Use battery to power zwave switch for pairing only?

I have a smart switch i want to stick in my garage. Unfortunately it to far from my Smartthings hub. I was wondering if i connected a 12v battery (somehow) to the switch, that it would give it enough power for me to sync the switch?

possible?

impossible to tell from your info.

Start by saying what is the model#.

Why do you say it is to far?

its an GE Zwave switch. Zw4003.

its to far because i have switch in there that I need to install in the house first then move it to the garage

that is a regular Zwave toggle switch. If you need to power it in a temporary location then you could use an extension cord, and hack off the end to temporarily power the switch. That’s called a suicide cord, because it’s a convenient way to electrocute yourself.

Powering your switch temporarily by 12v battery would be no different then a suicide cord, since you have to covert the 12v to 120v by an inverter, to power the switch anyway.

But the real mystery is, how do you expect your switch to work in the garage, if it’s to far to pair? Do you expect to install plug-in repeaters between hub and switch?

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^^This

If you the Hub can’t see it now then its not going to see it once paired. You need to put a repeater, in between or as far as you can from the Hub and closest to the garage as possible.

Your path now is one of frustration.

Good Luck.

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One point of clarification: Many older model Z wave devices cannot use the repeaters on a network until after they are a member of that network, which means they often have to be paired close to the hub, then moved to their permanent location, and then a zwave repair run to make the device aware of the available repeaters. So it’s not at all uncommon for devices to have instructions to do “bench pairing“ within 1 hop of the hub for their initial join, But then for them to work just fine once they are in place and the repair has been run.

Newer Z wave devices can take advantage of a feature called “networkwide inclusion“ (NWI) which allows them to be reached by the repeaters even for the initial join.

The GE 12727/Jasco ZW4003 is a device which has been on the market for several years and has gone through several firmware updates. I believe the earliest firmware versions of this switch did not support NWI, But the current versions do.

So it is possible that the OP has repeaters in place, But this particular switch cannot take advantage of them until after it has been paired.

There are a couple of options for this. By far the easiest is to use a minimote if you have one. Once the minimote is on your SmartThings network, it can be used to add a switch of this type.

image

A second possibility is to plug in a Wi-Fi booster that has an ethernet port on the side in an outlet close to where the switch is located and then plug the hub into that ethernet port for long enough to do the pairing.

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-N300-Range-Extender-EX2700/dp/B00L0YLRUW/

A third possibility is to put the hub on a really long ethernet cord and carry it to the switch.

https://www.amazon.com/Jadaol-Ethernet-Shielded-Computer-Internet/dp/B018TTSUNM/

A fourth option is to temporarily replace a wall switch which is close to your hub with the new wall switch.

And a fifth option, usually done by people who are professional installers, is to build a testing board for a switch where the power is supplied from a cord. This can be done safely, but to be honest it’s a lot more work than the other four options. :sunglasses:

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I have zwave devices already. As someone said, some older devices need to be paired first before they can use the network

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