I’m looking for some help with associating my hallway lights together using the Z-Wave Association tool. I currently have 5 Inovelli Red Series Switches attached to my hallway lights.
In the Association tool I associated the light switches from one to the next. But it doesn’t go backwards if that makes sense.
List of Switches
Hallway Kitchen
Hallway Foyer
Hallway Spare
Hallway Bath
Hallway Master
They are associated one to the next. Kitchen to foyer. Foyer to Spare. Spare to Bath. Bath to Master in the association tool.
If I turn on kitchen it will turn on all light switches. If I move to foyer it turns on all lights after it, but not kitchen. It continues that way down the line.
I have attempted to associate each light backwards in the order as well. But it turns the lights off instead because it see the next one is on then off.
It doesn’t quite make sense as you describe it, but let’s see if we can figure it out.
what do you mean by the “zwave association tool.“ Are you using the Z wave Tweaker? Or something else?
Zwave association does not match state. It triggers a basic command to be sent to the associated device When an event occurs. so it only sends a command when you turn the “trigger” switch on or off. It doesn’t matter that that switch is already off when something else goes on. It is only in the moment that the switch is pressed that the command is sent to the “target“ device.
Z wave association is one way, from the trigger to the target. So what you have described is the expected behavior. you turn on the Kitchen, it turns on the foyer, The foyer then turns on the spare, the spare then turns on the bath, The bath turns on the Master. Each of these is one individual association. So you would expect that if you turn on the spare, it would only turn on the bath and then the Master. You would not expect turning on the spare to turn on the foyer as you have described above.
If you want associations in multiple directions, you would have to create the entire chain, one association at a time, going back the other way. Then turning on the spare would turn on both the bath and the foyer. And they in turn would activate the next device in each direction.
So far all of that makes sense, I’m just not quite sure why you are seeing a turn off as you describe it, so we may need to track that down a little further.
But again, let’s start with what are you using to associate them?
The tool I am using is called the Z-Wave Association Tool.
I am simply wanting to have the switches mirror each other. If I hit the one light, the rest fall in suit and turn on as well. They do that now, just don’t go backwards. I hit foyer rest down the line works. The kitchen doesn’t. and so on.
Would a loop work? Like associate master to kitchen? So it goes full loop?
I’m not familiar with that tool, most people are using the Z wave Tweaker,
If you just want a mirror effect, have you tried just using the official mirror feature in smartlights in the app? It’s just an option in the smartthings mobile app, you don’t need to go into the IDE or look up device IDs or anything.
Create a new smartlighting automation, select the device you want to turn on (The target device), then when it asks what you want to do select “mirror behavior“. Then select the device you want to mirror (the trigger device)
If I use this logic, does anything change on the light side? The switches are smart switches only. They don’t control actual power to the light. You push the button up, it activates the on scene. And so on…
I don’t know the tool you are using. But I’ve used tweaker and messed with associations a bit. It seems like you would not want to daisy chain them. I think you would want to associate the other 4 lights with the each. In tweaker you would list the devices to be associated with a comma separating.
A2, 6B, e4 for example.
When a switch is toggled on. It sends a basic ON command to each device associated with it. When a switch is toggled off. It sends a basic OFF command to each of the devices associated with it.
So using the mirror format requires me to create multiple animations to work. I can set kitchen to turn on others. But it doesn’t work backwards. So I would need each to be set to work on each. But I’m afraid that it would be the same as the others. It would create a loop.
The mirror function shouldn’t create a loop. It’s very commonly used for virtual three ways so that all the statuses stay in sync in the smartthings mobile app.
There are a few individual switches which sometimes have a looping issue, but the models you are using should not.
