Z-Wave COMMAND_CLASS_POWERLEVEL

General Discussion
1

I’ve bought and installed a few GE (Jasco) Z-Wave On/Off Switches. I noticed theres no specific device type for these other than the Generic “Z-Wave Switch”. I’m always looking to make sure I get the most out of my devices in terms of the device type support. That said, the finger print shows: 0x25 0x27 0x73 0x70 0x86 0x72 0x77

0x73 is a POWERLEVEL command class. Anyone know what this is used for?

I’ve googled my brains out and all I came up with this:
http://open-zwave.googlecode.com/svn-history/r185/trunk/cpp/src/command_classes/Powerlevel.h

2

I found this command class being supported by the new Smart Switch 6, Gen5.

Intrigued, I went to the horse’s mouth, i.e. the Z-Wave public specification docs:
http://z-wave.sigmadesigns.com/design-z-wave/z-wave-public-specification/

which says:

Powerlevel Command Class, version 1
The Powerlevel Command Class defines RF transmit power controlling Commands useful when installing or testing a network. The Commands makes it possible for supporting controllers to set/get the RF transmit power level of a node and test specific links between nodes with a specific RF transmit power level.
NOTE: This Command Class is only used in an installation or test situation.

Interestingly, it does appear to be available in the SmartThings API

https://graph.api.smartthings.com/ide/doc/zwave-utils.html#powerlevelV1
class physicalgraph.zwave.commands.powerlevelv1.*

But I wouldn’t want to go round messing with it as you could probably mess up your z-wave network… :cold_sweat:

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Since Sigma designs has just recently allowed public access to some of the official Z wave documents, I would always start with those now, as @zcapr17 suggested. If you just Google you won’t find those right away because they are so new and so not as popular, but they’re going to be the most accurate. :sunglasses:

http://z-wave.sigmadesigns.com/design-z-wave/z-wave-public-specification/

There’s also the issue that if you use a custom device type handler, then it can no longer run locally. Many people prefer to use the stock device handlers so that if the SmartThings things cloud is unavailable the device can still be controlled with a smart lighting automation.

So while you certainly can change to a custom device Type handler if there are features that you need, you just need to be aware that you may be giving up local operation.

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