Monitoring your z-wave devices
Once your z-wave devices are added to Z-Command’s network, you can monitor and control them from the home screen.
Navigate to http://192.168.x.x or https://192.168.x.x (where 192.168.x.x is Z-Command’s IP address as assigned by your network router).
The default Z-Command administrator credentials are
username: admin
password: admin
You should see a list of devices similar to what’s shown below.
The first device, with node ID 1 should be your primary z-wave controller i.e. the USB z-wave dongle. Z-Command transmits information to your other wireless z-wave devices using this node.
Each z-wave device on your network is represented by a distinct rectangle containing the node ID, device name, device location and other information that might be unique to the type of device.
For devices that can be controlled, a blue bar on top of one or more buttons indicate the current state of the z-wave device. No blue bar will be present if Z-Command does not know the current state of the device.
You can specify any device name and location, which you can later use for filtering the devices list.
The box in the upper right hand corner of the screen can be used to filter down the devices list by device name, location and device type. For example, you can type “thermostat” to reduce the list to all the thermostat devices on your network.
Sometimes, a single physical z-wave device actually contains several z-wave devices i.e. it is a multi-instance or multi-channel device. An example is Aeon lab’s power strip which z-command will display as 5 separate rectangles.
Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Smart Energy Power Strip (DSC11-ZWUS)
In the example above, the device with node Id 18 is the root/primary device. While all its sub devices have node Ids prefixed with 18.x.x e.g. 18.2.2. You can only set the location of a root device since you can’t separate sub devices from the root device.
Z-Command has device permissions management that allows the administrator to assign viewing or controlling rights to each user. Only devices the administrator allows a logged-in user to view and/or control will be listed on the devices screen.
Querying devices
Devices will send status updates to Z-Command from time to time, which you will immediately see on the user interface. However, you can request a status update from a device by clicking the “query” button on relevant devices.
Note that querying a “non-listening” device (typically battery-powered) will not result in an immediate update. Non-listening devices go to sleep and will only respond to commands when they wake up. You can specify the wake up interval on the device detail page.
When you click the query button or any other button in Z-Command, you will get a visual feedback which represents the result of the operation you tried to perform. If the button background flashes green, the command was successful. If the button background flashes red, the command failed. You can retry. If the button background flashes blue, then the devices is asleep and the command was queued.
Show querying video
Controlling your z-wave devices
Some z-wave devices have specific actions that can be performed on them. For example, a binary switch can be turned on and off. A thermostat has mode property that can be set to heat, cool, off etc. You will see different buttons depending on the relevant actions available on the z-wave device listing you are viewing.
When you click an action button e.g. “off” on a binary switch, you will get a visual feedback that indicates whether the operation you intended to perform succeeded or failed. [See visual feedback]
Controlling a device successfully depends on whether the logged in user has been granted controlling rights on the target device. If the logged in user only has viewing rights, then the control operation will fail.