z-wave

Home Brew Z-Wave Wireless Door Bell

In case you haven’t gathered from previous posts, I’m quite into Z-Wave and Home Automation right now. Our existing wireless doorbell gave up the ghost a little while ago and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to get a Z-Wave doorbell so that I could integrate it into some areas of the house instead of just a dumb chime unit nowhere near the living areas where we stand a chance of hearing it.

I used the article Do You Sell a Z-Wave Doorbell over at my favourite Z-Wave UK reseller, Vesternet for a little inspiration but since the article was written things have moved on a little.

If you have a wired doorbell running on mains voltage then this is actually a bit easier to accomplish as you can use the Fibaro Binary Sensor however I don’t have an existing wired doorbell as there is no wiring to support one so it’s wireless all the way. Since speaking to Vesternet about the project originally, Fibaro have released the new Universal Door and Windows Sensor which is a Generation 5 Z-Wave device meaning longer range and improved battery life so this is obviously the device I purchased for the project. It also has some differences from the previous model.

Follow me beyond the fold for the what parts I used and how I bond them all together.

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Philips Hue Scene Control with Vera Z-Wave Scenes

For a little while now, I have been buying Philips Hue light bulbs for home. I haven’t gone too overboard just yet but one of the starting factors was being able to set some coloured lighting in the living room and in the kitchen to be able to provide a bit of flashing light action for those long summer nights with a drink or two and friends.

At Christmas, I was able to get myself a Vera Edge Z-Wave controller as I really wanted to start making better use of the Hue bulbs and integrating it with Z-Wave to setup some nice home automation scenarios. After getting Vera online and getting the Hue2 plugin installed and control of the bulbs, I started to struggle. What I quickly noticed was that when trying to use Z-Wave Scenes in Vera to operate groups of Hue bulbs, I wasn’t able to and instead had to chain up actions which had an undesired effect of each bulb turning on in order with a second or so delay between each. Compared with Hue scenes where you press it and the whole room lights up, this wasn’t great.

Tonight however, I managed to find the answer and get it working just so with a little bit of effort here and there. I wasn’t able to find this information easily on the MiCaseVerde forums so I thought I would post it here in the hope that someones Google search turns it up for them.

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