[APP Z-Wave] NEO Coolcam Z-Wave devices - Main discussion topic

TedTolboom

jimmy_zeropm said:

@TedTolboom you're welcome. And thanks for editing my post ;-). 

I'm very happy with my results, every problem is gone and everything works like a charm. But the tech-addict in me is still curious what really changed this. Pro Neo conclusion is that the sockets do work fully, I allways wondering if the advanced readings were really a working feature because they never gave any reading. But now the mesh is good, all works fine. And sure to note the much increased distance.

Not easy to say... I can't pinpoint to a technical reason; I do have a mixed network of Neo, Fibaro and Greenwave sockets.
In the same time, also some Z-wave mesh network improvements have been implemented in SW v1.5.x.

What is for sure: the bigger the Z-wave network (more powered devices), the stronger the network...

bvdbos

@Bebopper Best is to install the devices where you want them and then move Homey over there (using an extension-cable or powerbank). Also, @jimmy_zeropm 's experience says it's best to first add Fibaro and then Neo. In this line, it's best to first install the main-powered devices and then the battery-powered devices...

fiek

I can also conform that usings a fibaro wall plug did wonders for my z wave network. I first bought 8 Neo  plugs and 2 door sensors and had many problems with the range. Plugs not working or delays. After adding the fibaro plug everthing works like a charm. Even my plugs work on the attic and ‘technische ruimte’ which is a closed space with concrete walls. In the z wave map almost all the devices are connected through the fibaro wall plug. I am now going to extend my z wave network with Some more stuff.

zimbra

Regarding the difference between the 2 neo motion sensors, I'm really happy with the latest model.
I was ready to double tape the mount to my ceiling but since there seems to be some metal in the ceiling (it's a corner) it just sticks with the magnet in the mount

vaderag

Slightly random question for this thread but related to comments above... If i bought a fibaro plug (purely for range increase for the battery Neo's) can they be used as a dimmer? I.e. can i plug a lamp into it and the plug with modify the current running to the bulb in the same way that a dimmer usually would?

caseda

@vaderag
They can not, they only have a relais inside for on/off, with dimming it would have been 2 to maybe even 3 times as big

Bebopper

Playing around with my new toys, already have some nice flows working with the installed door sensor and motion sensor. Even though I only have one power plug Homey did create a mesh network with it. I now however have moved the power plug (to hopefully get some more coverage in another part of my house) and am wondering whether I need to reset the z-wave network for it to 'notice'  this. Is this necessary or not needed?

What does the factory reset of z-wave network option in Homey actually do? (is it the 'reset for the mesh network I am referring to above?)

It is clear to me that I need more powered z-wave devices, the range of the battery z-wave devices is by far not good enough to reach Homey from all around my house. Think the best/cheapest way to do this is by adding more power plugs, so I guess I will place another order for a bunch of these

Think I will also order one Fibaro wall plug as I read above that it can do miraculous things for the quality of your mesh network

I would like to setup a flow to send a notification to my phone when the battery of the z-wave devices is low; I see a card for "The battery level changed"  and another two cards with " The battery alarm turned on" and "The battery alarm turned off". Which of these cards should I use to get this warning?

vaderag

It seems that Fibaro don't do a UK power plug so I don't have the luxury of being able to use those to boost
I'll have to hope that other brand wall plugs do the same thing

Do these PIR's def have the ability to detect light level? That and motion are essential to me. Presumably they have no tamper detection either?

@Bebopper
I would assume that you want "The battery alarm turned on" for low battery
Battery level changed is i guess for monitoring power consumption

TedTolboom

Bebopper said:

What does the factory reset of z-wave network option in Homey actually do? (is it the 'reset for the mesh network I am referring to above?)
....
I would like to setup a flow to send a notification to my phone when the battery of the z-wave devices is low; I see a card for "The battery level changed"  and another two cards with " The battery alarm turned on" and "The battery alarm turned off". Which of these cards should I use to get this warning?

A reset of the Z-wave network will remove all devices from the Z-wave network and reset it completely (changing encryption keys)...

"The battery level changed": Triggers the flow when the battery level has changed, providing a tag with the new battery level to be used in the flow. 
" The battery alarm turned on": Triggers the flow when the device has triggered it's internal battery alarm levels. Can be used to send an notification to the owner of Homey that he or she needs to replace the batteries

vaderag said:

It seems that Fibaro don't do a UK power plug so I don't have the luxury of being able to use those to boost
I'll have to hope that other brand wall plugs do the same thing

Do these PIR's def have the ability to detect light level? That and motion are essential to me. Presumably they have no tamper detection either?

There are several options for UK like indicated above... 95% of my plugs are installed at places not in plain sight... so yes, it could also be ugly and bulky, as long as it operates reliably (absolute WAF killer if not)...

For the few in full sight, I either use the Neo power plug, or a Fibaro (or Aeotec) build in switch or dimmer module, which is connected behind a switch (to enable controls) or behind an in wall socket...

quakerix

Do you guys have sometimes with the PIR sensors a period of time +- 15 minutes that it is not sending that there's movement while people are moving in front of the sensor? My time-out value is about 10 minutes. If no movement after 10 min, lights go out. 

But sometimes, the sensor is just not sending anything for about 15 min:






If I compare the log file with the Insights. It looks like there is no 15 minutes that no motion was detected. Any idea's? My reset counter takes place when movement is detected. Or should it take place when movement has stopped?

vaderag

There are several options for UK like indicated above... 95% of my plugs are installed at places not in plain sight... so yes, it could also be ugly and bulky, as long as it operates reliably (absolute WAF killer if not)...

For the few in full sight, I either use the Neo power plug, or a Fibaro (or Aeotec) build in switch or dimmer module, which is connected behind a switch (to enable controls) or behind an in wall socket...Thanks

Isn't the Neo EU/US plug style only tho?

Hadn't considered the Fibaro switches/dimmer for the plug sockets - are they rated to 13A + then? I'd always just assumed they were for light switches only (not sure why) 

P.S. What is WAF?

bvdbos

Wife Acceptance Factor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_acceptance_factor

vaderag

Ah ha!

Back to the thread subject - I'm comparing the Coolcam PIR's with the Fibaro ones and obviously they only have the PIR and light level detection - fine. 

What i'm wondering tho is can you set the sensitivity like you can with the Fibaro? Because I have a cat and I dont want her setting things off...

Thanks!

Rocodamelshe

Yes u can:

Mathijs

Is there any reason the 24 and 25 devices won't respond to commands?  They work if I move them in the same room as the Homey.

Mod break: moved question to Neo app main discussion topic

RuudvB

Mathijs said:

Is there any reason the 24 and 25 devices won't respond to commands?  They work if I move them in the same room as the Homey.

Mod break: moved question to Neo app main discussion topic

In my personal experience: distance, walls or other thing blocking the z-wave signal.

PieDjee

Hi, just got my first neo coolcam pir. I want to make the following flow

IF movement AND light below <x> AND time between 23:00 - 7:00 THEN turn on light on lowest dimlevel.

However, I can't seem to find a threshold for light level in homey flows?

Rocodamelshe

Drag the normal logic card to the middle , make it " is less then" and put in a tag from ur light. Tags can be found on the top of ur screen.

RuudvB

PieDjee said:

Hi, just got my first neo coolcam pir. I want to make the following flow

IF movement AND light below <x> AND time between 23:00 - 7:00 THEN turn on light on lowest dimlevel.

However, I can't seem to find a threshold for light level in homey flows?

Did you install the NEO homey-app? If so, there should be a card for the IF column "movement is detected" or something similar (I use the dutch version: De bewegingsmelder gaat aan)

PieDjee

RuudvB said:

PieDjee said:

Hi, just got my first neo coolcam pir. I want to make the following flow

IF movement AND light below <x> AND time between 23:00 - 7:00 THEN turn on light on lowest dimlevel.

However, I can't seem to find a threshold for light level in homey flows?

Did you install the NEO homey-app? If so, there should be a card for the IF column "movement is detected" or something similar (I use the dutch version: De bewegingsmelder gaat aan)

Movement is not the issue, but the threshold for light level. But I think Rocodamelshe has the solution.

Phuturist

TedTolboom said:

Jeromes said:

Today I received the Neo Touch single wall switch. When I try to add it to Homey, the switch is added as 'unknown Z-Wave device'. Homey also tells me there is no app installed matching the device. I have the latest Neo app installed, tried the app store and also the latest GitHub version. They both give the same problem.

Nonetheless, the switch does work and the status also changes correctly. Main problem is that I cannot change any settings. If I am correct, the single switch is already supported (mentioned on the app store page). In that case it should install like all the other Neo devices. Or is this still in development? I am still on FW 1.3.1 btw.

@jeromes the switch that @m-ruiter ordered to test and add it to the Neo app was lost... so we could not retrieve the product ID's and verify the functioning of the single switch yet.

Can you post a screenshot of the product ID's? Based on that we can include it into the next update of the Neo app...

Is this still in the pipeline or should I put in a PR myself. Just installed a single switch today to find out it's not supported yet.

JBenjamins

Hi,

I just added one (1) Neo wall plug to Homey and after I found out how to pair it (press the button multiple times really quickly!) it is neatly showing up in the z-wave network map and all.

It even shows power usage and displays the state of the plug. Sometimes. When controlling the plug from the device settings within Homey, it is very unreliable. Sometimes it responds, but 2 out of 3 times it fails and just ignores the state. The switch remains on, but Homey seems to think it is off - at least, that's what is shown in the device card. The same goes for manually changing the state with the switch on the wall plug; sometimes it is displayed properly by the device card, most of the times it simply is ignored. The device is less than 2 meters away from Homey.

If I take a peek in the logfile for geeks, I notice that in the event the status is not properly transferred, this message appears: Error: TRANSMIT_COMPLETE_NO_ACK

For completeness sake, this is a failing transmission: 

[2017-09-18T22:36:50.698Z] Node[2]: sendData to COMMAND_CLASS_SWITCH_BINARY, params 0x01ff

[2017-09-18T22:36:50.698Z] Command[86] start: sendData

[2017-09-18T22:36:50.700Z] ProcessSendData[76]: To node: 2 with data: 0x2501ff and txOptions: ACK,AUTO_ROUTE

[2017-09-18T22:36:50.907Z] ProcessSendData[76]: Error: TRANSMIT_COMPLETE_NO_ACK

[2017-09-18T22:36:50.911Z] Command[86] end: sendData

And this one succeeds:

[2017-09-18T22:36:54.291Z] Node[2]: sendData to COMMAND_CLASS_SWITCH_BINARY, params 0x0100

[2017-09-18T22:36:54.292Z] Command[87] start: sendData

[2017-09-18T22:36:54.294Z] ProcessSendData[77]: To node: 2 with data: 0x250100 and txOptions: ACK,AUTO_ROUTE

[2017-09-18T22:36:54.426Z] Command[87] end: sendData

Is it just me, or would it make sense to keep trying until no error 'TRANSMIT_COMPLETE_NO_ACK' has been received?
What is especially worrying is that the status of the device is not in sync with reality - I thought z-wave would overcome this. I am not sure if this would need to be handled by the app or the main Homey z-wave implementation...

Is there anything else that can be done to improve the reliability, because like this it is a bit useless - I could just as well gamble with Kaku

Other than that, thanks a lot for creating this app Marco, it is surely appreciated!

RuudvB

JBenjamins said:

Is it just me, or would it make sense to keep trying until no error 'TRANSMIT_COMPLETE_NO_ACK' has been received?
What is especially worrying is that the status of the device is not in sync with reality - I thought z-wave would overcome this. I am not sure if this would need to be handled by the app or the main Homey z-wave implementation...

Is there anything else that can be done to improve the reliability, because like this it is a bit useless - I could just as well gamble with Kaku

Other than that, thanks a lot for creating this app Marco, it is surely appreciated!

No, it is certainly not you alone, I have wondered about this several times. Most of the time the working solution is shorten the distance to homey or another grid-powered z-wave device.

That said, this does not explain why the z-wave protocol stops pulling the device to get an accurate update. Could of course be that this is too processor intensive to keep going for some infinite time. If so, it could be an idea to create a timeout parameter that we can set ourselves? Choosing a reasonable time-frame with a max. of something like 60 seconds?

Maybe some of our z-wave wizards have some comment to this?

JBenjamins

RuudvB said:

JBenjamins said:

Is it just me, or would it make sense to keep trying until no error 'TRANSMIT_COMPLETE_NO_ACK' has been received?

No, it is certainly not you alone, I have wondered about this several times. Most of the time the working solution is shorten the distance to homey or another grid-powered z-wave device.

That said, this does not explain why the z-wave protocol stops pulling the device to get an accurate update. Could of course be that this is too processor intensive to keep going for some infinite time. If so, it could be an idea to create a timeout parameter that we can set ourselves? Choosing a reasonable time-frame with a max. of something like 60 seconds?

Maybe some of our z-wave wizards have some comment to this?

Thanks for your confirmation. Regardless of reducing the distance (I will try and add some more nodes to the z-wave network; I have a couple of wall plugs) this would not overcome the real problem, i.e. there is no correct feedback/status of the device. Like you say, it would make sense to actively poll the device for it's status, after the NO_ACK error was received.

Something else I found is that right now the wall plug isn't plugged in at all, but the device card still shows power usage (possibly cached) and acts as if I can control the device (flip the switch etc). This is at least a bit confusing, if a (z-wave) device is offline shouldn't it be greyed out or something? 

Thanks again for any insights - I am completely new to z-wave.

mruiter

z-wave is having a nasty bug issue in homey 1.5.x series. 
a group of devices can not be controlled anymore but do report in power usages for example.
A pull the plug can help when the state of the plugs or dimmers hang. or when you have a motion sensor that doesnt report or hangs on for lets say tamper alarm.


And again, plugs that have been bought at gearbest seem to be of lower quality somehow.
The range of these plugs seems to be a lot less then when you buy a plug on ali express or robbshop

mruiter

For the single wall switch,  it has been added to the sdkv2 version currently in test.
I hope to find some time tomorrow to finish the action cards for the siren and the kwh usage reset on the plug so the neo app is ready for the last test before it will be available in appstore.

Its already in my github under com.neo.sdkv2 but i would not advise novice people to use it, because when you switch to the sdkv2 its not a easy switch back and it might contain some errors 

JBenjamins

mruiter said:

And again, plugs that have been bought at gearbest seem to be of lower quality somehow.
The range of these plugs seems to be a lot less then when you buy a plug on ali express or robbshop

Well... I got mine from the sale at AliExpress sometime ago... So should be fine, right? 

Thanks again for all your support!

RuudvB

mruiter said:

z-wave is having a nasty bug issue in homey 1.5.x series. 
a group of devices can not be controlled anymore but do report in power usages for example.
A pull the plug can help when the state of the plugs or dimmers hang. or when you have a motion sensor that doesnt report or hangs on for lets say tamper alarm.


And again, plugs that have been bought at gearbest seem to be of lower quality somehow.
The range of these plugs seems to be a lot less then when you buy a plug on ali express or robbshop

I already guessed that we are experiencing some kind of bug in 1.5.x, good to know that it is confirmed. However for the discussion above this should be minor. What I described I already experienced with 1.3.1 and below. The feeling that polling a z-wave device simply stops after no_ack, I don't feel very satisfying. 

Like @JBenjamins stated, this way we could use much cheaper 433 stuff. We all know that 433 does not confirm actions. Z-wave however is supposed to check and acknowledge.
I wouldn't know how, but having some kind of flow to activate for testing acknowledgement would make sense to me. Something like a push notification or homey saying something like "I have checked that the lights have been turned on" would be very welcome. The opposite also, saying that the light could not be switched on because of a timeout.

Any idea how to accomplish something like this?

vaderag

Just installed my Neo Coolcam Sensors and all seems to be working well, except the option to have the LED show on movement... i have set this to on, but it doesnt come on... I have Homey set to announce when there is movement (for now) so I know it's detecting it.. Any ideas?

martijn1980

Goedenavond iedereen,

Enige tijd geleden heb ik de NEO Wall Plug aangeschaft met het idee om het Klik Aan Klik Uit systeem volledig te vervangen door Z-wave producten. Helaas heb ik tot dusver geen goede ervaringen met het installeren van deze NEO Wall Plug. 

De applicatie is geïnstalleerd en Homey is geüpdatet naar zijn laatste firmware. Daarnaast is deze wall plug direct naast Homey geplaatst en krijg ik de volgende melding bij het installeren van dit nieuwe apparaat: "Het interview is verlopen. Geen apparaat gevonden."

Op sommige momenten wordt de wall plug wel herkend; maar wordt de setup onderbroken en afgesloten. 
Wie ervaart deze problemen en/of weet hiervoor een oplossing? 

Alvast bedankt voor het meedenken.