Hi all! I'm new to Hubitat (and to smart home stuff in general), and getting started with my living room. I've set up a bank of three Inovelli black series (LZW30) on/off switches and a single GE Enbrighten z-wave wall outlet.
What I'd like to do is to disable the relay on the switch and use associations to control the outlet instead. My understanding is that, while the black series switch won't send events with the relay disabled, it will work in associations.
I can get the switches and outlet to join the network no problem, and can control them using the on/off buttons in their respective device panels. I've tried setting up an association using Inovelli's z-wave association tool (forcing both to common levels of S2 security and using group 2 for the association) with no luck -- testing with the relay on, the switch controls its own load but doesn't control the outlet.
Any thoughts on how to debug this? Or whether what I want is possible with this hardware? I'm happy to dive into the code (I work as a developer and that's part of what drew me to Hubitat), but it seems odd that I'd need to do that for such a simple operation...
Thank you so much for your time!
Welcome to the Hubitat community!
Ok, so the short of your question is your want to use one of the in-wall switches to control the in-wall outlet, correct? Why not just create an automation rule in Hubitat instead of trying to fuss with these direct device associations?
My understanding is that the black series Inovelli switches don't send switch events if the relay is disabled (and don't send button events ever), but will participate in associations.
Edit to add: link to that conversation here.
Yeah so I'm not still tracking on why you need to mess with relays, associations and such on these switches. To me it seems like a very simple solution that when the switch has a "ON" status you fire a rule to switch on the outlet, and transversely when the switch has a "OFF" status you fire a rule to switch off the outlet. But I must be missing something, someone else will likely come on along and help.
FYI, since you admitted you are new to home automation. In my house the primary light source in both the living room and master bedroom are lamps that wall powered. What I did was install in each lamp a Sengled Zigbee bulb and paired that with Hubitat. No smart in-wall outlet needed. Then I simply use voice control through Siri to control the lights. I found this way more convienant to pressing paddle switches and falls more into "smart home". When you walk into the living room you simply ask "Hey Siri, turn on all the lamps in here", or when you walk in the bedroom "Hey Siri, turn on all the lamps in here to 25%". This also allows you to build scenes like "Hey Siri, I'm going to bed" and she turns off all the lights in the house except for the master bedroom. Works amazing, and never have to mess with pressing buttons or switches and true "smart home" to me... 
What I think he's saying is that when you disable the relay on the Inovelli blacks they DON'T send switch on/off events any more, so you can't use it in hub side automations.
Disclaimer - I don't have any inovelli blacks, so can't verify - but the inovelli forum post he linked to would support that.
I get that part, but what I keep asking myself is why disable the relay in the switch in the first place? Just operate in normal relay mode and trigger automation rules based on the status in HE?
Gotcha. I assume it is because it is wired to something they don't want to turn on/off - like outlets, for example. But I'm just ASSuming.
But, they could always re-wire it, removing the switch from that service, too - and then do what you are saying.
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That's it exactly. Looking for software-reconfigurable switchable outlets, and not looking to have a gang box full of relays that aren't hooked up to anything. If, for example, I sell the house to somebody who doesn't have a hub, I'd like the "dumb" behaviour to be sensible.
In addition, it'd be nice to be able to take advantage of the fact that Z-wave is a distributed network. Not everything needs to go through the hub, and I think "attach this switch to this relay" is an excellent example of that.
Edit to add: Regarding voice-activated lights, we just have different ideas of what a smart home ought to be. I think the paddle switch is an outstanding interface that also happens to be the one my guests will expect. I have no interest in turning my lights on with voice commands, but would like to be able to turn them all off at a specific time, or to turn on all the lights in a series of stairwells using one switch, or to have them come on dimmer at night.
I had a similar situation that I resolved this past weekend. Three fourths of our guest room, including the bed wall, is served by one, yes one, duplex outlet that is fully switched. Both outlets are on one switch. This plays havoc with a Sleep Number bed.
I direct wired the outlet in the switch box, bypassing the switch. I replaced the duplex with a Z-wave duplex, and replaced the switch with a Z-wave accessory switch. Both of these are connected to my HE hub and the switch is associated with the outlet. Voilà! I now have an always on outlet AND a switched outlet. As @base736 said, even if the next owner (IF I chose to sell) isn’t home automation savvy the switch and outlet will still work together as though they are wired. I like to call this Software Defined Switching. 
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@wayne.pirtle: What switch are you using? I may be investing in the wrong hardware...
Any of the Z-wave+ switches should work. I happen to use the Eaton RF9600 series devices. Dimmer: RF9640. Accessory dimmer: RF9642. Switch: RF9601. Accessory switch: RF9617. I used an Enbrighten duplex I already had, otherwise I would have considered the Eaton duplex too.
Inovelli says the new black series on/off switches are z-wave plus -- guess that leaves me at the original question, then. 
What do I know, but I was poking around the z-wavealliance.org site and found this:
https://products.z-wavealliance.org/products/3452?selectedFrequencyId=2
Interesting that you can specify parameters for association behavior. Maybe your tool already does this? If not, maybe you could change them with the HE basic parameter tool, since you apparently can't do it with switch pushes, per the manual.
If that doesn't work, maybe try no security?
My basement is all associations now. I have a Ecotech contact sensor associated to three GE Enbrighten switches, so that when I open the top basement door, all three lighting circuits come on. Then, since two additional switches for three-way control of two of the circuits didn't have neutrals, I made a virtual arrangement by associating them with the switch controlling the load, and vice versa. I used no security, but I don't know if that's a factor.
edit: The ge switches don't have as many options. The relay still clicks on the virtual 3-way, but that's fine with me. Plus the indicator light comes on, for which yours has options too.
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That's an excellent reference! Found one for the outlet as well. Thank you so much -- will give this a shot tomorrow.
For posterity... Got this working finally. A few of pointers for anybody having trouble with the same thing:
- Be patient with including devices. Wait for the "device found" panel to come up, and configure the label there right away.
- Choose a common unauthenticated (I believe that was the term?) security level, and un-check everything else. My GE/Jasco outlets don't seem to support S0, so I set both the Inovelli switches and the outlets to S2.0 (is that appropriate notation?). If you're not seeing a spot to set security, you're probably rushing inclusion -- exclude the device and try again.
- Once you've got associations set up, you should absolutely be able to turn off local control and have the association still work.
Other things I've learned that are perhaps useful to others... Please let me know if I've got anything wrong here:
- Associations are directional, and are a question of "when this device sees a particular event, which other devices does it pass that on to". So if things are going right, your associations in the source's state variables should include anything that turns on with it (for example). Your target doesn't need to show any associations at all.
- The "Association Behavior" parameter for Inovelli stuff refers to which type of upstream event can trigger downstream associations. The default allows all upstream events to do so, so if you're having problems with triggering a target event, this probably isn't the place to look.
Thanks everybody for the pointers shared here!
