Fun with Robots

So almost no sensors worked with WINK, other than the various protocols promoted by WINK and Home Depot. This is bad news for someone who has a bunch of devices from an alarm system and want to throw in a quick WINK hub to fill the void.

I was able to find GO CONTROL devices, and a motion sensor from Ecowave, as well as another from Linear that could be its twin. All of these worked great, with a few words of caution.

I tried to set up an example test on the stairs down to my man cave. I had previously installed a PIRZWAVE2-ECO and used my Vera Edge to turn on a Domitech LED light bulb. It was pretty quick, and I was able to tweak configurations using the instruction sheet and a Google search. With WINK, the same setup technically worked, but was delayed coming on, and the bulb seemed to stay on forever. I would chalk this up to a lack of local control by the hub, as well as a lack of configuration options on the hub. If I were adding a WINK for the first time, I don’t think I’d notice. Indeed, after a week of trying this setup here (and in the playroom, door sensor on the furnace room and laundry room, and one on the garage entry) I did get used to the slight delay. Sometimes I got one foot on the step before it tripped the light. I expect WINK to step up their game once they get reorganized. The PIRZWAVE2-ECO is setup for 4 minutes by default and it’s good for areas that are lightly used.

I had 2 robots setup for this test; one was ‘detect motion, turn on light’ and the other was ‘no motion detected, turn off light’.  It doesn’t get simpler than that.

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