[ANSWERED]: Can someone explain me the concept of Polling

I'm still very new to zwave, and some of these terms are not entirely clear to me.

Am I correct in thinking that "polling" is Indigo initiating a request to a device and asking for certain data ?
And that "Wake up" is the device physically being triggered (in the case of i.e. a PIR motion sensor) and sending data to Indigo ?

Ifso,
In my current scenario, I have a few Aoetec Smart switches, they are plugin sockets and they apparantly have power usage metering.
I do not really care about the power usage metering for now, but in Indigo, in the device settings, it has polling enabled, "only when activity detected".

Since I don't need the power usage statistics, is it safe (maybe even preferable) to just turn off the polling for these devices ? Would they still work as a remote controlled switch ? Would this free some resources on the zwave network ?
The reason I am confused is that the sentence 'only when activity detected' makes it sound that the activity should be initiated from the device itself (the physical switch). It sounds like polling stands for communication going from Indigo to the device, and thus, turning off polling would render the switch uncontrollable by Indigo ?

You are correct with Polling - it is Indigo sending a status request to devices. It is NOT Indigo sending a command (on/off etc).

Most Zwave devices send their status to Indigo whenever they are changed locally at the device (light switch, plug-in socket, sensor). If it is say a plug-in socket that has power-metering in, the device might only send 'I've been turned on' - so with 'only when activity detected' Indigo would then poll for the power level value.

On the other hand, I have some Greenwave power strips that never send their status when operated locally. Therefore Indigo never knows whether they are on or off. Therefore it needs to poll every x minutes to find the status.

It depends on the plug-in devices you have whether turning off Polling will stop Indigo knowing the state of the device if you change state locally on the device. It won't stop Indigo controlling it though.

Wake up is not what you say. 'Awake' means the device is listening for instructions from Indigo. These might be on/ off instructions, they might be status-requests (ie Polling), they might be 'change parameter' instructions, or they might be define&sync instructions. All mains-powered Zwave devices are permanently awake. You can send them instructions any time and they will immediately do what you've said. Once a mains powered device has been 'included' into a Zwave controller (eg the Zstick) you should never need to press it's little button again - all changes will happen live.

Battery devices on the other hand would soon die if they had to listen for Indigo instructions 24/7. They live in a low-power state, enough to perform their purpose (eg PIR sensor), but not enough to communicate with the Zwave network. When they need to submit a change (PIR activated) they briefly connect to the Zwave network for long enough to send the necessary data to Indigo.

These battery devices all have a setting in them (sometimes fixed, sometimes settable by a parameter) that determines their wake interval. 1 hour is the usual default. Every hour, they will wake up, connect to Zwave, and wait a short time to see if any instructions are waiting for it. If there's any waiting, it does whatever they are, then sleeps again for another hour. You will therefore never (?) find battery-powered switches that receive on/off commands from Indigo, because they'd only ever action those commands every hour or whatever their wake period is. Not much use if your light only turns on or off every hour.

If you want to make changes to a battery device, you can make them any time, and they will usually pick them up when they next wake up. If you want to force the change immediately, you can go to the device and press the little button inside (or whatever it says in the manual) to wake it up. If it's a complex device and you're trying to re-sync it, you might need to keep pressing the button every second or two to keep the device awake long enough to send/receive all the necessary data for the sync process, otherwise it will sleep again.

Hope that clears things up?

[matt (support)]

howartp posted a great overview above (thanks!).

As a general rule-of-thumb, if the device is doing what you want with polling turned totally off then leave it that way. If not, then try polling after activity, and then if that doesn't work then try some of the constants polling interval choices. Polling too often will definitely increase the Z-Wave network congestion which might lead to reliability issues for more important commands (like controlling modules). Z-Wave commands being sent/received every few seconds is fine, but trying to have multiple commands a second for long periods of time can lead to issues.

Matt, as you're here, can you clarify one thing for me?

I said most powered devices are always awake - is this correct? I'm confused with say the TKB/Popp plug-in sockets, which respond to commands, polling, and parameter changes instantly, but they won't sync without triple-pressing their button to (supposedly) wake them up!? Or does sync need more than just 'being awake'?

[matt (support)]

Every non-battery powered module I've seen is awake all the time. I'm surprised the TKB/Popp plug-in sockets, which definitely sound like they are always awake, won't sync without a triple-tap.

Can you turn on the debug logging and copy/paste some log examples showing Indigo sending the module a status request (button in main window) as well as the define/sync failure? I'd be curious to see specifically which commands are failing.

Every non-battery powered module I've seen is awake all the time. I'm surprised the TKB/Popp plug-in sockets, which definitely sound like they are always awake, won't sync without a triple-tap.

Can you turn on the debug logging and copy/paste some log examples showing Indigo sending the module a status request (button in main window) as well as the define/sync failure? I'd be curious to see specifically which commands are failing.

Ah, right, I've just checked - it does actually sync ok without pressing the button.

I always assumed that syncing needed a device to be in inclusion mode, because for battery devices that is usually the same thing, but obviously not.

I will tweak my original post - PeteVis, if you've read an email notification to this thread, make sure you re-read the whole post above in a minute or to. (The edit count will go to 2 when I'm done).

Peter

Many thanks for the in depth explanation, that certainly made it clear !

It also explains an issue I was seeing when adding a Aoen Multisensor.
At first it did not include completely in Indigo, but I suspected it had something to do with it falling asleep. So when clicking the inside button a few times while I saw activity inside the Indigo event log, suddenly the Multisensor appeared with all it's sensors.

Can I extend (or maybe hijack) this discussion to a couple of other devices?
First: I put in a Z-stick USB to allow me to add one of the Honeywell Z-wave thermostats (mains powered through the 24 v transformer) and set it to poll on activity... it shows up in Indigo as a thermostat device and it's states are the current temperature setpoint, cooling/heating/off setpoint, and fan Continuous/auto/off setpoint. However, it "reports" when the compressor or fan turns on or off, as well as when the actual temperature changes, and I can capture those changes and values into variables; I assume they are not listed as states within the device itself because not all "Z-Wave Thermostat" devices have them?

The second item I have added is (are) some selected Z-wave Vents to hopefully shut off AC to the bedrooms during the day and the living room during the night. I got a single one to check "proof of concept", and it works fine, and have 4 more on order. It shows up as a "dimmer device" and responds to open and close commands within a couple of seconds. However, once I have a whole flock of these things, will their intercommunication traffic shorten the battery life (listed in the users sheet as about a year)?

Third, since I've now got the zstick Z-wave interface in place and working, will adding a kwikset Z-wave deadbolt be possible (apparently as an on/off switch from what other threads seem to indicate), or does that require a Vera interface?

Can I extend (or maybe hijack) this discussion to a couple of other devices?

I think hijack is probably the right term, because only question 2 really relates to the rest of the topic.

First: I put in a Z-stick USB to allow me to add one of the Honeywell Z-wave thermostats (mains powered through the 24 v transformer) and set it to poll on activity... it shows up in Indigo as a thermostat device and it's states are the current temperature setpoint, cooling/heating/off setpoint, and fan Continuous/auto/off setpoint. However, it "reports" when the compressor or fan turns on or off, as well as when the actual temperature changes, and I can capture those changes and values into variables; I assume they are not listed as states within the device itself because not all "Z-Wave Thermostat" devices have them?

I'm not familiar with the devices, but if they support compressor and fan states that aren't represented in Indigo, then please edit one of the devices and hit the submit device definition button (or whatever it's called; I'm away from my Mac at the moment). Also do a define&sync then copy and paste the info from the log into a new post in the zwave supported devices forum.

The second item I have added is (are) some selected Z-wave Vents to hopefully shut off AC to the bedrooms during the day and the living room during the night. I got a single one to check "proof of concept", and it works fine, and have 4 more on order. It shows up as a "dimmer device" and responds to open and close commands within a couple of seconds. However, once I have a whole flock of these things, will their intercommunication traffic shorten the battery life (listed in the users sheet as about a year)?

If they are designed to inter-communicate with each other (?) then the battery life quoted in their users sheet will allow for that. If you mean the communication between each one and Indigo then it depends what polling option you have set, and how they operate. If they are battery-operated then I'm surprised they are dimmer devices that receive open/close commands for the reasons given in my threads above; if they are staying awake all day (or waking up every few seconds) then their batteries won't last very long at all - although that is relative; if the user specs state 1 year battery life and the default config is to keep waking up every few seconds then maybe they will last 1 year. For comparison, my Fibaro motion sensors last about 2-3 months on one battery, depending on where they are (how much motion in that area of the house).

Third, since I've now got the zstick Z-wave interface in place and working, will adding a kwikset Z-wave deadbolt be possible (apparently as an on/off switch from what other threads seem to indicate), or does that require a Vera interface?

Indigo don't currently support Zwave locks directly because of the expensive licensing costs of the security module/code to allow them to interact securely with locks. I know they want to support them as much as we want them to, but we'll have to hold our breaths for now.

Peter

[matt (support)]

...add one of the Honeywell Z-wave thermostats (mains powered through the 24 v transformer) and set it to poll on activity... it shows up in Indigo as a thermostat device and it's states are the current temperature setpoint, cooling/heating/off setpoint, and fan Continuous/auto/off setpoint. However, it "reports" when the compressor or fan turns on or off, as well as when the actual temperature changes,

If the module reports or broadcasts the changes on its own, then you probably don't need to poll at all. You might still want to poll at an infrequent interval just to help keep things in sync, for example if there is a thermostat state change when your Mac is rebooting and Indigo isn't running.

and I can capture those changes and values into variables; I assume they are not listed as states within the device itself because not all "Z-Wave Thermostat" devices have them?

There should be device states for temperature, setpoints, modes, equipment states, etc. You shouldn't need to copy anything into variable values.