Revision as of 22:35, 31 July 2010

Z-Wave™ is a wireless RF-based communications technology designed for residential and light commercial control and status reading applications such as meter reading, lighting and appliance control, HVAC, access control, intruder and fire detection.

Overview

The support from LinuxMCE system is represented by an executable ZWave (it's placed in /usr/pluto/bin) which is the device implementation and a DeviceTemplate (1754) which is used to create LinuxMCE Devices for ZWave. There are high speed (4x 40kbps) and standard speed Z-Wave devices.

For information about what hardware to get look at Z-Wave Getting Started, or check out the Z-Wave Wiki Category.

How to install and use ZWave

Automatic installation - Lighting Wizard

The Lighting Wizard allows you to easily integrate LinuxMCE into your Z-Wave network. It is started after you plug in the Z-Wave dongle. Just follow the onscreen instructions. However the Lighting Wizard does not support SUC/SIS mode (see below) and because of this is now not the best way to include ZWave devices into your ZWave network. If you have a ZWave USB interface and an Inclusion Controller that supports SUC/SIS mode then this is the recommended configuration to use.

SUC/SIS Mode (recommended)

In SUC/SIS mode, LMCE adds your devices automatically as you include them into the Z-Wave network. Inclusion can be done using an inclusion remote or the "Add Node" command in LMCE (this option is really only successful in smaller test installations or possibly in smaller apartments for example). LMCE will assign new Node ids to the included devices and will add them in the Device tree under your ZWave USB interface

1. To use the SUC/SIS mode, send a "Reset" command to the ZWave USB interface.
   1. In the web admin, go to Advanced -> Devices, find the ZWave device in the tree, select it, click "Send Command To Device" in the right pane.
   2. Select "Reset" and click Send Command. (Reset will remove all devices from you Z-Wave network).
2. Next do a Reload Router (**This reload is essential**).
3. When using SUC/SIS mode you must add an Inclusion Controller as the 2nd device in your ZWave network (the first device being the ZWave USB interface itself). An Inclusion Controller is the device you use to include ZWave devices into the ZWave network - this might be your ZWave remote control or possibly a wireless wall switch as these can often do double duty as an Inclusion Controller. You can add additional Inclusion Controllers or indeed any other ZWave devices at any time in the future as needed, and they will be added to your Device Tree automatically for you - this is the unique power of SUC/SIS.
   1. If using a Tricklestar Remote:
      1. First select 'Add node' from the 'Send to this device the command' drop-down menu and click send (there is no need to fill in any values in this screen).
      2. Next put the remote in configuration mode, then press and hold up until the LED flashes green, then press up four times. The LED will begin flashing green. Once added, the remote LED should go steady green indicating success. If it goes red then reset the remote (hold up til green, then hold up 10 seconds until 3 color LED), and redo step 1-2.
   2. If not using a tricklestar remote:
      1. Select 'Add node' from the 'Send to this device the command' drop-down menu and click send (there is no need to fill in any values in this screen).
      2. Next bring your Inclusion Controller close to your Core's/MD's ZWave USB interface and click once on its button or paddle (if a Wireless light switch) to include it into the ZWave Network. Your device should now indicate a successful inclusion if not repeat the last step.
4. Do a quick reload of the router, twice.
5. If your Inclusion Remote indicated a successful inclusion you are now ready to start including light switches and other devices using the device you added as an Inclusion Controller (ie your ZWave remote or a wireless Light Switch) - and not the 'Add Node' command in Web Admin.
6. Place your inclusion controller device into Inclusion Mode (consult the devices manual for the details of how to include devices using it).
7. Now while holding it close to the device you want to include press any button on the front of that device (usually one of the paddles on a light switch for example).
8. Wait for the successful inclusion indication on the device you are including and if you have an Orbiter or Web Orbiter nearby you should also see a brief announcement that device was added successfully. A few second later a router reload screen will pop up - it is an important reload.
9. Now you can move to the next device and include it. A router reload is suggested after each include.
10. Keep doing this until all of your devices are included. With SUC/SIS there is no need to include all of your ZWave devices in one hit. You stop and continue another time without any issues. So adding some more devices months into the future is simple and easy to do.
11. Check in Web Admin's Wizard->Devices->Lights page to make sure all of your included devices are present (if not do a reload router).

• Note: When including devices using SUC/SIS mode always start by including the devices that are closest to where the Core's ZWave USB interface is located and finish with the device that is furthest away. This enables the inclusion process to utilise the ZWave mesh network to communicate with the Core's ZWave USB interface.

• Not all ZWave interfaces support SIS mode. See the page of the individual interface to check, here is a list of interfaces Z-Wave Getting Started#Interface.

Alternate setup of Tricklestar Remote (not recommended)

Manual setup / Download configuration

Once you have successfully installed the ZWave USB controller and it is seen on LinuxMCE (media:zwave_homepro_interface.png), you can proceed by populating the ZWave network information to LinuxMCE.

1. Add your ZWave devices to your master ZWave master remote controller (like ZTH200)
   • Once the devices are added to remote and verified they are working (you can control them with your remote controller), you need to copy the ZWave network information to LinuxMCE.
2. Go to LinuxMCE admin page ("http://dcerouter/lmce-admin/"), then choose "Wizard -> Devices -> Interfaces -> [your ZWave controller] -> Advanced".
   1. On the device page select "Send command to device".
   2. Select command "Download Configuration" and choose "Send Message".
      • Leave the data and file fields as blank
3. Now LinuxMCE is waiting for the ZWave information and you should send a copy of the ZWave network with your master remote controller to LinuxMCE.
   • If you are using HomePro remote controller this is done by selecting: "Setup -> Copy Remote Ctrl. -> Send Information -> Identical Copy". Once you have done that, the remote will show "Sending information..." and after successful sending it will return to clock screen (this shouldn't take more than couple of minutes).
   • You can monitor the process by watching the Zwave log file on LinuxMCE (usually "/var/log/pluto/*ZWave.log"). Unfortunately the admin page doesn't give much information of what is being done and is everything going smoothly. If the process is successfully, you should see the LinuxMCE communicating with the USB controller
   • Make sure the sending remote controller is near enough the USB receiver, otherwise nothing will happen.
4. Go to device tree (Show devices tree) and you should see (Media:zwave_devices_tree.png) the newly added ZWave modules/devices on the tree under "CORE -> ZWave".

You should do quick reload (Wizard -> Restart -> Quick Reload Router) in order to use the newly added devices with LinuxMCE. Once you have done that you should be able to control (like switching on/off) the devices under the Light (Media:zwave_lights.png).

Setting associations

If you use SIS mode, associations will be set automatically, so that LMCE is always associated with each new device. This allows LMCE to receive messages when a device changes state.

The web interface allows you to create associations between devices (I believe this requires SIS mode, not sure). Click "Show device tree" then navigate to your z-wave controller (under CORE) and select "Send command to device". A popup window will show and you can choose the "Set Association" command. Enter three parameters:

• the zwave NodeID of the source device, the one that will send the command
• the group in the source device that will trigger the send (typically the button number on a multi-paddle switch)
• the NodeID(s) device(s)

Example: 5 / 2 / 7,8 would cause devices 7 and 8 to turn on when you press button 2 of device 5

Tweak advanced ZWave settings

If you want to tweak some specific settings of your ZWave devices then read this article.

Implementation

Open version

The new open Z-Wave driver will be included in the upcoming 0810 release. The source code is available in LinuxMCE's SVN repository: http://svn.linuxmce.org/svn/branches/LinuxMCE-0810/src/ZWave.

A 32bit binary of the new Z-Wave driver for 0710 can be found here: http://vt100.at/files/ZWave-0.0.2-0710-32bit.bz2 Just swap with the existing /usr/pluto/bin/ZWave and quick reload the router.

Fiire driver

Fiire (a company no longer in business) also provided a Z-Wave driver, it is binary only: Fiire ZWave Patch

Old version

This is the version shipped with 0710. The source code for the old version is not available as it depends on proprietary files from Zensys.

Z-Wave API documentation

ZWave API