Z-Wave Duwi Remote Control (Reitz gmbH ZWRC10)

(Chrisb) #6

I use z-wave remotes in my kids rooms. They seem to like it better than having tasker controls on their tablets. As long as you’re just looking to control Z-wave devices it’s a nice, easy to use “offline” secondary option.

#7

Looked at this–it does use association. I think it may be able to used just like a minimote. (The minimote also joins as a controller; it’s not what it does when it joins that matters, it’s how it communicates when a button is pressed. If it uses Association, then we’re in. We put the hub in the Association group (not the end devices), then the hub gets the message when the button is pushed, and it can be a button controller.)

Same idea as The enerwave sc7.

The GE devices don’t work that way with smartthings because they don’t use Association. They don’t just join as a secondary controller, they act as a secondary controller, which means when you press a button on the remote itself sends a basic commands directly to the devices that it included (which have to be zwave devices within one hop).

But the Duwi remote uses Association, so I think it may work as a button controller where we get it to send its command to the hub rather than directly to the end device.

Of course if you do that then it just becomes a set of seven buttons. When you press the button it just sends a message to the hub. You would lose all of the fancy light information, with red lights meaning one thing and yellow lights meaning another thing and all of that. It will likely need custom code. and it will only work if the connection to the smartthing cloud account is available. But I think it may be doable. :sunglasses:

#8

For clarity, “bind” is is a zigbee term, not zwave. In zwave, the device will always join the same way. The only thing that makes it a button controller is that it is able to do association and send its button presses to the hub that way and that the device type handler includes capability.button. (or for newer devices use the “central scene command set,” but not the older “scene” command set and again use A DTH with capability.button)

So if it uses Association, we should be able to get the button presses.

The official conformance statement for this device is missing some fields, but it looks like it should join as a handheld controller, just like the minimote, and that it supports Association, again just like the minimote. So I do think it should be able to be used like a minimote. You won’t get to use all the buttons the way the manufacture intended, and you probably won’t get the red/yellow/green lights, but you should be able to press a button on the device and have the hub know about it. At that point with the right automation, including the official smartlights feature, you should be able to get the hub to send instructions to other devices on the SmartThings account.

But there may be some manufacturer – specific issues, I don’t know. And it would need a custom DTH to get control of all the buttons. If someone who has one can let us know how they are using it, that would be helpful. :sunglasses:

#9

I have one, but I can only control my lights by directly associating my lights with it, not via the hub. That has advantages though, because it allows me to dim/bright my lights by continuous holding of the button, something that can’t be done via the hub, which is a shame.

Just to add. I did associate it with the hub too (I think by accident rather than intentionally) as a zwave controller, but that’s as far as I got.

#10

So I’m assuming that those lights can also be controlled in other ways from SmartThings? Even if it’s just opening the mobile app and using the things screen?

If so, the sequence would go like this:

One) add all the lights to the SmartThings account

Two) add the remote to the SmartThings account. It should be found as a portable controller or maybe a secondary controller. Just adding it to the SmartThings account will automatically put the hub in Association group one. You don’t have to do anything special.

http://docs.smartthings.com/en/latest/device-type-developers-guide/z-wave-primer.html

The SmartThings hub automatically adds itself to association group 1 when a device that supports association joins the network.

  1. individually associate your lights to the remote, using the instructions in the user guide for the remote. Note that you will only be able to control Z wave devices within about 40 feet of the remote (one hop).

One of the advantages of using a Z wave device as a button controller and sending the messages through the hub rather than sending the messages to the lights directly from the remote is that with the button controller you can control anything that smartthings controls, including mode changes or devices of other protocols. And you can also control devices that are more than one hop from the remote, like lights on the other side of the house. But there are still community members who are using direct association with nearby Z wave devices for various reasons.

Those three steps should do it. The lights can talk to either the hub or the remote. The remote is known to the hub but you’re not doing anything with that other than giving it permission to talk to the light.

To go further, you would need to be using a device type handler that had capability.button

#11

Yes, that’s how I have it working - direct control of zwave devices from the remote. And yes, the hub can still control those same devices.
I’d love somebody to be able to create a DTH that allowed me to use the remote with the hub.

#12

Quick (general) question. I have associated my floor/table lamps to the duwi remote easily because they operate via pocket sockets…and association just involves a triple click of the pocket socket’s button. But is there a way to put these devices into association mode remotely? The reason I ask is I want to associate my fibaro dimmers to the remote and they are not easily accessible.

#13

Short answer is maybe. You can write code to attempt it, it’s just that not all devices will accept it without physical manipulation of the device, usually a button pattern as you mentioned.

See the following for the code you have to write:

@RobinWinbourne might have more to add, he is an expert on the Fibaros.

I do know Fibaros can be tricky in associations if you have paired them in secure mode.

(Chris Holt) #14

First of all apologies because I am sure that somewhere there already exists the answer to this however I can’t find it after a lot of googling. I suspect the answer is I need the right DTH and I may have to write one but I havent written DTHs yet and I don’t really understand Zwave enough I now realise.

Background: I have a Duwi Zwave Remote [1], which is normally a standalone controller in a zwave network. I know this is not a great thing, and as it is a scene controller I know thats even worse, however bear with me as what I am looking to do is (as detailed in link [2] and see next post for link 3 and 4) use association to directly link the remote to the ST hub. I believe then it can be seen by the ST system as buttons when using association to ensure presses are passed to the hub not out to zwave devices. This would work perfectly as I see button press events (as I can then use pistons to do things with those events)

Now, I freely admit to being a little out of my depth here so if something doesn’t make sense I probably don’t understand it properly. In all the forum links @JDRoberts nearly answers this but not quite as I am missing something basic I think!

Fundamentally I am at a loss to how I actually go about linking the remote to ST not as a secondary controller - because if I do inclusion then the remote is seen as a secondary controller. This may not matter as it doesn’t actually affect how ST works with it. The remote has buttons for inclusion, exclusion and association (mainly for it to include/exclude as a controller I expect not as a zwave device would). So, should I just be able to change to a default DTH or is a new one needed, and if so do I need to write one handler for this. I see a button device is part of the ST list already but this thing has 10 buttons.

So, in short I feel like I am so close but so far away. I have missed something fundamental…or what I am doing isn’t actually possible (the remote was cheap from Vesternet so it was an experiment anyway)

Any suggestions welcome :slight_smile:

–Chris

[1] Z-Wave Duwi Remote Control Manual http://www.vesternet.com/downloads/dl/file/id/203/product/565/z_wave_duwi_remote_control_manual.pdf

[2] Thread on Duwi remote usage Z-Wave Duwi Remote Control (Reitz gmbH ZWRC10)

(Chris Holt) #15

Other links:
[3] ST and Association Z-Wave association groups

[4] Another thread on Duwi remotes Z-Wave Duwi Remote Control (Reitz gmbH ZWRC10)

(Chris Holt) #16

Ahhh ok thanks I understand. I started this separately as I thought it was going to go off on how to add devices differently and write custom handlers to support that process. But i see now what I was missing-that it’s all the same and it’s dependent on an inherent support of association not actually manually “performing an association”

I’ll have a play with the minimote handler and report back

Thanks!

(Chris Holt) #17

Working with the minimote DTH (copy of which is here https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SmartThingsCommunity/SmartThingsPublic/master/devicetypes/smartthings/aeon-minimote.src/aeon-minimote.groovy) should I be seeing content around association classes being used in there (physicalgraph.zwave.commands.associationv2.*) as it doesn’t look like it does.

Initial testing of setting the remote to a type based on the minimote definition doesn’t seem to do anything - I can see events when i run the simulator on the IDE and press buttons but I see no button press events when i press real buttons on the remote?

(Chris Holt) #18

I see that the other thread is now active again aftter you added a post and is indeed talking about a similar problem. I haven’t had a chance to catch up on it yet so that’s a job for tomorrow sometime

(Chris Holt) #19

Back on this now…reading the thread you also were posting to and the gist in the crosslinked thread about switches I can see that the gist has calls to association classes but minimote doesn’t, so I’m not sure the minimote code (assuming I’m using the right one) will fulfil the association actions out of the box?

My problem is that when it gets to writing association related code from scratch I’m really in the dark, I can adapt and debug but at the moment I’m googling for DTHs that have association based approaches to button pushes.

Any suggestions

–Chris

(posting in here as the other thread seems to have diverged onto switches not duwi button presses)

#20

I asked the same question about a device handler that would allow me to use the remote with the hub here

I’m not too fussed about this though, because I know I’d lose the ability to smoothly dim my lights if I use the remote via the hum. At present, the remote, by direct association with my lights, allows me to dim them as they should be dimmed - smoothly and via a continuous button hold.

I guess the only advantage I see of being able to use the remote with the hub is to allow me to control any (not just zwave) devices, routines, pistons, etc, but at the cost stated above.

(Chris Holt) #21

If ST sees a button press, you can map that to anything (I am trying to do something totally different/much more generic to you, I did ead your history on this but I’m controlling anything via button->piston links). In theory (though I dont think they will all actually work) the remote actually has 30+ buttons (ten intended to switch things on/off, with each of those having an associated up and down button adjacent intended to be for dimming, plus an on/off button.

A remote doesn’t need status, i just want to link buttons to pistons/smartlighting and the simple press x and y happens is absolutely fine for what I need - its just a remote after all its intended to be stateless and simplistic. Whether I use the down dim on button 4 to dim down a device or as something totally unrelated makes no difference in this model - they are all just buttons. The only restriction in theory to how buttons are allocated is what my girlfriend will bear before the inconsistency of button usage on the remote drives her mad :slight_smile:

Deconding a Duwi remote
#22

I’m not sure I understand the question.

Association is a one time event, essentially A configuration step. Say you have a minimote and a Z wave wall switch. You “create the association” one time and one time only. The Z wave wall switch device ID is added to the group list kept in the Minimote. And the minimote device ID is added to the group list in the wall switch. And that’s all there is to it.

From then on, when the minimote sends a “basic” command (“Basic” has a specific Z wave meaningin this context, and is only on/off/dim) to that group, then that group will act on it. That’s all it means.

When creating a button controller, we actually don’t typically associate the wall switch to the Minimote. Instead, we associate the hub to the minimote.

Now when you press a button on the minimote, The hub gets the instruction. But the hub doesn’t itself act on that instruction–it doesn’t turn itself on or off. Instead, you use a smart app to say “when the hub receives a button two press notification then do…”. And that smart app will then send commands out to any other devices you wanted to have respond to that button press. The hub is receiving the button two press notification because the hub is in the Association group for that minimote, but you don’t have to specify that in your smart app. It just happens automatically. When you write the smart app, you just care that the hub knows button two was pressed. As a coder, you don’t care how the hub knows that.

So there won’t be any association code used after the initial set up. Because everything will go through the hub. The association is just used to make sure the hub get told when a button is pressed.

Most of the time in a smart things deploy association code is not needed at all, because the hub automatically adds itself to Association group one for every new device added to the network that supports association.

We only need the one time association configuration code if we want to put the hub into other association groups for a particular device, like group two or group three, or if we want to “directly associate” two Z wave devices so The trigger device can send a message directly to the receiving device without having to go through the hub first. But even in these situations the association code is only used one time to configure the devices. After that, everything happens automatically.

So association is used every time you press a button on a minimote in a smart things set up, but You don’t have to do anything to cause it to be used. ( other than maybe have a line in the DTH saying that this device supports Association, I’m not sure on that part or not.).

But definitely once the configuration is complete, you don’t need any additional code. The right messages will get to the right devices because they are configured in the right way. You don’t turn association on and off for each command being sent. Once it’s on, it’s on until you do a disassociate reconfiguration. This is true for both direct association and the more common association to the hub so it knows a button was pressed.

Did that help any?

(Chris Holt) #23

Well, yes and no. The yes part is that I do get what you are saying, and in particular this is key and I didn’t realise that:

So fundamentally what you are saying is that this device should work and should act as a remote for what i want (ie I can sense a button press and I use a smartapp) which is what I was basically saying to Pbrain above so thats all good

The no part is that I have absolutely no idea what to do next. Incidentally after many bored evenings of playing with it, adding and removing it from ST and trying different things as I have done on and off fo the last few weeks, when I press the inclusion button on the remote (which has a terrible manual in this context as the manual assumes it is meant to be a controller and talks of little else) the hub sees it as a new device and I see a Zwave remote device appear in my devices. I can change that to a minimote handler but I see absolutely no evidence of ST receiving any events (and I did remember to uncomment the log.debug in the minimote code parse event in case - that works in simulator if I press a button). It has an associate button button but god knows how it works or what ST subsequently does if the remote does indeed do anything useful when I press that button. I do know that the associate button doesn’t make the remote appear as a device when attaching it to ST, only the inclusion button does.

Can I see anywhere in ST really raw debug so as to see if the association has happened and if ST is receiving anything that its not parsing properly?

Thanks as ever for your help

–Chris

#24

If you open the minimote case, you will see that there are four additional buttons inside which are used for administrative functions. One of those is an “associate” button which has nothing to do with associating that particular minimote to the hub. Instead, it’s used to create a direct association between two other zwave devices, such as a motion sensor and a light.

I know you don’t have a minimote, but I mention that because my guess (I haven’t looked at the manual) is that the associate button on your Duwi device is used to associate a light to that handheld remote, or two other devices together, but it has nothing to do with associating the remote to the hub. So I wouldn’t expect you to see any hub log messages about it.

Unfortunately, because I rely on text to speech, I can’t read groovy code. My suggestion at this point is that you leave this thread as it is and start a new thread under “writing device types” and ask some of the master coders there to help see if the minimote device type handler can be adapted for the device that you have. You might title of the thread something like “Need help writing a new button controller DTH for Duwi remote” and then you should get responses from the appropriate people.

You don’t have to go through all the stuff we’ve talked about so far, just start out by saying that the device does support association so you want to make it work like a minimote and go from there.

I’m not saying it can be done, there could be some idiosyncrasies about this device that mean it can’t, it’s just that I can’t help you with the next steps but there are definitely people on the forum who can. Just move over to the writing device type handler section. :sunglasses:

https://community.smartthings.com/c/developers/writing-device-types

(Chris Holt) #25

Thats great, thanks. I at least feel like I have some understanding of the problem now and especially about association as that eluded me entirely before … and thats a whole lot further than I was when I started this thread so thank you for your help. I’ll report back if I manage it (or don’t!)

Cheers, --Chris