Secondary Controllers and Secured Sensors

[Oendaril]

I was surprised to be able to get my alarm panel with z-wave to pair as a secondary controller to the A+ (it appears as an unsupported device in the router, instead of as a controller). All of my light switches and thermostats paired over and appear to work the same as if it were primary.

However, the locks all came over and paired but are tagged as non-secured devices. As such, it appears none of the status updates or communication will work with the lock in this state. Is the key information not being shared between the two controllers when the secondary controller is added? Wondering if anyone has played around with this setup when talking about testing of secondary controllers like Vera.

[cxhatch]

What panel do you have ?

[Oendaril]

I'm using a lynx 5100 panel from honeywell.  It has explicit functionality for switchover to secondary from primary, but that kinda froze the A+.  Resetting the controller, excluding and adding the devices to A+ then using the learn functionality got the bulk of the sensors working.

[Oendaril]

Is there any plan to support the sharing of the encryption keys during the inclusion process for controllers (or letting us pair secondary controllers in general)? I know the z-wave spec says that they should be shared during inclusion, and another member was able to successfully use his honeywell panel as a secondary controller with locks using a zstick.

Or should I just be posting that in the feature requests?

[LGNilsson]

We have a fair bit of work to do before we even consider secondary controller support. In fact, I'm surprised this works at all, since we haven't actually added support for it as yet.
That said, we've understood that there is a demand for this and we're looking into ways that we can at least offer basic support.

[dumptruckusa]

I also have a Lynx Touch panel for my alarm system and some automation. Can you expand on this "secondary controller" business? I would love for the A+ to interact with the Lynx somehow, knowing when doors/windows are open, etc.

[Oendaril]

Unfortunately the lynx touch is a bit more limited than that.  If you have the z-wave module installed in the panel it will enable only three specific types of items: switches (binary, dimmer), locks and thermostats.  Any non-recognized items (like my flood sensor) show up as failed nodes in their system.

Secondary controller part is a feature of z-wave as well that lets you pair multiple controllers together and have both be able to send and receive signals from devices on the network.  Only the primary is able to add and remove nodes, though.  The home automation advanced tools area has a somewhat full stack implemented for this: you can do a controller shift which moves your lynx touch from primary and secondary and ports all of your nodes and i believe the homeid onto the other controller,  learn to either include it as a secondary controller directly or re-sync nodes from the primary controller and including which will enroll secondary controllers like a normal device when the lynx touch is the primary.