I’ve been struggling for months to get a 4-in-1 Sensor to work in Home Assistant. Initially, I got a reply from Inovelli support back in the summer, but then they went radio silent and I never got any help from them. I’m pretty new to Home Assistant and I’ve never owned any Inovelli devices before so my knowledge of both is pretty minimal.
I’m using an AEON Labs Z-stick Gen 5 US, and the Sensor appears to have initialized in Home Assistant. There are several entities battery, temp, lux, rel. hum, burglar, alarm type, alarm level, and battey level. The values don’t change very much, for example, I just moved the sensor from a dark location to a light location, and the lux value didn’t change. A red light toggles on/off on the sensor when I pass by it, but other than that I don’t see any changes in the HA log or interface.
I tried setting up an automation following instructions from Inovelli to have it turn on a light when motion was detected, but it didn’t work. Actually, the instructions weren’t up to date with the current HA UI, so who knows if I had it set up right. However, when I clicked “execute” on the configuration page the light came on but it would not execute from motion detection.
I followed the directions to set up the LZW60 from Inovelli, but I don’t have any confidence at all that this is working correctly. So, I’m hoping to find some help here, or possibly direction to a help source before I put these sensors on eBay and buy something that works.
The brightness, temperature, and humidity sensors are on a timer interval (config parameters 101, 102 and 103). Every time the interval is reached, the sensor value is checked. If the sensor value differs from the previous value by more than the value set in parameters 111, 112, or 113 (or if parameter 110 is set to always send updates), the sensor will send a report to the hub.
For example, if temperature interval is set to 1 hour with a threshold of 5 degrees, and the sensor sent its most recent report at 1pm with a value of 50 degrees:
Sensor will check the temperature every hour
When the sensor checks the temperature, if the value is greater than 55 or less than 45, it will send a report.
You can change the reporting intervals down as low as once per minute for brightness/temp/humidity, but the lower the interval, the faster the battery will drain.
Back when I was using the built-in zwave component, I had to create a custom sensor to handle the motion detection
Thanks for your reply, jtronicus. That’s more information that I’ve gotten anywhere else in 6 months. I actually ran across your post about the binary sensor through a google search, but the problems is, I don’t know where these values get set??? And, templates are so new, I really don’t know how to use them yet. Where the heck can one find this information??? So, you’re saying that if I use a sensor template for the Inovelli 4-in-1 I can build an automation???
A template Binary Sensor allows us to take a sensor that normally reports a value (in this case the “burglar” sensor) and create a new sensor out of it that reports an ON/OFF state. This makes it easier to create automations because you are triggering off an ON of OFF state instead of a numeric value. For the template above, we are treating a value of ‘8’ to mean ON, and any other value to mean OFF.
I am not sure exactly what your sensor’s name is, but it may look similar to sensor.inovelli_lzw60_4_in_1_sensor_burglar (you should be able to use the template I provided above but replace sensor_name with whatever name you want to call the new sensor, replace sensor.bathroom with the actual name of your sensor, and place it in your configuration.yaml file.
Most of the information on templates I learned from the Home Assistant website: Template - Home Assistant
I’m sure you could create automations without a sensor template, but I found that the template was easier to work with (and looks better if you add the sensor to your dashboard). Can you share the code for your existing automation?
I was talking about the parameters/values like 101, 102, etc. I was able to find them in the config/ozw_config/inovelli/lsw60.xml file.
When I was talking about templates being new, I was actually referring to blueprints. I know they were just introduced, so that should tell you how familiar I am with HA. I’m really just learning.
I can do that. THANKS!
id: ‘1609790227441’
alias: Laundry light on by motion
description: Turn the laundry light on when motion detected
trigger:
I havent used blueprints yet either. I actually switched to nodered for automations a few months back, and no longer use the built-in automations in HA.
A couple observations on your automation:
entity_id: binary_sensor.inovelli_unknown_type_000d_id_0001_sensor this is actually the wrong sensor. The sensor that changes when motion is detected should look more like this: sensor.inovelli_unknown_type_000d_id_0001_sensor_burglar
minutes: 1 you probably dont want a for section on this automation. What you are currently saying is to turn on the laundry room light when motion has been detected continuously for over 1 minute. This means you will be walking around in the dark for a whole minute before the light turns on.
This is an automation to turn the light on only. You probably want a second automation to turn the light off when motion stops being detected.
Based on the entity_id you provided, I think your binary_sensor template should look like this:
- id: '12345678'
alias: Laundry light on by motion
description: Turn the laundry light on when motion detected
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.laundry_motion
to: on
action:
- service: switch.turn_on
entity_id: switch.honeywell_unknown_type_5052_id_3033_switch
Automation 2:
- id: '98765432'
alias: Laundry light off after motion cleared
description: Turn the laundry light off when no motion has been detected for 1 minute
trigger:
- platform: state
entity_id: binary_sensor.laundry_motion
to: off
for:
minutes: 1
action:
- service: switch.turn_off
entity_id: switch.honeywell_unknown_type_5052_id_3033_switch
THANK YOU!! I hope to be able to get back to this later this afternoon, and hopefully, with your generous help, I can make it work!
Yes, I did know a second automation would be necessary to turn the lights off, but I was just hoping to get the first one working.
One question I’m still curious about though…does the sensor not send a signal to HA that is recorded in the logbook when a motion event occurs??? Thanks, and have a good day!
I am not 100% sure on that one. For me, the logbook does not appear to track any of my sensors (but it does track binary_sensor). I have a feeling that certain sensor types are automatically excluded from the logbook. You should be able to see it in the history section though.
OK, I’ve placed your code into my configuration.yaml file and the automation code for the first automation into the automation.yaml file. On reboot, HA came up with Safe Mode Activated. I did not replace the original ID in the automations.yaml file, but left it with the original value. Here’s a screenshot of the error.
This is my configuration.yaml file. Sorry for the formatting. I didn’t see a way to paste in a code block. Also, I removed the api keys for my weather station. Line 20 where the error occurred is where the binary sensor is defined. I’ve removed the binary_sensor code, rebooted, and HA seems normal. Any ideas?
homeassistant:
customize: !include customize.yaml
Configure a default setup of Home Assistant (frontend, api, etc)
default_config:
Uncomment this if you are using SSL/TLS, running in Docker container, etc.
entity_config:
light.leviton_unknown_type_1706_id_0334_level:
name: Basement Steps
description: Dimmable strip lights on the steps to the Basement
display_categories: LIGHT
entity_config:
switch.leviton_dzpa1_1lw_plug_in_appliance_module_switch:
name: Basement Fan
description: Basement fan to blow cool air upstairs
display_categories: SWITCH
With the .yaml file format, its important to make sure the spacing and formatting is correct. I cant really tell if the spacing is correct on your post above because it was not posted as a code block. Could you re-post it (or post it on a site like pastebin.com)?
Its also worth double-checking to make sure the sensor name is correct. My guess is that it is named sensor.inovelli_unknown_type_000d_id_0001_sensor_burglar, but I may be wrong.
I knew the spacing for .yaml, like Python, is critical, and I’m pretty sure my config file was OK. I’m going to try another sensor because I’ve seen some posts related to the burglar sensor and I’ve seen that as an entity in Home Assistant. I’ve restored my configuration.yaml file to it’s previous state, so there’s no code to share for now, but I’ll make this “burglar” change and see what happens. Thanks for following up.
Wondering if you’re still around?? You helped so much with this install that I wanted to ask you about a second.
I’ve recently migrated from the Home Assistant standard Zwave integration to the ZwaveJS2MQTT integration. I’ve had another Inovelli 4-in-1 Sensor laying around and I thought I’d try to bring it into use. Should I follow the same instructions that you laid out for the previous install, or since I’ve migrated to the newer integration, can I just “include” the new sensor as typical Zwave devices are added to Home Assistant?
You should be able to just include the device, and everything should just work. With zwaveJS2MQTT, the device automatically detects as a binary_sensor.
I have it up and running, thanks to your help, jtronicus!
I’m curious about something, though. These devices seem to have a very minimal detection range?? In other words, I need to pass fairly close, say within 5 feet, and almost directly on axis to activate the motion sensor. Is this typical? Is it possible I have it incorrectly oriented? The red LED glows in the lower right corner of the device as I now have it mounted on the wall.
I couldn’t find any type of activation map in the docs, so I was hoping you might know??
