Items, channels, things and zwave

Hi all,

Probably a bit of a basic question here, so I’m posting in beginners (and hoping that it might help others).

I seem to have constant problems with items not working correctly and I’m wondering if it’s due to a fundamental misunderstanding I have with how items, channels and things work?

If I look at @chris 's documentation here, I can see how the various channel types match up to an item type. Getting a mismatch here seems to stop the item getting linked to the channel (i.e. if I try to match a Switch item to a sensor_door then I think this just doesn’t work … at least, I think this was the cause of at least one of my problems).

However if I look up a Thing in @chris 's database, e.g. a fibaro FGK101 then I see that it is a sensor_binary. Whereas when I look in PaperUI for one of mine I see:

i.e. Chris is saying it should be a sensor_binary, but PaperUI thinks it provides the sensor_door channel.

This is my only fibaro FGK101 which is currently functioning, so I know this ‘works’ but I’m not sure how it matches to the database item. My .items file contains:
Contact Garage_Inside_Door "Garage Inside Door" <contact> (gGroundFloor,gInternalSensors) { channel="zwave:device:157b8d41438:node9:sensor_door" } Number Garage_Inside_Door_Bat "Garage Inside Door Battery: [%d %%]" <energy> (gGroundFloor,gInternalDoorSensors) { channel="zwave:device:157b8d41438:node9:battery-level" }

  • can this influence what channels PaperUI reports (i.e. am I to blame for the discrepancy between what I see on Chris’ page, or is it something more fundamental)?

The reason I’m wondering about all of this is a) I have several FGK101’s which don’t seem to be working and b) I want to use groups in my rules, but it’s a bit tricky to make something readable if
Group:Contact:OR(OPEN,CLOSED) gInternalDoorSensors "Internal doors open: [(%d)]" <contact>
returns UNDEF, presumably because contains a mixture of Switches and Contacts.

I did read through the documentation here again (and actually it’s been updated since I last looked - it’s very nice now!) before posting this question, but apologies in advance if it’s something which I should have been able to work out myself.

Do you know this thread about this device:

With Posting #106 there is someone stating that there are (at least) two different versions of this device. The newer one has to be defined as SWITCH and the older one as CONTACT.

Are you sure that all of your fgk-101 have the same revision?

Regarding sensor_binary (and that’s only a wild guess from me): Sensor binary is the gerneral class of the whole device. The channels of this device can of course be other classes. Your item definition looks good to me (as long as this revision is the old revision using the CONTACT type).

Thanks! I’ll have a look. It’s a bit frustrating if I need to have separate group items depending on the revision of the device though!