Aeotec Micro Smart Switch & Home Assistant

Several weeks ago my long awaited Z-Wave module for the Pine64 arrived. I managed to get open-zwave  installed on Debian on the Pi, found it was on /dev/ttyS2, but this week ran into trouble setting up my first Z-Wave device, the Aeotec Micro Switch.

Tailing the OZW_Log.txt I could see it get added to the network OK, but it would immediately show as dead. I found some advice online suggesting the security key needed to be added as per the Home-Assistant Adding secure devices tutorial. This did help, but it still wasn’t working right.

Eventually tried pointing the config_path to the openzwave config path – and suddenly things came to life and has been working well since.

zwave:
  usb_path: /dev/ttyS2
  config_path: /srv/hass/src/python-openzwave/openzwave/config

One Z-Wave parameter on the Aeotec did surprise me – it doesn’t default to reporting to the controller if the switch state has been changed locally (i.e. someone flicks the switch); so the controller doesn’t find out until it next polls.

I called the set_zwave_parameter service on Home Assistant to send a basic report when the state changed, default is 0, 1 sends a message to say something has changed, 2 sends a report showing what has changed.

{
  "entity_id": "switch.ensuite_towel_rail_switch_5",
  "parameter": "80",
  "length": "1",
  "value": "2"
}