I am just starting to build my system and I have only installed one of my numerous zwave switches that I have previously (currently) used with a Vera. First off, I saw a post about a 2gig panel being used as a secondary controller to a vera, is this possible with Qolsys panel?
2nd question, does the ADC app not indicate the on/off/dim status of zwave switches?
it seems like it doesn’t and I saw a post that was several years old that seemed to indicate that, which is mind blowing, if that is the case. It’s nice to be able to control lights but I think an essential part of zwave control is to know whether they are on in the first place and what dim level they are at if they are on. It does not seem like the panel or the app has this information. I was also quite underwhelmed when I installed my first switch because in vera there are pages of options to choose as far as setting up these switches. None of this seems to be available on the panel so I can only assume your only option is to use factory defaults for everything, which would be very dissapointing, potentially a deal breaker. Again, the beauty of Zwave is the ability to customize things to your preference. (Indicator light status, dimming rate, even switch invert is possible).The fact that this could be a possibility didn’t even cross my mind because it is just such a basic function.
Have I made a huge mistake? Am I missing something?
Lutron owns the patent on seeing the state of a switch or light via zwave. As a result, neither 2Gig nor Qolsys nor any other controller can actually see the state of the switch unless they paid a licensing fee to Lutron.
That being said, the Qolsys panel itself does show the state of the switch IF it’s the only thing manipulating the device. It only knows that it sent an “on” or “off” command and lights up the light icon on the panel accordingly. This is rather hit or miss though as it doesn’t poll the switch so if someone activated it manually you’re SOL.
As far as setting rules for switches including timed or sensor triggered actions, that’s all done on the ADC website and not on the panel itself.
Just to be clear because this is a frequent topic of frustration for which we’ve always had trouble finding a solid answer…
As I understand it the Lutron patent says that a light switch can not automatically/quickly report on/off/dimmer status changes when the status is changed by physically flipping the switch. In my opinion it’s a bad patent that doesn’t meet the USPTO’s own definition of an invention - that it’s novel, non-obvious and useful - because it seems obvious. They successfully enforced the patent against Leviton and I haven’t heard of another situation when it’s been challenged. Z-Wave controllers can, however, periodically poll light switches and request their status without violating the Lutron patent. That is what 2GIG and Qolsys (optionally?) should do even though it’s inefficient and doesn’t scale well but they currently don’t. It’s being looked into and I hope that some day they will enable that behavior with firmware updates. I’ve also seen someone suggest that the Lutron patent may be expiring this coming February but I’m no lawyer.
In the mean time, the only way to get true status of light switches in Alarm.com today is to use Lutron Caseta or RadioRA 2 light switches which are well supported by Alarm.com via a back-end cloud integration between Alarm.com and Lutron.
So my Qolsys panel knows the status of my lights, why doesn’t alarm.com? Do they choose not to display it because someone could have manually changed it at the switch? They could display it and have a remote refresh. The panel has a get status button, why does alarm.com not support doing that remotely and displaying the status? Seems like an easy fix to a longstanding issue to me.
Since the light status cannot be actively transmitted by the switch, the panel must “observe” the switch state anytime it wants to know. The switch at any point could have been manually flipped, so you can’t go off of last status.
In early firmware versions of the IQ, whenever you accessed the Z-wave menu in the Qolsys panel, background status requests were sent. This resulted in some performance issues at the panel. Now, status can be received on request instead of automatically.
The “Get Status” button is a work-around feature, and yes, I don’t see why it couldn’t be implemented in Alarm.com to give you a way to check status with the app. Unfortunately, it only works for Qolsys, and larger systems will have a very tough time processing simultaneous commands for 20-30 lights in a timely fashion, and there would be a delay to completion. As evidenced by previous firmware versions, lots of simultaneous requests can affect system performance as well.
Requesting individual lights then may be the work-around, but I think that may be viewed as cumbersome in most circumstances.
What we have been pushing for is the panel periodically request status, and any change in state sent to Alarm.com. That way you only need to open the app and see the latest status of the light. There would be a margin for error here, but it would be under a minute.
Ideally, the patent issue would resolve and the lights could simply transmit status upon any local change, but that’s the major roadblock.