A Z-Wave Blog

When I first started looking at Z-Wave, I saw the ControlThink PC SDK Starter Kit and immediately placed an order.

Then I started doing some more research, and realized I’d made a stupid mistake.  It turned out that there were two versions of Z-Wave, one for Europe and one of the US.  They are incompatible since they use different radio frequencies. 

I live in Switzerland.  Guess which version ControlThink sells?

Fortunately ControlThink use Google Checkout, which has a grace period during which you can cancel your order.  So I canceled my order and decided I needed to do a lot more research.

Switzerland is in the middle of Europe, but is not part of the European Union.  We also have funny shaped sockets here.

European Vendors

I first went looking for a European based Z-Wave vendor (I could find none in Switzerland).  These are the ones I looked at:

•  Elekhomica.nl are based in the Netherlands.  They seem to have a good range at reasonable prices, however when I tried to order I found out that they did not ship to Switzerland, since it is not in the European Union.
• zwave4u.de are based in Germany.  I got as far as placing an order with them however they use Paypal, and my Paypal account was out of date.  I had a very nice email exchange with Christian Paetz, who is the chap that runs zwave4u, and had no problems canceling my order - turns out he’d been shipped a batch of US devices anyway so I couldn’t have bought from him - I expect that will be resolved soon.
• letsautomate.co.uk didn’t have the appliance modules (that plug into sockets) for European style sockets listed.

Most of the vendors are reselling devices made by ACT Solutions.  Their range includes motion detectors, socket devices, switches, controllers and PC Interfaces.  These were the initial devices I was looking for.

Over the pond

Having exhausted the obvious European options I went looking abroad, and came across HomeSeer.com.  They sell the full range of ACT devices, including those made for EU frequencies.  The prices are OK, however the shipping costs are steep.

I placed my order for a USB Interface, a Dimmer switch, two motion sensors and a socket switch.  The total came to about US$315, and but then the shipping cost was added at US$110!  Ouch.

Within an hour or so of placing my order I was contacted by Mark Colegrove of HomeSeer, explaining that I might need to add a hand-held controller device too.  Although I planned on controlling everything using a PC, I thought it might be easier to do the initial setup using a controller, so I ordered one too.  It turns out to have been the right decision - setting it all up from the PC would have been a pain.

The advantage of paying over a hundred dollars in shipping was that the devices arrived within a few days.  I had to pay an additional US$45 in Swiss Import Duty when the package was delivered.

I was up and running within an afternoon, and was convinced that Z-Wave was the way for me.  I needed to place an additional much larger order to automate the whole house (instead of just my office), and asked both ACT Solutions and HomeSeer whether they offered discounts for bulk orders.

I never heard back from HomeSeer, but ACT did reply indicating quite substantial savings — so I placed a new order with them.  I’ll post when I receive the newer devices from them.

Conclusion

If Homeseer offered multiple shipping options to reduce the shipping cost (with a consequent delay in the order arriving), I’d not hesitate to recommend them … the customer service was excellent.

If you are looking to place a large order then you might want to contact ACT directly — you might save substantially.

If you are based in Europe then check out the vendors I listed above if you are based in their home country,  You’ll probably save substantially on shipping costs, although the products are more expensive at current exchange rates than those from HomeSeer.