylight and remote will come linked, you’ll need to unlink remote from skylight so that it can be added to your hass z-wave network. For that you need to follow instructions on how to remove device from network on page 11 ZRH12 manual(see link to manual above).
Adding Skylight to hass z-wave netrowk:
Once it’s done, you can now go to your z-wave integration in home assistant and click “add node secure”. After that you’ll need to click on tiny little hidden button on the skylight to tell skylight enter z-wave inclusion mode:
If “add node secure” doesn’t work, then try falling back to “add node”. For some reason it took awhile for my fakro skylight to be properly recognized in hass. I believe I had to restart hass as well to get things finally work properly.
Reset remote: simply follow instructions on how to reset ZRH12 in ZRH12 manual(see link to manual above).
Pair ZRH12 remote to hass z-wave network. To pair ZHR12 remote to hass z-wave network you need to (1) in hass z-wave settings click “add node”(I believe “add node secure” didn’t work for me) and (2) follow instructions for ZRH12 on page 12 on how to assign ZRH12 as secondary. If everything goes right you should see ZRH12 remote as a new node in your home assistant z-wave nodes dropdown list.
Adding ZRH12 to z-wave group: there is a trick with ZRH12 remote, as it is not recognized as “button” or as “scene controller”. The only entity under added ZRH12 remote will be battery level.
So, in order to have commands from ZRH12 to be routed to skylight, you’d need to add remote and skylight to a z-wave group. Select Fakro ZRH12 remote node as your z-wave device. In Node group associations section select:
– Group: “2 Group 2”
– Node to control: “Fakro Skylight (Node: # Complete)”
click “ADD TO GROUP”.
Note, that I’m using group 2 cause group 1 is used by my z-wave usb dongle.
Optional(not sure this needed) step: Once you click “ADD TO GROUP” button, you may also need to tell controller to do “add to group” as well. See manual page 7 ZRH12 manual. I’m not 100% sure that this step is needed, but I did it anyways.
After doing steps 1-2 you should be able to control your skylight with home assistant. And doing steps 3-5 will also make your remote be capable of controlling skylight as well.
p.s. turns out that there are at least 2 versions of fakro motorized skylights. One is z-wave based and the other one(old one) IR-based. I was lucky enough to order skylight twice and get both times old version (even though I specifically asked for z-wave version). I called home depot and they called fakro and had them send me an upgrade kit from IR to z-wave based motor. Upgrading was pretty easy procedure. No need to take off the skylight from the roof.
Hi Ivan,
thanks for your post.
Re the remote control, does it mean that you can use it to control the skylights but it won’t, however, ever appear as a remote in home assistant?
I’ve purchased separate zigbee buttons instead of the fakro controller but I would not be disappointed if I get it to work as a remote
Thanks
yep, the ZRH12 will pair to your home assistant and it even will get named as if it is remote controller, how ever there won’t be an “entity” that belongs to remote node that will tell it is a button or some sort of event trigger, it will only have an entity shoding battery level of remote:
You can certainly make your skylight work without remote, remote is just an event trigger that you can map to your skylight by adding it skylight and remote to the same z-wave group, but in reality any trigger that can send events to you z-wave network that you can listen to will work). In fact I barely use my remote, I generate close/open events from my inovelli switch with scenes support(double click up opens skylight, double click down closes it).
Got it thanks!
I’m going to try to setup the fakro remote as a backup in case my HA zwave network is down.
It’s not clear to me how I pair the windows without free removing them from the HA network. Do I put the remote in inclusion mode as per manual and just press P on the window?
I just realized you probably meant associations from within HA. Is that correct? I’m using the new Z-Wave zwavejs2mqtt integration so I’ll have to figure out how to do it.
Yeah, I’m still using old(deprecated) z-wave integration.
Your both remote AND skylights(or looks like you’re using windows) will be paired to your z-wave hub. In my case if remote was paired to skylight, the pair button on skylight simply didn’t work. This is why I had to unlink remote from skylight(see step 1) in original post.
Done. Thank you very much Ivan - it works like a charm. I’m going to recap here everything I’ve done because these Fakro windows/skylights are really nice but their Z-Wave support really sucks.
This is my setup:
Software
new Z-Wave JS integration
ZWaveJS2MQTT
Hardware
Aeon AeotecZ‐Stick Gen5 USB Controller
A couple of ZW117 extenders
ZRH12 FAKRO remote
2 Fakro Skylights with ZWS12 actuators
Actions
Setup your zigbee and zwave networks
Factory reset the windows and the remote
Hit “add node” in Home Assistant and then “P” on your windows, one by one
Hit “add node” in Home Assistant and add your remote as a secondary. See page 12
At this point, you can control the windows as “cover” and as switches in Home Assistant. I disabled the switch entity.
Making the remote work
In ZWaveJS2MQTT, select the remote control node. Go to Groups. Select Group 2 in the list and select the window as target. Do it for each window you may have.
Follow the instructions on page 7 for the ZRH12 and add the remote to the same group (2)
At this point, the windows should open and close with the remote.
Optional steps - better Google Assistant support
Additional Hardware
2 Aqara door & window contact sensors (MCCGQ11LM) (Zigbee)
A Zigbee controller
Google Assistant sucks when dealing with covers - this is how I set it up really nicely.
First of all, define an input_boolean and export it to Google Assistant. This will be the “switch” that you turn on and off to open the window.
Setup some voice routines so that you can toggle the switch by saying “Ok Google, open windows” etc.
Using NodeRed, set the value of the input_boolean to be the one from the contact sensors
This is how my overall flow looks like. Notice that there is an additional button that I use to trigger the windows which I’m probably going to remove now that the Fakro remote works as it should.
Ive been trying this for many hour now. But sadly i cant get it to work.
Ive done all the steps as i should, but still nothing happens when i press the buttons on my ZRH12 remote. It seams like when i add the blinds to the 2 group, it doesnt “stick”. As nothing happens when i press add to group after selecting the blind when having entered the config as the remote as master node.
Any suggestions?
from your post it is hard to understand what exactly that you’re trying to do and what is not working. Sounds like you have skylight paired to your z-wave network and you can control it from your network(no ZRH12 involved yet). And now you’re trying to make the ZRH12 remote to work as well?
Sometimes z-wave groups are already used by other devices and it is hard(at least for me with old z-wave integration that I use with my HA) to unlink device from group. I had to reset my skylight and remote in past and I too had problems with Group 2. I have no idea what was wrong but I knew that groups 3 was available so I switched both skylight and remote to work in group 3. The whole process did not went super smoothly as far as I remember. I had to re-do step 5 in this post 2-3 times before it actually started to work. It does not matter what group. you’re using. All that matters is that both remote and skylight are operating on the same group number.
p.s. if you elaborate on (1) what steps are you doing, (2) expected result (3) actual result I may be able to help better. Good luck with pairing:)
Tnx for taking your time to answer
I switched to Zwave JS some weeks ago and as far as i can tell, i don’t see it supporting the remote yet. So i will wait until i test again
Ok so I’m using the MQTT control panel now and j have added both remotes and windows to HA. Do i need to specify anything in the endpoint section of groups?
Lifeline is on on group 1 what I can see. And next is [2] Control1
So if i want to add them to group 2 it’s that one i should add?
According to the logs, I’ve managed to set the windows to group 2.
I’m just struggling to know what i should do when trying to assign the remote to group 2 also. Like in the manual? But then it asks me to press the programming button on the window. Is this correct method?
Heres the log
2021-08-11 10:39:10.834 INFO ZWAVE: Calling api getAssociations with args: [ 62, [length]: 1 ]
2021-08-11 10:39:10.841 INFO ZWAVE: Success zwave api call getAssociations [
{ endpoint: 0, groupId: 1, nodeId: 1, targetEndpoint: undefined },
{ endpoint: 0, groupId: 2, nodeId: 53, targetEndpoint: undefined },
{ endpoint: 0, groupId: 2, nodeId: 54, targetEndpoint: undefined },
[length]: 3
]
Honestly, ive spent soooo many hours trying to add my blinds and remotes. Have gone through your guide several times before. But today i managed to get all working. Big thanks!!
Hello everyone, I am a beginner in hass, I decided to try to manage the roof window roller shutters in my parent’s house,I know that this post is old but I have a really important question for me about one point, if I do like Roberto said, will it be possible to control the roller shutters with the ZHR12 if my hass become offline?
This thread is super helpful. I’m new to Z-wave and don’t know much about it. Before resetting the whole Fakro setup, I have a naive question: Isn’t there a way to connect a UZB dongle to ZRH-12 as a secondary device, not vice versa, as described above? I suspect the answer is no, but hey. Maybe copying device groups to UZB or something like that?
