I’ve just started with openhab and already connected my Hue lamps as well as my Sonos speakers successfully. I’m now keen to expand my hardware, but am wondering how to best control my roller shutters. Unfortunately, I cannot easily access the shutters themselves easily without destroying my walls, so I thought about placing the hardware into the switches (similar to what can be done with light switches). To me, it seemed as if Homematic/EQ3 products were working very well with OH, and they do also sell adapters for my light switches in order to allow me to continue using my existing covers when making the switches “smart”. However, there does not appear to be anything available for these double switches that I have in place for controlling the shutters:
Does someone maybe have some experience with these kind of switches and can give me some advice about how to best include those into openhab? Any help would be really appreciated! many thanks in advance and best regards
Welcome to the openHAB community.
Do you have already some Homematic products?
An alternative could be zWave. For example fibaro FGRS-222. Which find its place behind your existing switches.
I use 6 of them and they work very well.
many thanks for your response and the hint about zWave! I do not yet own any Homematic products, so I’ll definitely look into this in more detail. But even if I did have some Homematic products set up already, this wouldn’t prevent me from also using zWave, would it?
Now I’m just wondering if I need some additional hardware apart from the FGRS-2222 itself (e.g. some bridge or alike, similar to the CCU of Homematic) or if I can access the zWave module directly. Furthermore, could you explain where you’ve mounted the components? Directly behind the switches?
Many thanks again for your support!
You need a zWave Controller. You’ll get them as USB Sticks or Raspberry Modules.
The FGRS is so small, you can place it behind the original switches. You only need 3 additional, short calbes, to connect the original switch with de FGRS, which get connected with the motor of your shutters.
You can control the shutter from openHAB (Website, Rule etc) or with the original switches.
great, thanks a lot, sihui! I’ll try your stick then :). Have you ever experienced problems with thicker walls or something alike?
Furthermore, could someone maybe also give me a suggestion on which cables are appropriate for wiring the component and the switch and how to optimally perform the wiring? I’m sorry, but I’m not at all an electrician, but more on the coding side. I hope being able to manage this on my own without having to call an electrician nevertheless
Not at all, BUT: zwave provides a meshed network, meaning all mains powered devices extend the range of the network (but not the battery powered devices). So by choosing the correct (or “smart”) location for those devices you won’t have any problems with the range …
For the wiring: if you don’t know exactly how to do it hire an electrician, that’s also better for your insurance policy.
If you do know how to do that choose the same diameter for the cabling as currently used (in Germany for power up to the wattage of shutter motors it is 1.5 qmm). Don’t forget that the cable connections (WAGO connectors or similar) take up a lot of space, you will have 6 cables (switch up, switch down, motor up, motor down, hot, neutral) going into that FGR222, so you may need an extra receptacle.
e.g. Here: Zwave stick recommendations for 2016 & migration advice
If you will extend your zWave network in the future, take a look at the backup capabilities of the zWave Controller (USB Stick). Otherwise you have to re-include every device, if the controller breaks up.
An @sihui said, zWave builds up a mesh network.
I use zWave in a rock solid 120qm flat and had never problems with the zWave connection.
many thanks for your input! I’ll definitely read through the article about the sticks and try to determine which one is most appropriate for my use case.
I’m living in a solid house from the 1950s with quite a lot of concrete Right now, my server is located in the attic, but I’m planing to move it down into the basement due to a lower temperature down there, especially in summer. Of course, there won’t be no roller shutter devices being used in the basement, so the connection need to be stable through the floors from basement to attic. As far as I understood, the stick need to be “strong” enough to pass one floor as the actors on the ground floor will extend the reach that would in turn need to be enough for reaching the 2nd floor and so on. As the costs for the stick are very affordable in comparison to the costs for the CCU, I think I’ll give it a try and see how far I get ;).
@Christian: Great to have someone in here who uses both worlds :). I have two switches per shutter that are blocking each other, so I have to move both up in order to be able to move one of them downwards to open or close the shutter. As far as I understood, this “mechanic” approach needs to be reflected in the electronic part and I understood Homematic not offering solutions for these kind of switches. That also corresponds to your image that (if I understand correctly) represents one switch that can be moved up in order to open and down in order to close the shutter. Exchanging all switches might be possible, but would increase the costs quite significantly, that’s why I was searching for a solution that allows me to keep my switches as they are and “only” add some piece that allows me to access the shutters also from my OH. As far as I understood, the zWave approach would work here while Homematic doesn’t - Can you confirm? I’m wondering why would have had to exchange all switches with zWave while you’ve been able to keep them with Homematic which appears to be the other way around…
Furthermore, could you explain in more detail what you mean with “the roller shutters are not easy to access”?
I don’t know really about how much space is available in the flush sockets and if this would be sufficient for the one or the other… Actually, I’m just hoping for the best here
If the stick isn’t powerfull enough and you have not enough devices for a stable mesh-network (that means, that a zwave device don’t need a direct communication to the controller, when it reaches another zwave device) you can buy zwave range extenders like this Zwave Extender
I had the same problem. I have the normal Wall outlets (Unterputzdosen), which have 46mm depth (I think). It was a little bit pain to get everything back at its place, but it worked (and I’m a Officeworker and not a binford tool using Tim )
One last little quote:
I had “intelligent switches” for the shutter. That means, you can tip once for the direction, tip long for saving time and so on. They didn’t work with the Fibaro, because the Fibaro needs the electrical load to determine when the end-positions are reached.
I am also interested in a roller shutter solution integrated in my OH1 installation. But I am a little confused how this works?!
At the moment I already have a wireless solution based on hardware from “Becker Antriebssysteme”. A wall switch with radio communication to the roller shutter. As this seems to be an isolated solution from Becker at 868Mhz (and therefor not compatible with OH), I am thinking about changing this to a Zwave based solution (for which I already have several other devices).
I have read about the Fibaro FGRS-222 (also in this thread) and it seems to be a good device. But what I do not understand is, where I have to place this device to work properly? It seems that it can be mounted behind an appropriate wall switch. But how does the motor gets the commands? Is there another device connected to the motor? There is no wired connection between the wall switch and the motor.
And if the other way round (Fibaro device directly connected to the motor), how do the signal from the wall switch get to the roller shutter?
If you buy additional hardware, for example a zwave remote wall switch like this one: https://www.hans-hats.de/zwave-wandsender-c-563_587_616.html
you are able to switch the FGRS-222 without the need of wires.
But it’s a bit pricy though …
And: I doubt that your existing wireless solution has separate connectors for “up” and “down” commands which you would need for connecting the FGRS-222 …
You may configure the FGR222 for momentary switches (Taster) or toggle switches (Ein/Aus Schalter). You may even configure the device for a single momentary switch:
Parameter 14. Switch type.
The parameter settings are relevant for Roller Blind Mode and
Venetian Blind Mode (parameter 10 set to 0, 1, 2).
0 - Momentary switches
1 - Toggle switches
2 - Single, momentary switch. (The switch should be connected to
S1 terminal)
Default setting: 0
Parameter size: 1 [byte]
This is obviously not the answer I wanted to get! Ok, then this project is already at it’s end… I can’t make a wired connection and everything else indeed is too pricy.
But do I understand right: When I integrate the roller shutter like in your picture, I can control the roller shutter with a wall switch AND (because of zwave) also with OH, right? Does OH recognizes when I press the wall switch? Does OH “know” that the blinds are down if I let them go down with the wall switch?
All right, folks! I’ve now just placed an order for the following products:
Aeotec AEOEZW090-C Aeon Labs USB Stick
Z-Wave Aeon Labs Zwischenstecker mit Strommessfunktion, AEO_SES3_EU
Z-Wave Fibaro Jalousiesteuereinsatz Rev 02,FGR-222
I wanted to post the Amazon links, but for some reason, I’m not allowed to due to being a new user. So this is the article’s titles on Amazon instead, just in case this might help someone considering buying the same products.
My first attempts are as following:
Establish a working connection to the roller shutter actor that I’ll try to have installed in the bathroom by an electrician (he doesn’t know anything about this plan yet). The bathroom is is pretty close to the server and I’m hoping to receive a little “training sessions” from my electrician in order to achieve the skills to reproduce the procedure for other rooms in the future ;). I’ll try to get this working in OH in a way that I can trigger a shutter moving up or downwards via the OH app as well as having the current status of the roller shutter (opened/closed) being shown in the UI.
I’ll plug the switchable plug with metering functionality (is there any smaller term for this?) before my dryer and try to achieve power being cut off as soon as the dryer has finished his job and the consumption descreases under a certain threshold that i might have to determine before, I guess?
any hints and tips are still very much appreciated :). Many many thanks to all of you for your great help!
I’ll keep you posted about my progress :).
Right now, my server is located in the attic, but I’m planing to move it down into the basement due to a lower temperature down there, especially in summer. Of course, there won’t be no roller shutter devices being used in the basement, so the connection need to be stable through the floors from basement to attic. As far as I understood, the stick need to be “strong” enough to pass one floor as the actors on the ground floor will extend the reach that would in turn need to be enough for reaching the 2nd floor and so on. As the costs for the stick are very affordable in comparison to the costs for the CCU, I think I’ll give it a try and see how far I get ;).
So this is the article’s titles on Amazon instead, just in case this might help someone considering buying the same products.