Sunday, October 23, 2016

Zooz ZEN24 Toggle Dimmer Review

Introduction:

This is my second review on Zooz products, this time I will cover the ZEN24 Toggle Dimmer switch.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free product in return for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own and not influenced by the developing company, and/or its affiliates in any way.


Description:

The Zooz ZEN24 toggle dimmer switch, replaces your existing light switch and allows on/off control and brightness control of your lights manually or remotely thru a z-wave connected hub.
Important to note, as mentioned in the manual, this dimmer switch works with most high-quality DIMMABLE LED, CFL, and incandescent bulbs. In my case the LED are not dimmable and you can see some flickering at low power.
http://www.thesmartesthouse.com/collections/zooz/products/2-zooz-z-wave-plus-dimmer-toggle-switch-zen24-2-pack
I was successfully able to include the Zooz ZEN24 dimmer toggle switch, in my Z-Wave network running Home-Assistant.io 0.29 in a Raspberry PI with an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5.


Appearance:

Similar to other Zooz products, the packaging is excellent. The switch is standard 1-gang box size, about two inches wide. Very well constructed with clear indications for the electric connections needed (Line, Neutral and Load).



Installation:

This is an electric device and must be installed according your local electric codes and regulations. As the instructions http://www.getzooz.com/downloads/manual-for-zooz-z-wave-plus-dimmer-toggle-switch-zen24.pdf  states, hire a qualified professional to complete the installation for you.



Configuration:

Once the dimmer switch is installed and power is restored. Toggle the dimmer switch up and down and confirm you can control your lights manually.
To include the ZEN24 dimmer in the Z-Wave network, I took my Aeotec Z-Stick closer to the dimmer switch. Tapped the Z-Stick once to begin the pairing process, then toggled the ZEN24 dimmer switch up and down quickly three times. At first, my z-stick was not able to pair properly. But repeating this process few times it was successful in recognizing the dimmer switch. I might have toggled the dimmer switch up and down more than five times quickly, instead of three as suggested in the manual.
Took the Z-Stick back into the Raspberry PI, rebooted it and waited until home-assistant showed the new device. Again, it took another reboot for the new dimmer switch to show properly in the device list.



Once the new device is recognized, you can use its unique name, to configure it in your UI and groups within home-assistant



You can now enjoy controlling the lights from your mobile device wherever you are. Using Home-Assistant you can also setup automation rules and group lights together on scenes to match special events in your day to day, like movie night, sleep, etc.




Cons:

In contrast to the previous Zooz switch reviewed, the ZEN24 dimmer switch pairing process took several tries to get it included in my z-wave network. Nonetheless, I was successfully on the third try.
Similar to the ZEN23, the faceplate cover screws did not go all the way thru. I would recommend Zooz to include a set of smaller length faceplate screws in the box.


Pros:

I give the Zooz ZEN24 toggle switch FOUR STARS. Excellent packaging, very good quality, ease to wire and install. Minus one start because of the screw length issue mentioned.
The pairing process was ok, after few steps and some trial and repeating, I had it included in my Z-Wave network.
Works properly with Home-Assistant and Open ZWave


Conclusion:

If you are looking to control your dimmable lights in your Z-Wave network, the Zooz ZEN24 Toggle Switch is a good fit.

Friday, October 14, 2016

Zooz ZEN23 Z-Wave Toggle Switch

Introduction:

In my constant quest of new devices to nurture my smart home, I found the online store of The Smartest House. They offer a wide range of brands, among them Zooz. This review is for the Zooz Z-Wave plus on/off toggle switch ZEN23.


Disclaimer: I was provided with a free product in return for my honest review. All thoughts and opinions expressed herein are my own and not influenced by the developing company, and/or its affiliates in any way.


Description:

The Zooz ZEN23 toggle switch, replaces your existing light switch and allows wireless and manual control of your lights.

I was successfully able to include the Zooz ZEN23 toggle switch, in my Z-Wave network running Home-Assistant.io 0.28 in a Raspberry PI with an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5.


Appearance:

ZOOZ Z-Wave ZEN23 Toggle SwitchI purchased the ZEN23 toggle switch thru a major online retailer, four days later the box was in my front door. The packaging is very well done, and it feels as inside you will find an expensive smart phone instead.

ZOOZ Z-Wave ZEN23 Toggle Switch
The switch is made in China, and it has standard gang box measures, about 2 in. wide.


Features:

Z-Wave Plus 908.42 MHz
Power: 120 VAC, 60 Hz
Max load: 960 W Incandescent, 1800W (15A) Resistive
Min load: 20 Watts
Range: Up to 100 feet line of sight


Installation:

This is an electric device and must be installed according your local electric codes and regulations. As the PDF instructions states, hire a qualified professional to complete the installation for you.

ZOOZ Z-Wave ZEN23 Toggle Switch

It is important to note the switch requires four wires: load, line, neutral and ground. 


Configuration:

Once the switch is installed and power is restored. Toggle the switch up and down and confirm you can control your lights manually.
To include the ZEN23 switch in the Z-Wave network, I took my Aeotec Z-Stick closer to the switch. Tapped the Z-Stick once to begin the pairing process, then toggled the ZEN23 switch up and down quickly three times, waited few seconds and the process was completed. The Z-Stick led stop flashing, and stayed solid indicating successfully paring. Tapped the Z-Stick again to finish the process.

Took the Z-Stick back in the Raspberry PI, launched the web interface for home-assistant, navigated to Developer Tools | States and a new device show up, listed as available.

Home-Assistant

A quick edit of the configuration files to include the new device

Home-Assistant

And is now listed in the web interface.

Home-Assistant


You can now enjoy controlling the lights from your mobile device wherever you are. Using Home-Assistant you can also setup automation rules and group lights together on scenes to match special events in your day to day, like movie night, sleep, etc.


Pros:

I give the Zooz ZEN23 toggle switch FIVE STARS. Excellent packaging, very good quality, ease to install and wire.
The pairing process was a brief, with few short steps I had it included in my Z-Wave network.
Works properly with Home-Assistant and Open ZWave


Cons:

One of the face-plate cover screws did not go all the way thru. I had to cut the screw in half to put it back in.


Conclusion:

If you are looking to control lights in your Z-Wave network, the Zooz ZEN23 Toggle Switch is a good fit, I surely recommend.

Using it for about one week so far, and finding very useful to turn on my garage lights without the need to walk all the way thru, to get to the wall switch.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Custom Cortana commands and Home-assistant.io

HassVoiceCmd

This is an Universal Windows Platform (UWP) application that bootstraps Home Assistant and registers each service/entity as custom Cortana commands.
Source code is in Gthub.com
UI is based on Template10

Requirements

This application was built with Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition.
It requires Newtonsoft.Json.

How it works

You can run the application within Visual Studio, after launched.

Click the menu button and enter your Home-assistant web address, you can also enter a prefix word.
Click Save.
After bootstrapping, it display a list of all the available commands.

To call a command, just speak the prefix together with the phrase as shown in the UI.
For example: "Please turn on the garage light".

Improvements

At this time, it supports simple RESTful commands that require only passing the entity_id
XMLSerializer to properly generate UTF-8 text/file