Now that openHAB is installed, it's time to add some devices. After looking at the options available, I decided to try out some Z-Wave devices. Z-Wave creates it's own wireless mesh network, so even if my WiFi went down, all my devices would still be able to operate (as long as my PC is still on). So I got these:
- A USB Z-Stick, which allows the PC to interact with the Z-Wave network.
- A Z-Wave bulb.
So today's goal is to make it so I can turn this bulb on and off from the openHAB dashboard. First off, we need to get this Z-Stick set up and detected by openHAB. So I plugged it in, opened the Paper UI, and installed the Z-Wave binding.
Next, I went to Configuration > Things > (+) > Z-Wave Binding > Add Manually > Z-Wave Serial Controller. Woah, that's deep. It wants to know the serial port that the Z-Stick is using, so we need to find that. To do that, we can right-click the start button, open Computer Management, and go to Device Manager.
COM7 it is. So select that and press the checkmark icon. Now we have our Thing set up! Next is to set up the bulb. We can go back to Configuration > Things > (+) > Z-Wave Binding, but this time don't add manually. Now switch on the bulb, and there it is! After accepting it with the checkmark, it's now available when we go to the Control menu, there for us to control.
And that's it! We now have a bulb we can remote control from the openHAB console. This is going well, so I think I'm going to get a Z-Wave switch that can be mounted on my wall next.