Any experience with any of the particular switches?

Hardware Home Automation
1

So on some post, someone mentioned a good paradigm that is common sense and what I had already planned on implementing, but his response succinctly wrapped it up. Any HA system should take the following into account:

1.) Working from the cloud (web access, basically)
2.) Working locally (LAN)
3.) Working manually (In case there is some sort of network outage, etc, you still want to be able to turn off the lights!)

I am very new in my HA ventures and have done a lot of tinkering and currently have 5 Etekcity RF Outlets, a rooted Wink Hub (which is, IMO, worth its weight in gold if you can get it rooted), and a little OSRAM zigbee bulb for testing operation with the Wink. I have not actually installed OH yet - I am waiting until I can get my RPi setup a little better and protect the SD card with some new features they just opened up (booting from alternate sources).

I am controlling it all currently with a custom app I have developed for Android, controlling scripts on the RPi using PubNub datastreaming.

Anyway, I want to work on part 3 listed above to ensure that I have the manual functions accounted for. This, of course, means in wall switches. I am a DIY’er so electricity doesn’t scare me off (well, I of course have a healthy respect for it!).

Since I am using the Wink hub, I have quite a few options but not sure what to choose. I am looking to replace, initially, about 5 switches so while I don’t want something extremely expensive, I can handle 40-50 or so dollars each as long as they work well! Though, of course the cheaper the better. I do have neutral and none of them need to be 3-way. I would like as many options of bulb types as possible.

So, does anyone have any opinions on any of these (or can suggest any others)

Lutron Caseta
Leviton DZC Universal
Leviton DZMX1-1LZ
Any of the GE Z-Wave models (not hearing too many good things about these, which is unfortunate bc they seem to be cheaper)

Does Lutron Maestro work with OH directly (don’t think they work with Wink)? I seem to remember reading something about that somewhere. I really like those if they work well.

Are there any others that could work? Thanks!

2

I have GE outlets and appliance modules. They work great for me, though they do not support energy use monitoring nor reporting their on/off state when manually switched. That could be a significant problem for you. I don’t really need it so it hasn’t really bothered me.

As far as I can tell these are not remotely controllable so won’t work with any HA hub.

I have a LINEAR WS15Z-1 switch that, like the GE outlets, works great but doesn’t report when manually triggered. I manly chose it as it was the only one I could find at the time where I could change the color of the switch.

3

Yeah, that is what I was referring to. I suppose I could have qualified my statement by saying not “bad” as in doesn’t work well, just not as robust. See, my biggest problem (well, not the best noun, could get in trouble for that!) is that my wife is all fine with my “hobby” and I have 3 very tech savvy kids as well and they don’t mind using the app; however, if my wife wants to get in the closet in the hall to look for something, she is not going to want to fool with an app, and that makes a lot of sense. I plan on integrating an Echo as well, so Alexa could really help us out there as well. But yeah, I do want something that reports back for sure.

I can’t find any definitive info on this, which is part of the problem. I do think they can be controlled though, just not the way we would want them to be. Their Caseta line is more of what I think I would be looking for.

4

Just because it doesn’t report back doesn’t mean that they cannot be manually switched. It just means that your HA system may not know for sure whether they have been manually turned on, unless you do polling.

I’ve found in my situation that I really don’t care. I essentially run the lights that I do have automated completely automated based on the sun, time of day, and weather (light sensors is in work). If someone comes along and switches one on or off, well the correct behavior is to keep it that way anyway until the next time period. So the only thing I’m missing is an updated sitemap. And I only use the sitemap for debugging (my wife, kid, and house guests never have to interact with an app for anything) so an out of date sitemap isn’t a problem.

I could see this being a bit of a problem with dimmers though if you want the dimmer to return to a previous state rather than a predetermined state. But even then you can set up some polling on the devices to get that state (once every few minutes should be plenty).

That works for me. I don’t expect it to work for everyone. But I’ve found that when one is able to be flexible enough to ask the question (do I really need that) wonderfully elegant and useful solutions can result. That is why I like to push people to rethink their approach periodically.

Semper Gumby!

5

You know what? That makes a lot of sense. I don’t think I need all of that either. I will look into it.

6

If you’re in the US or Canada I’d HIGHLY recommend Insteon. I’ve heard nightmare after nightmare from Zwave users and I have nothing but stability and reliability with all my Insteon devices except for one switch which I’ve documented. NOTHING is intentionally in the cloud in my setup. I use a VPN connection to access OpenHAB if I’m not home but will someday setup encryption and do the secure connection thing.

You can read my experiences at http://eviltechmonkey.com/automation.html - got a bunch of Amazon links there just to stuff I use and recommend. Smarthome.com has year end sales on mulitpacks regulary and coupons so if you’re just getting started and in no hurry sign up and slowly build your system out.