Something easy

When doing my own Z-Wave installation I have decided to make it without rush with simple steps. As such I have started with measuring temperature. When I moved in I have prepared for this 6-wired cable going along the garage wall and outside to the garden. My RazBerry controller is waiting at home and I gather equipment. I plan to limit soldering and use more connectors – some may be too big but I do not make precise probes (yet).

Fibaro’s Universal Binary Sensor allows to connect up to 4 temperature sensors DS18B20, 2 binary sensors, alarm detectors and works with any Z-Wave controller. At first I plan to use 2 Dallas sensors – in the garden and storage room near the garage.

Schema overview

DS18B20 uses I2C protocol to send temperature data to receiver – my Fibaro sensor in this case. Pay attention to connecting these two elements – it is not complex. Generic connection schema is the following

Temperature sensor assembly

First I add some wires to DS sensor to have easy and comfortable way of attaching it to the line. I plan then to hide outdoor sensor in plastic cap not exposed to the sun.

I connect wired sensor to communication line using small screw connectors and put into the cap.

This sensor goes to the garden and similar one is connected parallelly to the same line in the storage room.

In the middle of garage and more or less in the middle of the line I cut the wire and put Z-Wave sensor with battery in the mounting box. I used 12V battery which turned out to be low – for the time being I switched to 12V LED power supply. Later on I want to move to battery mode to limit number of cables running around.

When all is connected we can continue with…

Inclusion

Each Z-Wave device must be included in network by controller before it is usable. If your device was earlier used in another network it must be either reseted or excluded first. For Fibaro sensor it is:

• Inclusion: set controller in inclusion mode and press button on the sensor quickly 3 times. Sensor must be directly visible by the controller (no routing) and for me it works best if it is relatively close – 2 meters.
• Reset: Turn off sensor, press button and turn power on. Keep button pressed for around 10 seconds and turn off. Do not forget to exclude sensor by force if you have reseted it.

Go to your Smarhome UI to inclussion section and press Start Inclusion button and press 3 times button on Fibaro sensor.

If everything goes well you should have your device added. There may be a problem that interview is 99% completed and system will ask to retry – I found out it is due to some bug and does not disturb in normal work. Simply allow configuration process to complete manually. You will see under primary sensor both temperature sensors and available input/output

Using Expert UI https://find.z-wave.me/expert/# you can configure sensor to be of Fibaro Universal Binary Sensor. This will make UI more readable and advanced Z-Wave parameters will be more readable.

Congratulation – you have your first Z-Wave device installed. You can download Z-Wave application on your mobile also and check how it works.