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.
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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.
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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.