Aeon Z-wave z-stick USB?

[m19brandon]

I was thinking of ordering the Aeon Z-wave Z-stick to use with my setup. Does anyone think this is a bad idea before I invest the $45 plus a few switches? Thanks, B

[m19brandon]

Any thoughts?

[krambriw]

Hi,
I have no experience with the Aeon stick but I have the the RaZberry Z-Wave module piggy backed in a Raspberry Pi and a few Fibaro devices. Z-Wave obviously is better due to the mesh network and two-way communication.

My experience in general is
- I feel that when the routing is not working one-to-one, the response times gets noticeable slower
- When routing is optimum, the response is instant
- It can happen that responses to commands never arrives (just dies out due to time-outs I guess)
- The devices are still much to expensive to convince me to change all devices from my simpler stuff (similar to X10, Waveman)

If my experience above is due to RaZberry limitations is to me unknown.

Besides, I assume you would like to have support for it in EG, I dont think there a plugin available for the Aeon stick

Vera would also be a possible alternative

Best regards, Walter

[m19brandon]

I'm going to give it a shoot, only $85 for the stick and a switch. If it does not workout I will rethink this and go the vera route.

EG all the way, a plug in would be nice but not required. zVirtualScenes supports REST and I enjoy writing Python.

Thanks,

[m19brandon]

I found the zVirtualScenes Integration Plugins and it works. My wife loved the one switch so I bought 5 more. The first switch I bought is the only problem switch I have and it is also the closest to the USB stick. It takes forever to reply back, locking EG in a Get statement and sometimes never returns. Other than that it works get. How are your tracking you switches state? I have being setting global var for each one but Im not sure that is the best once I have 20 of this things.

[krambriw]

It takes forever to reply back, locking EG in a Get statement and sometimes never returns

If you are asking me, I have a callback routine implemented in the Z-WAVE controller in the RPi so I get events when they happen, I do not use any Get and therefore no lockups of EG.

Anyway, the way it should be done is to put that Get into a separate thread so that lockup of EG is avoided. Is it the zVirtualScenes Integration Plugin that is handling this? If so, that one should be looked into. Also the thread performace should then be monitored, I mean checking that it is running if there is a risk that it stops

Best

[m19brandon]

Thanks for the advice, I will take a look this weekend in more detail. In the mean time I added a Get Status macro on all the zwave devices running every 25mins. This seems to result is quicker toggle actions but it has only been a few hours. The real test is in 8 hour when I wake up. On the power toggle marcos it looks like it is doing a get and then performing the on or off post base on the state of the device.

[m19brandon]

My belief was wrong I believe. The GetStatus does not poll the device bu the zVC software. I have now disable Window's power saving feature on the USB port.

[sintei]

I use the zwave stick with EG and zvirtualscenes.
And I store ON/OFFs/dimmer% in EG.

The only negative is that zvirtualscenes is fairly slow in it self.
if you use for instance "homegenie.it", you will see the feedbacks and triggers are quick and snappy.
However, since there is no plugin to EG from homegenie I am "stuck" with zvirtualscenes.

I've had a quick chat with Steve Cross (writer of zvirtualscenes to Eg plugin).
And he is making his own software (with EG in mind as well), but I see the last entry in his software is in november last year.
http://www.stevecross.org/wiki/doku.php ... automation

[m19brandon]

I send a post command every minute to the zVS webservice every minute and this has fixed most of my delay issues.