Zooz ZEN17 as a Garage Door Opener

There is an old thread about using the Zooz ZEN17 with OH 2/3. Don’t read it. You’ll just get confused.

The ZEN17 works well with OH 4.3.4. While the device offers a lot of options, I won’t cover them here but will describe how to get it to work as a Garage Door Opener. If you utilize a momentary switch to operate your garage door opener, the ZEN17 will work seamlessly. For the last word on your installation, contact Zooz Support. They are excellent.

First of all the power requirements: the device comes with a USB-C connector and will work off a 5-volt USB plug, but it is uniquely suited to control environments as it can also be powered by 12-24 volts AC or DC. My Legacy opener supplies 20 VDC to operate the optical safety switches, so I tapped this circuit to power the ZEN17.

There is a technical note on how to use the device as a Garage Door Opener but frankly I found it, along with the documentation in the box, confusing.

Additionally, the tech note does not describe Openhab configuration. Things did not fall into place for me until I wired it up on my bench and watched the console. Here’s the basic set-up:

Ignore the NC security sensor for the time being and focus on the relay and wall switch connections. My opener supplies 20 VDC to the lighted wall switch. When the wall switch is pressed, it completes the circuit. The NO Zooz Relay 1 is connected in parallel with the wall switch, so either the Relay or the wall switch can complete the opener circuit and trigger the opener.

Now for triggering the relay. The Thing configuration below will allow you to trigger Relay 1 for one second.

Relay 1 is controlled by Switch S1. Configure the switch input as “momentary mode” for Garage door. Ignore Relay 2. When I made that change, OH showed the configuration as “Pending”. I pressed the Z-Wave button on the ZEN17 for 5 seconds to complete the mode change. YMMV.

Enable the Trigger for S1. This will allow S1 to control Relay 1.

Configure Relay 1 to turn Off one second after activation.


Link Switch S1 somewhere in your Model and you should be able to test the operation of Relay 1 with the Analyze switch.

Back to the “optional wired contact sensor”. This really doesn’t make sense to me. The diagram shows it wired to S1, but S1 is normally associated with control of Relay 1.

If you wanted to monitor the position of the Garage Door using the OH configuration described above, you could connect a contact sensor to S2. The status of Binary Sensor 2 could then be read as “Triggered” or “Untriggered”.

Realistically, no one would probably do that. It would be easier to install a Z-Wave door sensor and read the open/closed status directly, independently of the ZEN17.

Finally, if OH is configured as above, you could connect a momentary SPST switch across S1 as shown in the illustration and it could also trigger the Garage Door opener by triggering Relay 1.

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