Z-Stick Recognized but Not Presented in Dialog Boxes

For many years now I've been running Indigo (4/5/6/7) with all-Insteon equipment, using the PowerLinc 2413U interface. At the moment, I'm running Indigo 7.5 on macOS 10.14.5 Mojave on a headless late 2014 Mac mini. I would like to expand my system to include door locks, remote sensors and other equipment that either aren't available from Insteon, or that are poorly implemented by Insteon, so I have decided to add Z-Wave capability to my system.

I have just purchased an Aeotec Z-Stick Gen5. I plugged it into the Mac mini, enabled the Z-Wave interface in Indigo, and configured it successfully. Indigo now seems to see the Z-Stick: on the status bar at the bottom left of the Indigo window, I see "Z-Wave" in green, right next to the words "PowerLinc 2413U" also in green. However, the Z-Stick does not appear as an option in the Target Device dropdown list in either the Send Raw Z-Wave Command dialog, nor the Modify Configuration Parameter dialog. In fact, the Target Device dropdown list in both dialogs is effectively empty, saying only in light-gray text, "- select an item -".

I have tried reloading the Z-Wave interface. That had no discernible effect and generated no errors in the log. I also tried disabling and renenabling the Z-Wave interface. That also had no discernible effect and generated no errors in the log (although the log captured the actions... the Disable said "closed connection to Z-Stick Gen5 (ZW090)", and the Enable said "connected to Z-Stick Gen5 (ZW090) interface on /dev/cu.usbmodem14701 (firmware 1.01, minimum SDK 6.51.06)"

Admittedly, I don't yet have any Z-Wave devices set up to test with the stick, but I was hoping to send a Raw Z-Wave Command to stop it's annoying Red-Yellow-Blue flashing. Online, I found the hex bytes necessary to stop the flashing, but when I go to the Send Raw Z-Wave Command dialog, I can't select the Z-Stick from the Target Device drop down.

Have I missed something? Does anyone have any suggestions?

[jay (support)]

You don't specify the Z-Stick anywhere but in the Z-Wave config dialog. All of the things you mention require that you have a Z-Wave device added as the target of those commands. I don't believe that there's a way to change the LED behavior (though I could be wrong). I just taped a quarter over it since I never need the button itself...

The bytes you’ve found to achieve this are serial communication from a terminal that can open a connection to COM # with baud rate etc, not Zwave bytes.

On Windows I’d use putty for this; I’m not familiar with Mac equivalents.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Jay, would a plugin be able to send raw serial to the Zstick or is the port held open by IPH such that an isolated plugin couldn’t talk to it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[jay (support)]

You'd need to shut down the Z-Wave interface so that the serial port is released. Then some other process could access it, including a plugin (which would open the port, send the commands, then close it).

First and foremost, thanks to Jay and everyone else who chimed in with advice and comment. To close the loop on two points...

Jay was of course right, and it was "user error" on my end, or more precisely a mistaken assumption about how the dialog box works. Today, after adding my first Z-Wave device (a Kwikset deadbolt), the Target device dropdown is now populated with "Front door deadbolt", which is the name of the device I added. So you can use the dialog to send raw commands to Z-Wave devices, just not to the Z-Stick interface itself.

Second, to stop the red-yellow-blue cycling, I used the following command on my Mac. In my case, the device name for my Z-Stick is /dev/tty.usbmodem14701, so you'll need to substitute the device name your system is using.

Code: Select all

echo -e '\x01\x08\x00\xF2\x51\x01\x00\x05\x01\x51'|cu -l /dev/tty.usbmodem14701 -s 115200

Two caveats about the above command. My attempts initially failed with an error from cu about "line in use". To resolve the error, I first stopped the Indigo server service and completely quit from the app. Second, I couldn't get it to work with sudo so I opened a shell prompt as root (e.g., sudo bash) and then executed the command. I don't know which of these two things or the combination of both is what made it eventually work. However, I now have no flashing lights and didn't need to resort to duct tape or spare change!