Z-Wave Home Automation

I recently decided to renew my shutters in the living room and the dining room. The old plastic ones were getting yellowish from the sun and some elements had dents and cracks. I decided to get new Aluminium shutters with can be operated with a motor.

As motors I chose simple "dumb" Oximo WT by Somfy. They have 4 wires running down from the motor, PE, N, P1 and P2. P1 and P2 are used for either up or down and are the same as L.

They were installed with a simple switch to control them locally. But I wanted them to be more "smart". They should open in the morning and close in the evening. I chose the Z-Wave system as it seems promising for future additions.

To control the shutters I chose the Düwi 05436, which have L N Com P1 P2. Connecting those to the Oximo WT was quite easy, just keep in mind that you need to connect Com from the 05436 to L of your installation. A simple small "bridge" to connect them is all you need. If the shutters run up when pressing the down button, just change P1 and P2.

Now I have shutters in my house which can be operated locally with a switch (same as before) but can also be controlled via Z-Wave technology. The Z-Wave hub (like the "central") is a MiCasaVerde Lite, a small controller hub. It's connected to your local network via LAN cable and provides a user interface via its local IP address. Adding the shutter controllers to it wasn't a big deal, pretty standard procedure straight from the manual.

But then problems started. I couldn't access the UI of the Vera Lite any more. Long story short, using Chrome's "private tab" solved the problem. Now I can control my shutters with the UI from any computer or smartphone. I also invested in a dimmable wall plug  to control a light remotely. Works fine too. Moving the bar to a specific % works perfectly for the dimmable wall plug.

Sadly, it does not work the same way for the shutters. As I found out, the % indicated there is a time-% of the total operating time of either state "up" or "down" by default its is set to 120s. So 50% would be 60s of operating. But for example my small window (just 30cm wide) is closed completly by the Oximo WT within 20s. So If I would like to close the small window shutter only down to 50% I need to set the shutter to 8,3%.

You can modify the "total time need to operate to 100%" in the advanced Z-Wave settings somehow... But haven't read into that yet. For now I am happy to operate them to full close/ full open.

I have read in the Düwi 054368 that there is a "calibration" mode of the switch to do this process directly on the device. I ll try that on my Düwi 05436 next weekend. If this works, I think the Düwis will set their "total time needed to operate to 100%" by themselves.

What else did I got for my Z-Wave system?

I fetched myself a Düwi 05431 wall switch to control the balcony light. But i couldn't install it as the provided wall mount plate and all the exterior of the switch ( Everlux series ) is not compatible with my already installed switches. Will go to the hardware-store and look for a double housing which is compatible with the Everlux. Or maybe just get an Everlux wall socket. Whatever is cheaper.

And I got me an PHI_PAN06 from Philio. It is a relay which can control two separate loads of max 1500 Watts. Before I tried to mount it in my garage to control the garden illumination and the garden power sockets ( some Christmas decoration lights are connected to the garden sockets), i quickly connected it to a spare wire in my hobby room to test it. And I am glad I did. Because the Vera Lite didn't really discovered it, merely added four devices which were not functional. After some digging I found out that you need to update the "device library" of the Vera Lite so that the Vera know what device it is and how to handle it. Compare it to installing some new drivers on the Vera. Otherwise the Vera does not know what a PHI_PAN06 is.

So you do this by adding an MiOS app on the Vera Called Updater. Search the App Store of the Vera for the device list updater and run an update. After that the Vera discovers the relay and it works fine. Although it added 4 devices again with different functions, I don't care. Now they work.

The next part is installing the relay in the garage. Should be not a big deal, will do next weekend before Christmas. Will need some more stuff from the hardware store to do this properly. Like a small fuse box to put all the cabling in. And some external regular wall switches to operate the relay locally as well. Always handy to have a local option if the Z-wave shouldn't work for any reason.