Will a scene controller work with xTension

[James Sentman]

Short answer yes, they work with XTension. Long answer but not always the way you'd expect. XTension has a zwave device type for scene that will turn on and off in response to reception of scene commands. But it doesn't always work that way. Some of the remotes/controllers wont let you create a scene that doesn't have any devices bound to it, so you can't just send an on and off for a scene unless it's directly controlling at least one light. So forget about using it for controlling other types of lights or things that dont necessarily involve a light. On the Vera with the remotes I've got to test with there is no scene off event that you can trap for individual buttons. You can only trap a single master scene off event that will run whenever any of them presses the off button. This is a pain too but maybe surmountable.

I can't tell if the one you're looking at will have those problems or not, but it's definitely not going to be a simple drop in replacement for the X10 remotes. It may be worth experimenting with one, but don't buy a case of them till you've tested what exactly it's capable of.



On Sep 10, 2014, at 10:00 AM, WILLIAM J HUSLER <bhusler at me.com> wrote:

> Greetings all!
> 
> I have some 4 button X10 wall switches that are starting to fail (I'm sure it's just contacts again, but I'm tired of uninstalling them and burnishing the contacts). I would like to find something in the Z-Wave world to replace them and it seems this would be a suitable substitute:  ENERWAVE Z-Wave 7 Button Scene Controller ZWN-SC7, but only if the "scenes" will be transmitted to xTension for proper processing. I would envision separate units for each scene (or at least a unit script that can tell which scene was requested). Any thoughts?

Thanks,
 	James


James Sentman                       http://sentman.com		http://MacHomeAutomation.com