I have a rule setup to fire when the state of the in-wall zwave fan control (GE ZW4002) changes.
when
Item FamilyRoom_Fan changed
then
Rule works perfectly when the fan receives a command via UI.
The problem I’m seeing is when the fan switch (which is essentially a dimmer) is dimmed up or down, it doesn’t appear that openHAB is receiving the state change and therefore firing the rule.
Thoughts?
Thanks, Glenn
Make sure you have your association group Lifeline set to your controller.
@sihui Thanks for the quick response!
Your suggestion helped me uncover something that is likely related to the issue.
When I tried associating the Controller to the Lifeline group the setting appeared to work but when I went back to check it wasn’t set. Upon further investigation I found setting the Lifeline group only worked for 3 of my 9 GE Fans. This leads me to believe that 6 of these are actually the older GE Z-Wave Smart Fan Controls (12730) which are of the zwave non-plus variety.
Given the this particular device is of the zwave non-plus variety, therefore no Association Group capability, might you have another suggestion on getting consistent feedback from the switch?
Thanks, Glenn
Associations do work also for non zwave plus devices.
I think the difference is just that for zwave plus devices the binding is able to set the association group automatically.
Here is what frontail log shows for standard zwave vs. zwave plus fan controls
Standard Zwave: logs a change when the fan control goes from Off to On or On to Off. Does not log anything when changing fan speeds.
Zwave Plus: logs a change when the fan control goes from Off to On or On to Off as well as when changing the fan speeds.
This only applies to control the fan via the physical switch.
Really has me in a bind not being able to determine when the state of the fan changes.
Interesting, never heard about this.
I’m using zwave devices, including dimmers, since more than three years and always was able to get the current state, also when using the physical switches.
Don’t worry, this does happen sometimes. Use HABmin for all zwave config, not PaperUI.
Hey @sihui, Thanks for the continued help… Looking forward to the point where I can do the same for others.
I actually was using HABmin to configure the Association Groups but as I mentioned only worked for 3 of the 9 fans.
For example, have two Things both identified as “ZW4002 In-Wall Smart Fan Control”. Both have an Association group “1. Lifeline” with a footer “Z-Wave Plus Lifeline”. Clicking into either provides a list of the which includes the Controller and every Node. In both cases I select the Controller and see it listed it listed in the space provided. Next I click Save and here is where there is a difference.
[me.event.ThingUpdatedEvent] - Thing 'zwave:device:512:node55' has been updated.`
[vent.ConfigStatusInfoEvent] - ConfigStatusInfo [configStatusMessages=[ConfigStatusMessage [parameterName=group_1, type=PENDING, messageKey=null, arguments=null, message=null, statusCode=null]]]`
[me.event.ThingUpdatedEvent] - Thing 'zwave:device:512:node50' has been updated.
[vent.ConfigStatusInfoEvent] - ConfigStatusInfo [configStatusMessages=[]]
Although these are both shown as the same type of device my hunch is some of these are the older non-plus version. I’ll pull the covers off to confirm and if this is the case, I need to determine if there’s something that can be configured so openHAB knows when the devices state changed.
Thanks Again, Glenn
I’m not sure if we are going in the right direction, so let’s ping @chris if he has some time to check your statement:
I’m not sure what statement you want me to check? I would be a little surprised if the two versions reported different things, but I’ve no way to know.
Sorry for not being precise enough:
The OP stated that a percent type value is only updated through Lifeline associations group for Zwave Plus devices, not for the “older” non-plus devices.
He has problems to get state changes (percentage) for dimmers updated to openHAB items while using manual switches.
As I have never experienced something like that (as long as the association group is set to the controller) I was wondering if I have missed something 
Thx again for your time.
Ok, then my answer was valid 
-:
There is no standard as to what is reported - it’s down to the device. If they have the same firmware, then they should report the same thing, but I can’t really say much about the specific device as I’m not familiar with it.
There is only 1 entry for this device in the database, so from a binding perspective, there can’t be different ways of handling what is received.
Hi Guys,
Let me back up and state the actual use cases and then the problem I’m having.
Have a patio with 5 fans each controlled by one of these GE Z-Wave Smart Fan Controls throughout by house. They are mix of the older non-plus (12730). I have some of the newer z-wave plus (14287) in another part of the house that don’t have the same issue.
I want to control toggle on/off and set the level of all five fans from using any of the wall switches. I setup a rule that looks for a state change and then send its state as a command to the other fans. This works when toggling power but not when changing levels. I can see in frontail that the fan reports back its state when toggling power on or off but not when changing levels. What is interesting is when you send the fan a command through UI, it reports back that it received a command and its state change and the rule works.
Something to know about the fan controls is they are very much like dimmers. The levels range from 0-100 like a dimmer. When the level is 1-33 the voltage out put is low, 34-66 medium and 67-100 high.
In my the second use case, want to always have the fan set to 10 for low, 50 for medium and 100 for High. In BasicUI and HABPanel I present the user with Off, Low, Medium, High which sends 0, 10, 50 or 100). If you ask Alexa to set the fan to Low, Medium or High she’ll also send a 10, 50 or 100. The problem is when you change the fan level from the wall switch you never know what what dim level its going to use within each of the ranges. Then my UI which is expecting to display Low for 10, Medium for 50 and High for 100 displays nothing.
There’s probably a cleaner way to do accomplish this last use case with Map Transformation but I haven’t studied that chapter yet.
So that’s what I’m trying to do and the problem I’m having.
Thanks, Glenn
This sounds like OH autoupdate at work. It’s enabled for every Item by default, send a command and OH adjusts the state without any feedback from the device.
Looks like that is masking an absence of feedback here.
I did some troubleshooting and I think you are right about the autoupdate setting.
With autoupdate = true the log shows:
With autoupdate = false the log shows:
I observed autoupdate has no effect when controlling the Fan from the wall switch. The z-wave non-plus devices report back On/Off state changes while the z-wave plus devices report On/Off state changes and Dim level changes.
So it would appear I’ll have to relocate the z-wave plus devices to places I want to control other devices. In that case, I should be able to use the z-wave plus Association to control the other devices without going through OH.