Zwave and how it's a Mess - Leviton and not following standards.
So there is currently only 1 Zwave RS232 module on the market, it's made by Leviton and it's a steaming mess of things.
I have smartthings at home, and I want to move away from a cloud based home automation to something more robust and programmable, so I decided that Zwave via an RS232 Controller connected to Crestron would be an answer. Zwave is supposed to be a standard, a better standard than Zigbee.. so I went down that path and bought a Leviton Rs232 Zwave plus controller.... Only to discover that Leviton decided that this cant be a Master but only a slave controller to ensure selling more product. so now you have to buy a Zwave master controller. So $250 so far and now I can start working with the devices.
A GE light switch works great. On and off and I can ask it the level. It's when you get to sensors like door sensors and motion sensors that Leviton decided that you dont need those. so while it can see the traffic on the network, it ignores it and will not display the alarm events or on/off events from those devices.
So back to square one. Looking for a decent home automation system with wireless battery operated door sensors that is not cloud based.... I may be stuck with having to design my own wireless door switches as nobody makes any that have an open protocol that is easy to detect open/close/tamper.
So if you are thinking you can get the LEviton RS232 Zigbee device and use that. Dont. It's a useless device as it can not listen to the network for events, it can send on and off commands and ask for levels. but it will never hear unsolicited and reported levels.
I have smartthings at home, and I want to move away from a cloud based home automation to something more robust and programmable, so I decided that Zwave via an RS232 Controller connected to Crestron would be an answer. Zwave is supposed to be a standard, a better standard than Zigbee.. so I went down that path and bought a Leviton Rs232 Zwave plus controller.... Only to discover that Leviton decided that this cant be a Master but only a slave controller to ensure selling more product. so now you have to buy a Zwave master controller. So $250 so far and now I can start working with the devices.
A GE light switch works great. On and off and I can ask it the level. It's when you get to sensors like door sensors and motion sensors that Leviton decided that you dont need those. so while it can see the traffic on the network, it ignores it and will not display the alarm events or on/off events from those devices.
So back to square one. Looking for a decent home automation system with wireless battery operated door sensors that is not cloud based.... I may be stuck with having to design my own wireless door switches as nobody makes any that have an open protocol that is easy to detect open/close/tamper.
So if you are thinking you can get the LEviton RS232 Zigbee device and use that. Dont. It's a useless device as it can not listen to the network for events, it can send on and off commands and ask for levels. but it will never hear unsolicited and reported levels.
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