after playing around with openHABian on my Pi3 for a while and learning the basics, my home automation project should take off now.
I’m going to install roller shutters on two windows in one room. I made up a plan and would really appreciate your feedback before I start the investment.
My requirements:
electrical roller shutters
open/close both shutters by pressing one button
control button next to the door
operational independent of openHAB (in case my OH is broken)
alternative control through openHAB
After diving deep through the discussions in this forum (thank you guys!) I ordered roller shutters with standard electric motors (non-RC). So far I don’t have any special hardware and I’m not bound to any communication protocol.
But I do have some limitations:
no direct wiring between control switch at the door and the motors possible
no direct wiring to RaspberryPi (OH) possible
So at least some radio-control is needed. I discovered ZigBee and Z-Wave to be suitable and found some positive reviews on Fibaro devices (Z-Wave).
So my plan look like this:
The switch next to the door is connected to a FGR-222
Each shutter motor is controlled through a FGR-222
An additional switch next to the window for when OH is down, connected to the FGR-222s of the shutter motors
Z-Wave module or USB-Stick for RPi with respective binding
Configure door switch and desk switch to control both motors when pressed
So I’d need 3x FGR-222 and two switches as well as the Z-Wave module.
Finally my questions to the community:
Will this setup work as intended and fulfill my requirements?
Is there a cheaper / more elegant way to achieve the goals?
Additionally I’m concsidering to install window sensors to recognize open/closed state. Might be usefull for further automation logic later. Are there any recommendations?
You don’t need the #1 Fibaro Shutter, but a wall switch. Of course, the wall switch will be battery powered.
I don’t know if it’s possible to link actuators to command other actuators, but it’s very easy to link the wall switch to more than one actuator, and there would be no need for openHAB to “translate” or “bridge” the command to the actuators.
Hi Udo,
thank you for the instant reply! I think your proposal is very interesting. Could you name an example product for the wall switch?
I forgot to mention that I have a light switch and power socket next to the door anyway and therefore power supply for the door switch is no problem. That would avoid the frustration (and waste) each time the battery is dead.
On the other hand the switch should be smoothly integrated, i.e. match the look of the existing switches (Presto-Vedder Alessa series).
So the wall switch idea, regardless of the power source, would not need OH?
I thought you need some Z-Wave gateway (OH in my case) to link switches and actuators.
Basically I thought you could simply use the switch inputs of your Z-Wave devices as trigger for anything else in your system. Then the FGR-222 #1 (alternatively a FGS-223 or similar product from any other manufacturer) would read and transmit the wall switch state.
So this assumption is wrong?
Well, this is exactly the point. I don’t know if this will work without a gateway. Of course you can use openHAB to monitor one actuator (without any motor) and use this information to control two other actuators, but a simple wall switch will do the job without any openHAB instance, and cheaper, I guess.
I’m not aware of any walls switches that do their job without batteries. That’s just because they need so little energy.
In fact, there is enocean which does it without batteries, but also without wires, it uses energy harvesting for the transmitter, but enocean is more expensive than zwave.
If you want to get rid of the batteries, you can use a micro psu (I’ve seen some really small ones, which will fit in a switch terminal box (don’t know if that is the correct term… Schalterklemmdose in german)
Thanks for the additional hints.
I looked into Enocean, too, but ruled it out as I have power cables available and the price is higher.
For other applications (e.g. window sensor) I still consider Enocean.
What I still don’t understand is how the remote wall switch would be able to control the FGR-222 #2 and #3 without any gateway.
According to FGR-222 manual, it can control other devices through association directly. But for configuring those associations - as far as I understood - a gateway controller is mandatory.
How are simple switches linked with the device to be controled?
I have seen devices where associations can be configured without any gateway, just by button presses. I think those were some remotes.
For all other devices you need a controller and for example openHAB:
I don’t understand your point. You won’t need the additional FGRM at the door because you already have a switch electrically connected to both of your actuators. That’ll enable you to open/close shutters even when OH is down (or when you intentionally operate them manually).
There’s a number of Fibaro actuators such as the FGS-223 and FGD-212 that have a 2nd input (to connect your wall switch to) that allow for configuring an association to your rollershutter FGRM(s), so this would still work in case OH is down.
And yes, there’s ZWave remotes from Düwi, Aeotec, Fibaros and probably others.
I don’t have any wall switches at all. I use a Düwi remote as an emergency fallback solution if OH is down.
But that doesn’t (and shouldn’t) happen often.
The Fibaro FGK works but it’s rather expensive (35€ I think). I’m using sensors from the MAX! subsystem I run anyway (20€).
Either way, consider putting wires to provide 5V to the sensors, will save you from hassle and a need to exchange batteries in the long run.
The FGR-222 #1 is abused as double-switch-input. As Udo stated earlier, a simple wall switch would do the job. Yet I need to find one I can combine with the switches from my switch and socket series to have a smooth look.
Basically same concept as with the FGR-222, right? Take an actuator (double relay, dimmer, roller shutter) and only use the switch inputs. Then I found the FGR-222 slightly cheaper than the other two.
So basically I wouldn’t need the switch at the window, because the one at the door can be associated with the FGR-222 #2 & #3 and then work independent of OH?
Agreed, but need to be prepared anyway. The remote is a great idea, thank you!
Thank you once more for this recommendation. I’m tearing up the walls now anyway and putting 2 more wires in there will be little extra effort. How often do you need to replace the batteries?
Again, I don’t understand its purpose.
If OH is down, you can manually operate your shutters using the switches near your windows that are attached to the two actuators that are also connected to your shutters. Yes that works locally even if the server is down.
You don’t need any 3rd switch at the door or elsewhere .
Depends on parameters and usage, maybe once a year on average.
The switch next to the door will be mainly used to control the shutters (unless I create an automation program) as it is much more convinient to reach.
If it wasn’t so much work to put the wire from the FGR #2 & #3 there wouldn’t be a switch next to the window.
Well you can do that but that’s a waste of ports.
FGR and FGS have 1:1 mapping inputs:outputs.
FGD has another input with no corresponding output.
All three (and most remotes) allow to use a config called scene activation. That’ll send scene commands to the OH controller, but only works well (without a need to mitigate side effects) if there’s no output to exist or if it exists but is not connected anywhere. Then again, it allows to distinguish multiple actions such as single, double and triple-clicks that you can process on the server, so you can program your system to do everything you want it to.
Yes but you’re limited in the number of associations, and it interferes with scene switching capabilities which you would need to use if you want a single click to operate both shutters at the same time (through OH server “multiplication” of commands).
If you only ever want to use the door switch and the sole purpose of your window switches is to provide a fallback solution if OH is down, I would omit them and get a remote instead.
Still, be physically prepared, i.e. just omit the switch but allow for adding it later.
After quite some time of silence here I’d like to thank you once more.
In the meantime I took the easy way to get a quick solution and only installed the switch near the windows.
I see I need to dive deeper into the concepts of associations and scenes. So far I implemented all of the relationships between Z-Wave devices through rules, which seems to be quite a waste of time for some cases. I’ll post an updated as soon as I find the time to make any progress on this.
Scenes aren’t complicated. Enble that in the device, use an item like { channel="zwave:device:ddd2xxxx:node32:scene_number" } and trigger upon changes to that
It’ll get set the numbers you find in the Fibaro manual.
openHAB: