It’s been a long time since live been on here!
I’m looking at what seems to be a great deal on these nutone zwave switches but I want to make sure they’ll do what I need before I buy them.
Most of my home automation has lately been directly over internet (through smartlife or similar apps and hardware) to direct control from Amazon Alexa devices or automaton; but I still have my SmartThings system, mainly doing AC and a few other tasks.
I have some automated lights through Smartlife and they are currently controlled by both Alexa as well as wall switches, also through the Smartlife system (I just disconnected the switched wire to the lights and wired them to the always hot wire.) I had to put 4x automation programs into smartlife for each room so the switch position follows the light’s actual mode (since it’s not always controlled by the switch)
What I want to do is replace the light switches with these nutone nwt00z zwave switches so I can use the other switches in other positions around the house.
I guess my questions are:
will these switches connect and communicate with smartthings without having a nutone “real” switch (that switches a wire)? - it looks looks they should but I didn’t see specifically that they will.
can I use these switches to control a light either between ST and smartlife or ST and Alexa (then between Alexa and smartlife) so the switch position (on/off) and the lights follow each other?
if 1 and 2 above work, does anybody know if the dimming capability of the switch can be forwarded through the network of controllers to work properly in the end?
I wrote a long answer, but I’ve changed my mind about what I want to say, and now I’m too tired to write that. so here’s the first part.
Smartlife recently dropped its Ifttt integration after Ifttt raised the price is that it charges the manufacturers. So at present there is no way to integrate your SmartLife switches with smart things except by using Alexa as an intermediary. And that’s only a one-way integration. So it works pretty well for plug-in pocket sockets: you can have smartthings tell the pocket socket to turn on and off.
But that method doesn’t work very well for light switches, because while you could have smartthings tell the smartlife switch to turn on, if someone turns the smartlife switch on at the wall, or even via Alexa, smartthings won’t know about it.
So I don’t think you can get to where you wanted to be in this case.
Technically, you would be fine just using these accessory switches as they are in terms of the wiring, but the problem is that they are very old devices and use zwave classic, not zwave plus, and they depend on Z wave direct association, which changed a lot with zwave plus.
So while you can add it to your smartthings Z wave network, at this point I don’t think the hub will recognize its button presses unless you happen to have an early release V1 hub. That is, unless the hub is also Zwave classic.
Combine that with the out of sync issues and I just don’t think it’s going to work well for you. It would be OK as an accessory if your master switch was a nearby Z wave switch so the accessory talked directly to the other switch rather than to the hub. But as it is, it just doesn’t seem like a good fit.
JDR thank you for your quick and informative response (even if you changed your mind and didn’t elaborate!) I will now attempt to pick your brain and get a little confirmation of what I’m reading… (Of course anybody else can chime in too!)
All very interesting info… Unfortunately I have very little knowledge of the zwave stuff and it’s quirks, as I have only been using zigbee things (successfully & usefully) so far…
So you changed your mind… I’m assuming there is something you didn’t consider in your original post.
Based on my original questions:
your post indicates that you believe it will work directly with my ST hub without a real switch. Fyi my hub is a v2 if I remember right (def newer than v1) it’s been a while since I messed with it, it just works!
I’m assuming that in the end you thought of a way this would work (hence the prelude added to your answer), although your initial post indicated that it would only go one way. I did sign up for ifttt but couldn’t find a way to makes it do anything I wanted, it seems more restrictive than it’s description, as I could only find that certain if’s can make certain than’s happen, not any if to any than (if that makes sense). Anyway, I do know that if I ask alexa what the thermostat is set to, it tells me (getting the info from ST) and if I change the temperature it goes through immediately. Whether that has any impact on if Alexa will send auto updates to ST when things happen or if one of them needs to initiate the communication, I do not know (like if alexa turns on the light, then does it tell ST the light is on or do I need to make a routine for that?) I would assume with routines triggered by the status of the switch changing and/or by the status of the light it should work properly… Any thoughts for or against this?
On and off should be pretty easy but will dimmer status be shared / work? I have no idea about this and didn’t see any sign of an answer in your post. Do you have any idea?
Sorry, apparently I wasn’t clear. I deleted my original post and so what is there now is my current thinking. It doesn’t match up with what you’ve written above.
I do not Believe it will work with your V2 hub because of the changes in Zwave association. So the only way to use the Nutone accessory switches with a Nutone smartthings hub is by using it as the accessory to a Z wave master switch which is physically close to the accessory switch. That’s not what you’ve been describing.
Your SmartLife devices will not work with Ifttt Because they recently dropped support for their IFTTT channel. There is still a smartthings channel which works, but that won’t help.
Your smartlife devices will still work with Amazon Alexa routines, so you can use that for a partial integration between your smartLife devices and smartthings, but it’s only one way as I described above.
And even if you’re OK with the way that works, you still can’t use the Nutone accessory switch because of the issues in point 1.
If you read the link I gave you about the removal of the Ifttt channel there may be an alternative way that you could try, but I just didn’t wanna go into all that, and it might cost fees. But take a look at that thread and ask people there, they have smartlife devices. So that might get you some smartthings integration, but it still doesn’t let you use the Nutone accessory switches.
As far as dimming control from the zwave accessory switch, that isn’t going to work in any configuration in your set up.
Also, please use the terminology “master switch“ instead of “real switch.“ Otherwise people are going to think you mean a virtual switch of some kind. The accessory switch is a “real“ as in “physical“ device. It just doesn’t control a load.
Thank you again for your clarification…
As you were writing, I started messing around with a “master switch” from zooz (model zen21) that I actually bought a couple of years ago but never actually used! (This is a tangent, but ultimately related to the original question) Obviously it’s from a different manufacturer (and is apparently zwave+ as it says on the back of the switch).
I was able to sync it with ST and have it show up in Alexa’s app; but it shows up as a controllable device to Alexa, but not a “controller” device! So I could not get it to control a light connected to alexa . I did notice that if I toggle the physical switch then ST (and Alexa) follows along nicely but if I try to switch it digitally from either service, it seems like it only will take one switch change every minute or so (I didn’t time it) or otherwise will not switch from the hub when told to do so (update- if it is set as a light in alexa it will switch on and off nicely).
I then tried making a virtual light in ST to use the switch to control it and make it a part of the scene but could not figure out how to make a virtual light! (Only a virtual switch) Finally I realized that a virtual light won’t turn on another light anyway, I could make the switch appear as a light in alexa (didn’t help other than to put out on a different group of devices), and ifttt was not much help either…
I did finally see how I can use ifttt to make anything do anything (not sure how I missed this before) but Alexa still has limitations, one of my light bulb manufacturers is not on ifttt (Tuya Smart), and although I did not read the link you provided, Smartlife is still available on IFTTT AZ of this writing. Unfortunately ifttt does not see my new devices; I’m assuming I need to re-log in to ST from IFTTT for it to update devices, but that’s a drag right now.
So the way it appears, the only way I will be able to make a ST switch work for me (with control from Alexa) is if it controls a device directly (or at a minimum, if it can trigger IFTTT to do something for me.)
As for those inexpensive switches, I’m reading mixed accounts of some people having no trouble connecting them to ST gen2 and other people having a ton of issues! Maybe I’ll buy one just to mess with it but otherwise I don’t think I’ll be able to make it do anything ATLEAST until there’s a way to make Alexa use a switch as a device to control other devices/scenes rather than a device that can just be controlled.
I’m glad you’re making some progress. And again, I apologize for any earlier confusion.
As far as Amazon Alexa routines, at the present time, you cannot use any switch of any brand as the “If.“ Only as the “then.“
If I had to guess, I would guess that this is because many switches sold by Amazon do not report their status back when physically changed at the wall, and Amazon doesn’t want the customers to be unhappy with brands that don’t that don’t work in Alexa routines The way other brands do. And explaining all of that would be a customer support nightmare.
So they made the decision to only allow sensors as triggers.
(An if/then statement, whether it’s in IFTTT, an Alexa Routine, SmartThings, or wherever, has a “trigger” and a “target.” The trigger could be time of day, voice command, a different device changing state, or many other options. It’s up to the designers of the rules engine as to what’s allowed. But if a device doesn’t report its changing state to the platform, then it can’t be used as a trigger.)
The advantage we have as smartthings users is that it is possible to create a virtual device which is both a switch and a sensor. You can turn the switch on and off just like any switch. When you turn it on, the sensor looks like it’s open. When you turn it off, the sensor looks like it’s closed. So this is a very common way of being able to use Alexa routines from SmartThings. You do everything you want to on the smartthings side and then you turn on the Virtual switch which makes the virtual sensor look like it opened. And you use that virtual sensor as the trigger for your Alexa routine.
Again, this is a very popular method. For details, see the community FAQ. (The topic title is a clickable link)
. I did notice that if I toggle the physical switch then ST (and Alexa) follows along nicely but if I try to switch it digitally from either service, it seems like it only will take one switch change every minute or so (I didn’t time it) or otherwise will not switch from the hub when told to do so (update- if it is set as a light in alexa it will switch on and off nicely).
