Recently my colleague Frank (props to him) discovered this device which could well be a good alternative to the (ever delayed) Qees power strip. We both decided to order one of these devices. It’s a very reasonably priced device (€50,-) for it’s specifications:
- 6 switchable and measurable sockets
- Overcurrent (10A fuse) -and surge protection
- 0.1W precision on load monitoring (energy measurement)
Here’s a picture of the device:
I was very curious whether this device would work with HouseAgent out of the box. After pairing the device (piece of cake, if you follow the manual) with my Aeon Labs z-stick, I tried to add the device to the HouseAgent database. This is what I got:
Hmm odd values, at that point I had no clue what values to expect. So, I decided to give Homeseer a go to so how it would recognize this device. After importing the device into Homeseer, this is what I got (a huge pile of devices/values!):
(click to enlarge)
Aha, so it’s a multi instance z-wave device! Notice the multiple instances underneath the root device (device 8). I suspect this is what causes the issue in HouseAgent/open-zwave, looking at the logfile of HouseAgent I noticed this log line:
2012-03-20 17:47:19:953 All endpoints in this device are the same as endpoint 1. Searching for the other endpoints...
It seems only the first instance is detected and the root device, I need to troubleshoot this a bit further.
I decided to play around a bit with the device from within Homeseer, all the functionality seems to work as advertised (the metering works, switching individual sockets works!). The nice thing is that all the sockets are measured individually, but also the power bar itself is measured and switchable as a whole. One minor drawback of this device is the fact that you need to poll it for it status (it doesn’t advertise it’s status on the z-wave network). Another point of attention is the fact that GreenWave doesn’t support this PowerNode without their own gateway product. Although it appears to work just fine, I take no responsibility if it doesn’t work for you!
Conclusion
This is a very nice device for it’s price, in fact it does all I expect of a power bar. This bar is going to be great for my TV setup! There’s some work to be done on the software side (HouseAgent), but I am pretty confident I can get it to work with some effort.