I am new here and new to both HA and OpenHAB, as a matter of fact I haven’t even started playing with it yet myself.
The first z-wave devices I am interested in purchasing along with a raspberry pi to run OpenHAB are the new LIFX Bulbs with infrared, and the new graber virtual cord blinds.
Will these graber virtual cord blinds work with openhab? I see somfy listed on the OpenHAB site, but these are not the conventional somfy blinds/motors that use the somfy RTS bridge, these are different, these come as a pre-assembled unit, the somfy motor has z-wave built into it by graber, the motor is made by somfy but the z-wave parts are added on/included into the motor.
This appears much simpler and cheaper than the somfy RTS approach, but will it work with OpenHAB? It does appear to work with SmartThings? From what I can tell it presents itself to smartthings as a dimmer?
More information about these shades can be found at the SmartThings community forum at this particular thread:
Can anyone answer this for me? I just don’t want to purchase custom blinds to find out I cant use them in openHAB.
I assume the new LIFX bulbs should work fine though is this true?
Well, you probably won’t get a definitive response because it’s somewhat unlikely that someone already has this specific, brand new combo running.
Generally speaking, if it’s a zwave device, it will work with openHAB. It’s likely that Graber has just used/relabeled an existing, openHAB-supported zwave relay device so that including it with OH will make it work out of the box. If not, you can still enhance the zwave device database if needed, so maybe it’s some hassle, but ultimately, you will get it to work, too.
A more conservative, proven approach would be to get a somfy (or other) motor and to connect it to zwave relays that are known to work well with openHAB (such as the Fibaro FGRM devices). At least you should compare the solutions in terms of $$$. Also keep in mind what that means in terms of maintenance. To have the zwave device in a central wiring hub is always better than to have it built into the wall, blinds or motor if you need to access it.
The Graber units use the same motor/Z-Wave arrangement as the Bali Blinds (look for AutoView in the Bali line). That may help in your discovery process.
The Z-Wave radio is in the end of the motor unit, and the remote is battery powered. IIRC, it’s listed as a ZWave Plus product.
I have a set of the Dual Shades on order to test it out. It may take a while for them to come in, but I’ll let you know once I have them in hand.
So I just installed this set from Bali, but apparently Graber is the one making the motors. I was going to try to upload the information to the database but I cant quite figure it out.
I have paired it with HABmin and of course am getting the device not in database line.
Check out nodeXX.xml, usually located in /var/lib/openhab/zwave. XX is the zwave ID your device was assigned. There must be something if you managed to include it.
See if you can force sending NIFs. Most devices will do if you do as if you wanted to in/ex-clude them (triple click or similar), but don’t set openHAB into inclusion mode. That should add missing device data to the file (= local zwave database), maybe it even lights up in habmin afterwards.
