New to Indigo and New to Mac

Hello,
I am new to Indigo and new to Mac. I have a Mac Mini.

I have installed the Indigo trial, added a Z-Stick, and a GE outlet plug-in on/off appliance module.

Everything went smoothly. Within Indigo I am able to turn the outlet on or off manually. I set up a schedule to turn it on at a time approximately an hour from the current time.

I came back a few minutes after it should've turned on and I saw the Mac Mini was asleep. The USB ports on the mini were powered off, and the Z-Stick was powered off. The appliance module had not turned on.

After waking up the Mac, I tried to cycle the appliance module from Indigo manually – seemed not to be found. I tried to re-sync the appliance module and Indigo reported a timeout communicating.

I walked over to the appliance module and pushed the button. I guess it then woke up or something and I was able to manually control the appliance module from Indigo.

What actually happened here?

I'm going to take a wild guess – the Mac went to sleep, the Z-Stick turned off, the appliance module realized the Z-wave controller was missing so it went to sleep, Indigo lost communication???

Must I have the Mac Mini set to never sleep? Would an external powered hub make the Z-Stick not be powered down if the Mac sleeps? Is this the preferred way to go.

I come from a Windows world so I'm not familiar with the Mac at all.

Will Indigo function if the Mac goes to sleep?
Will a powered hub keep the Z-Stick alive and devices in the Z-wave network recognized?

Thanks,
Barry.

Barry,

Simple answer is that the Mac must stay awake with Indigo running, that way Indigo can communicate with the Z-Stick to control the Z-Wave devices. No other way round this, and it does make sense as the Z-Stick can't doesn't have the capabilities to run schedules, triggers, and so forth. And before you ask, no, there are no other Z-Wave sticks you could use that have this capability.

So, keep the Mac awake by setting the Energy Saver setting in System Preferences to Never for Computer Sleep.

Simon

Oh, and if you're running the Mini headless, i.e. without a display attached, then you should look into getting one of these.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/CBLMDPHEAD/
or
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADP4KHEAD/

Haven't tried one myself, but I understand they make a big difference.

Simon

Thanks for the tip. I'm definitely going to give one of these a try!

Oh, and if you're running the Mini headless, i.e. without a display attached, then you should look into getting one of these.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/CBLMDPHEAD/
or
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/ADP4KHEAD/

Haven't tried one myself, but I understand they make a big difference.

Simon

So my HDMI adapter arrived today. Definitely worth the $20 to have one. It won't improve Indigo directly. However it makes a huge difference when dealing with the desktop of your headless Mac mini. No more choppy desktop just a smoother experience.