Z-Wave Duwi Remote Control (Reitz gmbH ZWRC10)

Devices & Integrations
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:

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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?

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

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

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