Learn Existing Z-Wave Network (Join as Secondary Controller)

I’ve finally gotten my openHABian setup working on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+; I’ve installed the Z-Wave binding, my Z-Wave USB stick is online.

Does the Z-Wave binding provide any way of “learning” an existing network (i.e., joining as a secondary controller)? This topic has been discussed frequently, here and elsewhere, but no one seems to have gotten to a definitive or straightforward answer (maybe such an answer doesn’t exist).

The properties of the Z-Wave USB stick that the Z-Wave binding exposes include booleans for whether the controller will act as a primary controller and a static update controller (SUC), but even with primary controller set to false and SUC set to true, the binding doesn’t seem to provide any way of initiating the “learning” process to join an existing network.

Thanks in advance…

Did you try the ‘synchronize network’ option in habmin (it’s an option of the controller thing).

Thanks, Markus. I looked for that in habmin, but I haven’t been able to find it. I had found a ‘synchronize network’ option in the Paper UI and tried that, however, and it doesn’t seem to start the Z-Wave network ‘learn’ process. When I tried openhab’s ‘synchronize network’ before and then monitored events in my existing Z-Wave network while my intended primary controller was in ‘inclusion mode’, nothing seemed to be coming from my openhab Z-Wave USB stick. So whatever openhab’s ‘synchronize network’ does, it doesn’t seem to start the Z-Wave network ‘learn’ process.

Speculative tangent: to my knowledge, ‘synchronize network’ has no technical meaning as it relates to Z-Wave. I think this option in openhab has something to do with synchronizing the openhab software binding to a Z-Wave network already stored on a Z-Wave controller device—maybe this would be useful when changing host software to openhab with a Z-Wave USB stick that has already been set up with some other host software as a primary or secondary controller on an existing Z-Wave network. Theoretically, a Z-Wave USB stick should be able to be unplugged from one host software and plugged into another without losing its Z-Wave network configuration. But I’m just speculating here, as the meaning of openhab’s ‘synchronize network’ isn’t documented anywhere that I can find.

I’d be happy for anyone to tell me I’m misunderstanding something here… allowing for a Z-Wave controller to serve as a secondary controller but not providing any way to initiate the ‘learn’ process would seem to be a fairly gaping oversight in openhab’s Z-Wave binding. Thanks again.

It’s not meant to do that. The “learn” is started during inclusion…

The synchronise network starts a network synchronisation to the SUC. This is a controller function, so the local controller should negotiate with the SUC/SIS.

The synchronisation is the local controller, to the network SIS/SUC. It won’t do anything if there is no SIS in the network.

It has nothing to do with openHAB -only the ZWave network.

I hope I’ve helped then :wink:

Thanks, Chris. Yes, the learn process is started during inclusion, so how in openHAB (using the standard Z-Wave binding) do I tell my Z-Wave controller to be included in the primary controller’s network while the primary controller is in inclusion mode? This is ultimately my question—the other part was a speculative tangent, and I appreciate your having responded to that.

At the moment, this is not possible. You would need to use other software to do this right now, which is what I assume others have done who have used this.

It can of course be added, but at the moment I don’t really have the time right now so it would be quicker to use other software such as the Zensys tool to do the initial inclusion.

Thank you! I appreciate the conclusive answer. :slight_smile:

Hi Chris,

In the meantime: has this feature been added to the newly released OpenHAB 3 ?