Mixing z-wave products from multiple vendors

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • georgevella
    Automated Home Lurker
    • Sep 2010
    • 4

    Mixing z-wave products from multiple vendors

    Hi

    I am setting up my apartment for home automation. I already have a basic ring-style electrical circuit running, which is why I am going for a mix of Merten for the switches and controller and HomePro for the adapters (I am from Malta and we use the BS1363 (UK) socket). I would like to be able to be able to switch off/on the HomePro adapters with Merten's transmitters. Would this be possible?

    (PS: I am relatively new to home automation so any tips and recommendations would be appreciated)
  • darkknight
    Automated Home Jr Member
    • Dec 2005
    • 31

    #2
    I delved into this a few weeks ago and ran into some problems.

    I mixed MK Astral Light switches with HomePro Light switches and plug in appliance and dimmer modules.

    For most things, everything will work well. You would thing they are all compatible because of Z-Wave standards, right ?

    But then I ran into a problem. Though I'm not sure if you'll experience this with the Merten switches, it's worth investigating just to be sure.


    The MKAstral light switches I have support a feature called MultiChannel Command Class. My understanding is that this will be adopted as part of the Z-Wave standards, but currently, very few other suppliers support this feature.

    This allows for a single device (such as a double paddle light switch) to be controlled as a single node. But because it has two paddles, it supports multiple channels within that node. So there's 1 and 2 channel for the left and right paddle. This is a non standard feature.

    By using any other controller (such as Homepro), I was only able to control channel 1 i.e. the left hand channel. The only way around it was to purchase the MK Astral remote, but since then I discovered that the Aeon Labs Z-Stick 2 (alot cheaper!) supported this as well as Homeseer. So although my preffered Home Automation software is mControl (by Embedded Automation), I've had to use Homeseer in trial mode and the Z-Stick to set up my network and then use mControl for it's day to day running.

    It's not what I wanted and I'm partly incined to get in touch with the Z-Wave alliance to get there act together, but it now does work for me. You'd think you buy into a standard and for all devices to be interoperable... I never had this problem with different X10 brands.

    I've asked for MultiChannel command class to be supported by mConrol. See this thread :



    All I would say is do your research fully before you buy.

    Thoughtout these investigations, I spoke to the top dogs at Embdedded Automation, HomePro and MK Astral. HomePro has the oldest Z-Wave standards but are cheaper and have a richer product range than others.

    I hope this helps.


    Cheers

    Comment

    • georgevella
      Automated Home Lurker
      • Sep 2010
      • 4

      #3
      Thanks, that was helpful. I have been reading through the documentation provided on Merten's website and they do provide some info on how to make it work with other zwave products. I am still trying to understand all this business with channels and stuff; the 2-gang transmitter has 4 channels, I am assuming one per button.

      I was going for a HomeSeer + Z-Stick combo in the future so thanks again for the tip.

      Just curious, where did you buy your stuff?

      Comment

      • darkknight
        Automated Home Jr Member
        • Dec 2005
        • 31

        #4
        Z-wave Products UK (Don't want to advertise them, but I'm sure they can be googled)

        Note that I only needed Homeseer to set up my network. Thereafter, I am using mControl to control it, so essentially I used Homeseer in demo mode.

        Comment

        Working...
        X