Hello I am trying to add a Leviton VRPA1-1LW, a Aeon Labs DSC06106-ZWUS, and a Aeon Labs AEDSB09104ZWUS Aeotec Z-Wave Smart Energy Monitor. I am admittedly a beginner and as such just need to know how to add these to a configured and live Z-Stick Gen-5. So in short I am not sure and would appreciate a redirect to the correct guide where I could find out how to add devices to my gen-5 stick … is there a pairing process? Or am I oversimplifying things? From what I am able to find with other devices it looks like I need to bind every device within openhab is that a correct statement? Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!
Hi,
Firstly I would suggest you read the manual for your devices and understand what they can do and how the work within the Z wave network. Once you’ve done that you’ll be in a better position to understand how to use them with OH.
Have a search for “working z wave configurations” for a thread full of examples.
Cheers,
Garry
Gary;
Thanks but the manuals suck IMHO … they just tell you to bring the device on the network… I am not clear what that first means and second how to do that… one device says to call them to accomplish this task … it cant be that hard.
If I had a device, a generic device, that say was a light dimmer or something simple - and I wanted to go about adding it to my “zwave network” what would be the rough outline steps that is I guess what I am asking for and trying to accomplish - essentially first getting the process down in my head then going from there.
Thanks agin
So first you have to set your zstick to discover mode, which is just unplugging it, pressing the button, then go over to you device and include it, this can be holding the inclusion button on the device, triple click it or some other way. You need to read the manuals, but hopefully this should give you an idea to better understand the manual.
You then plug your zstick back in and your devices should appear in the zwave binding in habmin, or in your inbox in OH2. Presuming you’ve set up the zstick port in the binding etc.
OK the basics are straight forward. You need to include each device into your z wave network. That means pressing the include button the the controller and the device. Reference the manual for each device as some simply require a single press. Where other need a triple press or even a long press. There is no standard. Once you have included all your devices into the z wave network you need to plug the controller into the computers USB port. Launch OH and open a browser to your HABmin URL, from there you’ll be able to see all the details for your z wave network.
That should get you started.
I can help you out with two out of your three devices, since I use them as well! 
First, an aside though. I’d like to recommend using HABmin for your device including needs. You don’t absolutely need it, but if you want to change any of the zwave device settings (and chances are you will), you will need it at that point. Might as well bite (the small) bullet and put in habmin right now.
With that out of the way, here’s how you do it with habmin.
First, get into the zwave binding. Click on “configuration” at the top left, then “bindings” at the bottom, then ZWAVE in the list of bindings to highlight it. Finally, in the right pane click “devices”, then when you’re ready, click the “Include” button.
You now have 30 seconds to get your device into inclusion mode. For your aeon smartswitch, that’s easy – hit the button to turn it on or off. That’s it.
For your aeon HEM it’s a bit more difficult but not all that much. Plug the HEM into a usb charger of your choice. Flip the HEM over, and remove the wall bracket. Unscrew the tiny screw at the bottom. Remove battery plate (really? batteries to cover when there’s a power outage for a device that measures power? Hello McFly, anybody home??? 
) Tap the black button once.
If they don’t include, likely reason is that the inclusion timer expired. It’s only 30 seconds, and easy to miss if you’re futzing around with a screwdriver.
Good news is that these devices work fantastically with openhab! I think I’m up to 12 or so smart switches and have 5 HEMs. If you get a bunch of them you definitely want to play with their zwave attributes (especially the HEMs!) or they can be over-aggressive about reporting power usage. I had to tune mine otherwise my zwave network was very very chatty with data usage reports flying about every second!
(And you’re right, the manuals do blow for most aeon products.)
@TheKorn - I have habmin installed - I think properly - there is no "you did it right " light LOL … so I will follow these instructions and report back - I cannot thank you enough!
@TheKorn - I see the devices now under Node 1 and see Node 2 thats the good news but its yellow and I am not sure if that is bad or not, is that because it is or isnt parired??
Sorry for the lame q’s …
Well, yes and no. Unless you’re a special circumstance (and let’s face it – you don’t know what you’re doing so you’re not a special circumstance) node 1 is going to be your controller (z-stick). So you got one of your devices to include, but the other one did not include. (Try again!) So… progress, at any rate!
If you see a node at all in habmin, then it’s paired. If it’s grey then it means it hasn’t completed initialization, if it’s yellow it means that it’s had trouble in the past. Check out this for more info.
Thanks for the reply TheKorn - that link helps tremendously … so lets assume all the other devices I have will pair OK and all will be well the heavens align etc…
Where do I go next to start setting up profiles etc? Is that when I go back to openhab? Ill keep looking for tutorials but thought it worth a question…
Hi Kuja,
Without trying to sound off, I fear your going to struggle with all things OH if your asking these very basic questions. Please use the search function to try and find examples and guides, there is a massive amount of information here that should help you out. OH is effectively a middle man component between your devices and presentation. A lot of the work required to make your Home Automation work needs a good understanding of how to program. You don’t need to be an expert coder though.
Can I suggest you install the demo configuration an try and understand that first before you move on. If you continue to struggle with OH I would advice you look at alternative concepts, there are a few open source home automation projects out there.
Good luck,
Garry
Gary understood completely and already had done that on previous. It did teach me a lot over the past couple of days so thanks for the push back to that.
One thing I am having trouble figuring out and once again I may just not be the best of searchers that I wondered if you woudlnt mind helping or pointing me in the right direction again.
I am trying to find out what the link is between the item and the binding … how can you say for example switch1 controls a device that I have controlled by my z-wave controller? I just cant seem to put the two together…
Thanks in advance!
Not really sure what you mean by profiles. If what you meant to say was rules (“if this happens, do that”) then yes that’s back in regular openhab land instead of habmin.
Wait, hang on.
A binding is a specific interface. You have a zwave binding. Someone else who is running KNX will have a KNX binding. Think of bindings as technologies. (You can have bindings that have no physical presence, such as email.)
An item is a specific thing. An item can interface to a binding (such as a zwave switch), but isn’t required to (a virtual switch).
So for example, let’s take one of my devices, completely at random (i.e. the first one I looked at):
Switch SIDE_DOOR_LIGHT "Side Door Light" (Group_Lamps, Group_Outside_Lamps, Group_Front_Hall, Group_Persistence) {zwave="104:0:command=SWITCH_BINARY,refresh_interval=0",imperihab="room:OH_Front Hall,label=Side Door Light"}
Let’s go field by field…
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It’s a switch.
-
Its internal name that you’d use in rules and such is SIDE_DOOR_LIGHT .
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Its text description is Side Door Light.
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It’s a member of groups Group_Lamps, Group_Outside_Lamps, Group_Front_Hall, and Group_Persistence. (My naming convention starts all my groups starting with Group_ .)
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It’s bound to the zwave binding. It’s node 104, endpoint 0 in my zwave network, and has some zwave options passed to that binding.
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It’s also bound to a second binding, Imperihab. Don’t worry about that bit, that’s advanced screwing around.
That should get you pointed in the right direction.
@TheKorn
Thank you! This did help tremendously again.
The explanation helped and I am clear on all of it but there are some fundamental knowledge gaps still for me.
One of which is what tool / interface did you use to create,lookup, find this information ?? What I mean is for creating these components(say everything from items to bindings to sitemaps) you were to use something like habmin(which I have installed and am using) I just would like to confirm some basics which is what is being used to configure all this - the <IP_ADDRESS>:8080/openhab.app config is easy its the backend that I want to validate …
In general I am trying to put the compnoents of OpenHab into buckets of functionality still so say for example
-OpenHab - general project - see architecture for more information the <IP_ADDRESS>:8080/openhab.app url will be for manipulating the overall automation and even turning items on and off - I think this part is 1000 percent clear on my end.
-Habmin - Here you admin all your components (not sure if thats a true statement) and essentially design the back end components to that make up your home automation - so your sitemaps your individual items groups etc etc.
-CLI - etc etc
Any others??
All that said helps me phrase - man its easier over voice - this next question … Where does this section paste into - say I had a system with all the same names where does this go ? In what file specifically? Or does it go in the “bindings String” and “Bindings Name” properties itself?
- The zwave line above, {zwave=“104:0:command=SWITCH_BINARY,refresh_interval=0”,imperihab=“room:OH_Front Hall,label=Side Door Light”}, --> first off where does this config line go ? In the sitemapp manually or via a gui where would one put this syntax?
PS you will have to let me know what I can do as a “thanks” i realize that these questions are silly I just cannot seem to grasp some of the fundamentals but I know rest will be gravy. -
Thanks!
Don’t take this the wrong way, but it doesn’t seem like you’ve read much (if any) of the documentation in the wiki. That’s really the first place you should start.
BUT I’ll spot you that it’s a bit of a task to go in cold without a mental framework. So before you pound the wiki, let me give you a rough mental scaffolding.
A binding, as mentioned before, is how openhab interfaces to a particular technology for input or output. Zwave has a binding, KNX has its own binding, bluetooth has its own binding, email has its own binding, google calendar has its own binding, etc.etc.etc. You add bindings as you need them. For example, I don’t even really know what KNX is – so I don’t have that binding loaded. (I’m sure I could look it up, but I don’t care. ;))
An item is your base unit of “a thing”. Could be a physical switch that you turn on and off (that talks to a binding), could be a set of contacts that opens and closes on its own depending on if a door is open or closed, etc.
A sitemap is how you arrange your items for presentation to the end user (you). Nothing gets defined here, it references items, groups, etc. that are defined elsewhere.
Rules are where you automate things. If the front door opens after dark, turn on the hall light. That type of thing.
HABmin is a special control panel extension for zwave. Zwave doesn’t quite fit openhab’s model (devices have lots of options that you need to be able to set), so it needs its own separate control panel area.
Originally I was using my favorite text editor, but I quickly realized the utility of the openhab designer. A specialty built tool almost always does the job better, and that’s exactly what openhab designer is.
No. For now, just think of habmin as a way to go one layer deep and look at what zwave is doing. Except if you’re adding or removing devices, you shouldn’t in general need to do much in HABmin. (HABmin can also do a lot more than just control zwave, but for now just ignore the extras and concentrate on what you need it for.)
That line was copied, verbatim, from one of my .items files. They live in the (openhab directory)/items directory. How you should organize your .items files depends on your own personal style of organization. If you have three devices, throw everything in one file and call it a day. When you get a big network like mine that has 60+ nodes, you have to get organized and split things out into individual files of your own taste.
That’s not a complete entry. That’s just the portion that tells openhab which bindings to use. (Two different ones at the same time!) The entire line (above) came from one of my .items files.
Now go read, a lot. Read everything I linked to, and read stuff those pages linked to. Then go read it again. Read it until it starts to make sense. 
Thanks for the help … I am up and running with 11 devices.
I just need to do some research on a way to get the electrical usage into a file of sorts or a better way to graph!
Thanks again for the help!
FYI I was over complicating things again. I thought there was a specific syntax for every type of device and that it had more to do with the device specifications than it did just trying things and seeing how they worked !
What does your item look like for the HEM’s? Looking to get one of these to measure the total power used, would be helpful when I get there.
Here’s a HEM where I have the phase one clamp on one circuit (oven/dishwasher), and the second phase clamp on a different branch circuit (micro & fridge). Summing the two doesn’t make any sense whatsoever, so I throw that summed data away. (I don’t even collect it for persistence!)
Number KITCHEN_WATTS "kit endpoint 0 [%01.0f Watts]" <line> { zwave="68:0:command=METER,meter_scale=E_W" }
Number KITCHEN_OVEN_DISHWASHER_WATTS "Kitchen oven and dishwasher [%01.0f Watts]" <line> (Group_Power,Group_Kitchen, Group_Persistence) { zwave="68:1:command=METER,meter_scale=E_W", imperihab="room:OH_Power,label=Kitchen Oven Dishwasher,type=DevElectricity,watts=KITCHEN_OVEN_DISHWASHER_WATTS" }
Number KITCHEN_MICROWAVE_FRIDGE_WATTS "Kitchen microwave and fridge [%01.0f Watts]" <line> (Group_Power,Group_Kitchen, Group_Persistence) { zwave="68:2:command=METER,meter_scale=E_W", imperihab="room:OH_Power,label=Kitchen Microwave Fridge,type=DevElectricity,watts=KITCHEN_MICROWAVE_FRIDGE_WATTS" }
Change meter_scale from E_W to E_KWh to collect KWh. 
(I don’t bother to since I find instantaneous usage graphs to be more illuminating.)
I am not getting any reading. I have the first point connected to a power strip that has my PC and other stuff connected to, so it should be a large enough reading to actually display something.
This is what I have, I have tried changing the endpoint from nothing, 0, 1 and 2 and it doesn’t change (as a side note I am not sure what this is, I thought this was what test node it is connected to but I have seen cases where nothing is entered, and yours where you have 0-2)
Number Test_KWh "Test point 1 [%.2f W]" <energy> (GF_Living) { zwave="2:1:command=METER,meter_scale=E_W, refresh_interval=60"} Number Test_W "Test Point 1 [%.2f kWh]" <energy> (GF_Living) { zwave="2:1:command=METER,meter_scale=E_KWh, refresh_interval=60"}
my sitemap:
Text item=Test_KWh Text item=Test_W
and this is what my habmin device config looks like, I tried changing it to what I found another user suggested. Whenever I change item 101: it always changed to some otehr value, so I am not sure what that is supposed to be or if it is correct.
