[OBSOLETE] Leviton VRCS4

not sure what you mean, my lights turn on and off w/ status, if that’s what you mean.

I have the same scene “Hall Lights” on two different VCRS4’s. In Vera, each light beneath the button is an addressable item, you can set the color (0 off, 1 green, 2 red, 3 orange) which is fantastic when you’re using it as a scene controller. Your family knows which button to push to turn OFF the scene, etc.

Ah I actually have that (I have 3 vrcs4’s) with some overlapping switches, though you can only use green and orange for ‘on’ and red/off for off. I do it w/ a separate smartapp, so you do have to configure it twice. Its a bit messy so I’d have to clean it up before publishing.

ST doesn’t really understand the idea of a scene. If you figured out how to make them addressable lights, you could use SmartLighting to say turn the indicator GREEN when the HALL_LIGHT turns on, and turn the indicator OFF when the HALL_LIGHT turns off.

If you’d be willing to share your code, I’d take a shot at turning it into a lighting device handler.

right all my ‘scenes’ are sets of lights though. and that’s what my code does. You pick lights for each set of buttons, and then it calls the setLightStatus method in my dht w/ the appropriate color. The only caveat is that if you use it as an associated controller, setting the color to green/orange means a button press sends an off command, while none/red sends an on command.

I have multiple vrcs4’s and vrcz4’s and would also be interested in your smart app (messy or not) for controlling the indicator lights on the switches. “Your family knows which button to push to turn OFF the scene” would be awesome given we have some of these at opposite end of the house for controlling exterior lighting and modes.

I’d love to see the code as well. The scene controllers are an important part of my setup and I’d love to bring them back up to speed. I may even be able to help out with some coding, too.

Please excuse my newbiness, but is your ZWave Scene associator dth meant to replace @bdahlem’s Leviton VRCS Z-Wave Scene Control that I have associated with my VRCS4 switches?

Hi and many thanks for the smartapp, but I’m curious if it’s normal to need to open the app and “configure” the scene controller every couple days? I’ve been doing this for the past couple weeks every time it stop working and it’s getting tedious.

For the record I’m using ST v2 hub and using @bdahlem’s dth for the Leviton VRCS4 switches.

its a device type handler, so it would replace the device handler, but not the smart app. I’ve since rewritten portions of it (read hacked at it), to have a modified version of the smart app control the association, and handle the light control too, I just haven’t had time to clean it up enough to be releasable. Basically there’s just a bunch of garbage that isn’t needed (but confuses the setup), so not very intuative. If there’s demand I’ll try to dedicate some time to cleaning it up.

I would certainly appreciate it if you could clean up the DTH and make it “releasable” :smile:

Also, I’m not understanding your comment fully, but have you also modified either @bdahlem or @ieguz’s smartapps?

essentially yes, I have a modified smartapp (I don’t remember who’s it was to start) which handles all this. my use is (maybe) a bit unique. I don’t care about having hub-controlled switching. I use the vrcs4 (I now have 4 of them) as purely associators, to one or more other switches. The vrcs4’s send ‘all on’ and ‘all off’ commands directly to the configured zwave devices. The smart apps job is simply to configure the switches to point at the appropriate devices, as well as handle updating individual led light status (which is required to be sending proper commands, as when the light is green/orange, it sends all-off, and when its off/red it sends ‘all-on’).

How does the VRCS4 send directly to the configured zwave devices? Did you need to use the Leviton programming remote controller to create those associations between each particular scene buttons to each particular zwave device?

Or was that accomplished strictly via DTH and/or Smartapp?

that’s what my dht/smartapp do. Is direct association to other zwave devices on the network. Not leviton remote/etc required (I don’t own one)

I would love to play around with that. Right now I’m using @bdahlem’s smartapp with @ieguz’s improved DTH, but it can sometimes take over 6 seconds until the command is processed and the scene activates. There are even some times where I have to go press “configure” in the app because the scene controllers stop activating the scenes.

ok i’ll need to clean it up some…right now its pretty hacky, as basically I just abuse the ‘toggle’ functionality (if it finds toggle, it takes the association route). Note this won’t be helpful if you use the device for things other then just lights. At least I haven’t tested it to do that. But yes, for the most part, my actions are instant. You do have to wait 5-6 seconds for the light status to update (would probably be less if your switches have instant-status, mine do not). And you can’t issue the inverse command until after the light updates, if that makes sense.

Thanks for looking into it! For the record I am using the VRCS4’s only with Homeseer WS-100+ switches that control the load on my lights. I would love to see the house lights turn on instantly! With regards to the VRCS4, the LED indicator delay is not such a big deal, so long as it indicates the scene status within a few seconds (and retains it so long as the scene is active).

ok i’ll try to get it cleaned up some this weekend. and to clarify it isn’t scene status, but switch status that the indicators will show. If you turn on the light via some other means (actual switch, app, etc) it’ll within a few seconds turn on the indicator. If you have multiple switches configured to a single button, any single switch being on is enough to trigger the indicator to be on (and again, when the indicator is on, it sends ‘all off’, when the indicator is off it sends ‘all on’).

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That “compromise“ is perfectly acceptable and understandable given the endless variations of specific configurations that exist.

By any chance do you have a tip jar?

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that took less then expected. The smartapp is here:

You may or may not need to update the DHT to my new one (it may work w/ the old one, but would be safer to use the new dht:

Set the device to the dht, install the smartapp, create a new instance of the smartapp for each vrcs4 (it’ll ask you to pick a device, as well as switches/colors for each button).

One word of warning, I’ve really only tested it on my 3 vrcs4’s. If your hardware in anyway differs then mine, it may not work. Once the switch is in direct association mode, it isn’t always 100% easy to get it back out, without a factory reset/remove/readd (hold buttons 1+3).

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