HowTo: Aeon Labs MiniMote fully functional Scene Controller in UI5!

So after updating my Vera2 to UI5 / Firmware 1.5.233 I just added the Aeon Labs MiniMote (Firmware 1.17) as a secondary zwave scene controller, AND IT’S A FULLY FUNCTIONAL SCENE CONTROLLER!

I can run predefined scenes on the vera using the Minimote! See Screenshots attached:

HowTo (or at least what worked in my case):

  1. Go To: http://www.aeon-labs.com/site/products/view/3/
  2. Update your MiniMote Firmware to 1.17.
  3. Reset your MiniMote: Hold “Associate” and “Learn” until the lights stop blinking.
  4. On your Vera2 (has to run on UI5 1.5.233 or 1.5.255) go to “Devices=>Add a Device=>Advanced zwave devices” Add a secondary" battery operated handheld remotes"
  5. Now the zwave light on your vera starts blinking slowly.
  6. Take your MiniMote close to the vera and push the “Learn Button”.
  7. The zwave led on the vera and the leds on the minimote will start to blink fast and stop again.
  8. Wait a couple of minutes until the lua engine is restarted and the zwave light on the vera is not blinking anymore.
  9. The go to “Devices=>Other” in the vera UI5. Click the wrench-button (settings) of the device “_MiniMote”.
  10. Choose which scene to run on which button in the “Scenes”-Tab
  11. Close the Settings Window and click save.
  12. Wait for lua to restart and try.

Works on ver2 and vera3.

Thanks for putting that together!

From what you posted elsewhere I got the impression the MiniMote supports short and long presses, i.e. 2 scenes, per button. Assuming the short presses map to ‘[tt]buttons are turned on[/tt]’ scenes, do the long presses map to the ‘[tt]buttons are turned off[/tt]’ scenes in the [tt]Scenes[/tt] tab?

Yes exactly. You can basically run 8 different scenes with the MiniMote. Two for each button: short press & long press.

I have for example a scene “All lights On” (assigned to Button1-Short) in my room, and a Scene “All lights Off” (assigned to Button1-Long). So that means that if I push button 1 all lights get turned on, if I keep it pressed shortly all lights turn off.

And for some reason I think the MiniMote is very “fast”. I never have any lag or anything, works perfectly reliable.

awesome. thanks for posting 8)

Confirmed working in UI5 (1.5.255) on Vera2 with Australian-frequency Aeon Labs Z-Wave dongle at version 1.17. No need to mess with any of those Configuration settings. Thanks chixxi.

Works like a charm. If only if I could keep UI5 working. Thank you

Hello All,

i cannot get it to work on EU Vera3 (1.5.215) with Aeon Labs EU MiniMote at version 1.17.

How can i upgrade my Vera3 to 1.5.233?

  • Currently upgrading to 1.5.254! Will post the results when finished!

I can’t get my MiniMote to be recognized on my PC as a USB device so I can upgrade the firmware. Any ideas why?

Maybe try to reset the remote by holding “Learn” and “Associate” Buttons pushed until leds stop blinking. I never had any problems with the updating procedure of the remote.

Maybe try to reset the remote by holding “Learn” and “Associate” Buttons pushed until leds stop blinking. I never had any problems with the updating procedure of the remote.[/quote]
Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it, but it didn’t work. I guess I’ll try Aeon support and see if they can help.

update I tried the minimote on a different PC with a different USB cable and it mounted immediately. I performed the firmware update and now I have (all three) of my minis running scenes quickly and reliably!

I’m also an Aussie and I upgraded to UI5 and then ran the update for the minimote with the latest firmware, still no love. vera says “ZWave network failed to go into learn mode. Aborting… Wait 1 minute and try again.”.

Is there a way to check what firmware version is installed on the minimote?

I’ve tried several times, I can still pair the mote with my light switches and my power line module, but not vera.

Any ideas?

I'm also an Aussie and I upgraded to UI5 and then ran the update for the minimote with the latest firmware, still no love. vera says "ZWave network failed to go into learn mode. Aborting... Wait 1 minute and try again."

That seems to be a problem from the vera, not from the MiniMote. The Vera is not able to go into Learning Mode.

Is there a way to check what firmware version is installed on the minimote?

Once the remote is connected the firmware version is shown in UI5 in the device settings. This also showed in my case when I had an older firmware on the Minimote.

Thanks, I reset the Vera2 z-wave network and now it works correctly! great!

this has worked great, thanks!

Fantastic - thank you

I wish there were simple walk throughs like this for every question I have!

Got it working in 10 minutes on vera3 EU version
using the steps from chixxi works like a charm

My MiniMotes work like a charm under UI5, finally I can use them to control scenes.

One small issue though: it seems that it is no longer possible to associate Minimote buttons to devices instead of using the to trigger scenes. For one of my Minimotes I’d like the ability to dim lights up/down, and for that I need to associate a button directly with the dimmer.

It seems that the individual buttons can be switched between scene buttons and regular buttons through configuration parameters 241 - 244. I’ve tried setting these in the Vera interface, but sending the configuration to the Minimote always fails at: “purging associations”. Vera will keep trying this purge for up to several minutes without success, and fails when I finally let the Minimote go to sleep again. Any workaround for this?

I never associated a minim mote directly to a device, I never tried.

You could basically just create a scene which dims you lights down by 1%, and another scene which would dim your lights up by 1%. Then you could use two buttons to run these scenes. But this doesn’t seem like a very smart approach, because you’d have to push you buttons 100 times to dim from 0-100% percent.

A colleague has written some luup code to do this with one button. I’ll ask him to post that here…

Hi

I cant seem to get mine to work. From the instructions it should appear as _MiniMote however every time i add it it appears as _SceneController. I have upgraded the firmware v1.17 Au for australia, running UI5 1.5.246.

It seemed to pair to the dongle fine, still works with all lights on/off by holding 1&2/3&4.

Any ideas?

Basically it should work. But you are not running on the newest version of the vera’s firmware, maybe try updating your vera…