Few questions on the ZWave UCM.
The UCM can send commands, but doesnt receive \'live\' status ? You have to poll the network first to determine the status of a particular device to know its status ? ie not like CBUS UCM implementation.
Also, what else is required ? Plan was to get some plugin modules and just the zwave ucm - but you need more kit to set up the zwave network initially ?
Yes, the UCM/Zwave cannot receive status automatically, it has to poll for status unlike C-Bus which is a comprehensive two way protocol
Zwave modules are mainly divided into Controllers and Slaves. Controllers are like remote controls, they can control but any changes not caused by that controller is not known by it. The primary conrtroller is usually a handheld remote control, while Comforts UCM/Zwave acts as a secondary controller which gets its network information from the primary controller. To know the status, the controller has to regularly poll each device. Zwave is basically an X10 replacement. We have used it for some time in the office and I must say it has been pretty reliable.
Another limitation is that the UCM/Zwave cannot be controller by another Zwave remote controller to trigger a response, because in the Zwave network, our device is a controller and not a slave. It appears to be a limitation of the Zwave network which was designed to be a simple to use and setup network
To start a Zwave network, you need to get the modules and the primary remote. These are availablle in UK and EU styles from ACT Solutions (\"Homepro\") and Merten (part of Schneider) have also announced Z-Wave products, but not sure if they are available in the UK. Then you need a UCM/Zwave to connect to Comfort.
To confirm - if you want to action zwave device, but need to know it\'s sate, you\'ll need to interogate the device on the network first in the response ?
How are these status\' stored to be used in a response ?
Yes, you need to interrogate the device on the network first so that the status will be updated inside Comfort\'s counter.
You can then use this stored counter value to trigger a response.
thnx
anything against running zwave device status interogations every second to update the counters ?
Interrogating the network every few seconds will cause a traffic jam as there is quite a lot of transmissions to do this type of updating - remember Zwave is a mesh network there the nodes need to handle traffic between other nodes.
You should only imterrogate when you need to know
This is one of the limtations of the Zwave system, they dont support automatic update of status unfortunately