Home Assistant: Install Inovelli Z-Wave Devices

Home Assistant is a powerhouse when it comes to managing and automating your Z-Wave devices. I’ve recently picked up a couple of Inovelli Red Series Dimmer Switches and want to install and integrate them into my Home Assistant install. Inovelli Z-Wave Devices are great devices and these ones represent my first foray into Z-Wave. They have been a big upgrade (for the same prices) from my Insteon switches. While I haven’t yet played with all the features, these switches offer colour coded light bars which can change colours with different events (e.g. turn red if you’ve left your garage door open), they offer activation of up to 10 scenes (with multi tap), they save their last state in the event of power loss and they also do energy monitoring! Also many of you might be interested to know that they don’t require a neutral wire. This article is going to be about integrating these Inovelli switches with your Home Assistant installation although much of the same process should also be applicable for other brands. And so, let get started with Home Assistant: Install Inovelli Z-Wave Devices!

There is a new Z-Wave JS integration in Home Assistant, but I have heard of some migration challenges and mixed reviews, and so I am currently in the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix boat”. That being said the Open Z-Wave configuration in the guide is deprecated.

This article is part of my Home Automation series and you can check out other Home Automation articles on this site which may also be interesting or helpful.

What You Will Need:

1. a machine (e.g. Raspberry Pi) running Home Assistant
2. a PC to download files to and upload to your Home Assistant machine
3. a Z-Wave USB dongle HUB (such as Aotec) plugged into your Home Assistant machine
4. at least one Inovelli (or other) Z-Wave device already wired and physically installed and within range of your Z-wave HUB

Download and Install Open Z-Wave Config Files

The first thing we are going to do is download the Open Z-Wave config files. On your PC go to the OpenZWave Github Page and download the zip file by clicking the green code button at the top right and then clicking Download ZIP from the drop down menu.

On your Home Assistant device create the /config/ozwave/ folder. You can do this via samba (windows) shares or by connecting via SSH to your Home Machine. Now open the zip file you’ve just downloaded to your PC and within the zip file navigate to open-zwave-1.4.zip\open-zwave-1.4. You will need to copy the config folder to the /config/ozwave/ folder. It will look something like below:

If you navigate this config folder on your Home Assistant Machine, you will notice that it has a number of different folders for Zwave manufactures each which contain configs for various devices.

Now that is done, you will need to download the inovelli zwave config from the GitHub page. Do that same this as above – click the green code button and click Download ZIP. We are going to be moving the files within the ZIP file folder inovelli_zwave_config-master.zip\inovelli_zwave_config-master\config\inovelli to the /config/ozwave/config/inovelli directory on you Home Assistant machine.

Config OpenZWave

Now that all of the config files are copied you your Home Assistant machine, we need to configure Open Z-Wave.

Edit the config/ozwave/config/manufacturer_specific.xml file on your Home Assistant machine. The easiest way to do this is by using the file editor in the Home Assistant WebUI, but you can also edit via the samba shares or via SSH if you’re more comfortable that way.

You need to look for the section that looks like this:

<Manufacturer id="031E" name="Inovelli">
</Manufacturer>

If you find a section with this, leave it alone and keep searching:

<Manufacturer id="0312" name="Inovelli">

You need to change the correct section to look like this:

<Manufacturer id="031E" name="Inovelli">
	<Product type="0002" id="0001" name="LZW30-SN Switch Red Series" config="inovelli/lzw30-sn.xml"/>
	<Product type="0001" id="0001" name="LZW31-SN Dimmer Red Series" config="inovelli/lzw31-sn.xml"/>
	<Product type="0005" id="0001" name="LZW42 Multi-Color Bulb" config="inovelli/lzw42.xml"/>
	<Product type="0006" id="0001" name="LZW41 Multi-White Bulb" config="inovelli/lzw41.xml"/>
	<Product type="0007" id="0001" name="LZW40 Dimmable  Bulb" config="inovelli/lzw40.xml"/>
</Manufacturer>

Enabling OpenZwave

Great! Now Z-Wave is configure now lets enable Z-Wave. First we need to know what the the USB path is of your USB Z-Wave dongle. Find the usb_path by navigating to: supervisor menu -> system tab -> host system card -> hardware button within the Home Assistant WebUI.

Now that we know the USB path, we need to edit the /config/configuration.yaml by inserting the following text in at the bottom of the file:

zwave:
  usb_path: /dev/ttyACM0
  config_path: /config/ozwave/config

Of course you will need to replace the usb_path with the correct path of your USB device as discovered above.

Restart your Home Assistant machine.

Once rebooted, navigate to the following configuration -> integrations -> configure on Z-wave card.

If everything is setup correctly, you will be on the Z-Wave Network Management page and you will see an card at the top which says “Z-Wave Network Started”, like the image below. Congratulations, your Z-Wave network is up and running!

Add (Inovelli) Devices to Your Z-Wave Network

On the same Z-Wave Network Management page as above, you will see options for your network, including “Heal Network”, “Add Node” and “Remove Node”.

To add a device, your will want to put Home Assistant into inclusion mode (start the inclusion process) by pressing the “Add Node” button. Once that is done you can go to your Z-Wave device and set it into pairing mode. For the Inovelli Red Dimming Switches I’ve used, this means pressing the config button three times in close succession. The device LED notification bar will flash blue and when it finds the network, it will turn green. If the process fails, it will turn red.

Once added your device will show up as a node in the drop down menu on the the Z-Wave Node Management Card, like below.

Repeat the above process for adding additional Z-wave devices.

That’s it! You’ve completed this Home Assistant: Install Inovelli Z-Wave Devices guide!  Your Inovelli (or other) Z-wave devices are connected and you can begin further Home Assistant customization and setup.

Have a blast surfin’ the Z-Wave!

~Raze

Sources:
(Inovelli): https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guide-for-installing-inovelli-devices-in-home-assistant-ozwave-v1-4/172043
(Z-Wave Controllers): https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/z-wave/controllers/
(Z-Wave Config): https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/z-wave/installation/
(Add Devices): https://www.home-assistant.io/docs/z-wave/adding/

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