Full Power Inclusion

Revision as of 01:23, 5 January 2009

In order for Vera to use Z-Wave devices, those devices must be "paired" or "included" into Vera's Z-Wave network. Generally this is done by removing Vera's black Z-Wave dongle and bringing it within 3 feet (1 meter) of the Z-Wave device you want included and then turn on/off or otherwise activating the Z-Wave device. This is called "low power inclusion" because the wireless signals used to talk with the Z-Wave device in order to include the device are intentionally sent at a very low power so that only devices that are very close to the dongle will get included. This way if you live in, say an apartment, and your neighbors also have Z-Wave devices, you do not need to worry that when you are including/pairing your Z-Wave devices that your neighbor will at the same time activate one of their Z-Wave devices and it gets included in your Z-Wave network by mistake. The other advantage to the standard low power inclusion is that you get immediate feedback on Vera's black Z-Wave dongle that the new Z-Wave device was successfully paired because the blinking light on the dongle momentarily stops blinking. This is particularly useful if you're having trouble pairing a node because you can reset the node and get instant feedback that it's working.

If there are no neighbors within a 20 foot (about 6 meter) range of Vera, you might also try "full power" inclusion. This means you leave Vera's Z-Wave dongle connected and Vera will use the normal, full power setting of the Z-Wave network to try to include nodes. To do this, go to 'Devices', choose 'Z-Wave options', as shown here. On the pull-down change to the left of the go button change 'low power' to 'full power'. If you want to reset/exclude nodes, instead of including them, change the first pull-down to say 'Exclude'. If you leave the 2nd pull down at 'one', then as soon as Vera has included/excluded one node, Vera will stop trying. If you change it to say 'Multiple', then for however many seconds you specify in the 'timeout' box (default 30) you can include/exclude as many nodes as you want. You can also change the type pull down if you want to limit the type of nodes being included/excluded. When you're all done, click Go.

Full power inclusion doesn't always work. Only newer Z-Wave devices support it, and, they don't always support the full 'mesh network' functions needed to reliably include. So you can use full power inclusion to pick up as many nodes as you can, and then remove Vera's Z-Wave dongle and carry it around to pick up the nodes that you couldn't get with full power inclusion.