I’ve been waiting for weeks now for HomeSeer to get their excellent Z-Wave dimmers and companion switches back in stock. They finally did earlier this week, and my wallet is feeling the pain…

Shipping was prompt; I ordered them on Tuesday with standard ground shipping, and — to my shock — they arrived this afternoon. Now my weekend is utterly doomed…

The Order

The picture shows my order, artfully arranged on the island in the kitchen:

• 15 HS-WD100+ Dimmers
• 5 HS-WS100+ Switches
• 5 HS-WA100+ Companion Switches

I purposely limited my order due to the cost; when these are installed, I’ll have about 70% of the house on Z-Wave, which should give me enough to play with for a while. Then again, I’m often impatient; I can already feel the urge to order the rest…

The Plan

I went through a bit ago and dropped the switches off on the floor under the wall boxes they’ll go into. I expect it’s going to take me all weekend (and then some) to get them all installed. Fortunately, the house is wired fairly sanely — I’ve yet to run into a junction box that doesn’t have what I need in it. The worst thing I can say about this place is that the wall boxes tend to be full of bits of drywall…

Well, that and the fact that I keep managing to crack the wall plates. Can’t they make those things out of something sturdier?!

In any event, once I get them all installed and included in my network, I’ll be able to start some serious exploration of openHAB. I don’t have much in the way of sensors, but I have enough to get started. I’m currently on the fence about sticking with it; the release build is unreliable in some ways, but I haven’t yet tried one of the nightlies.

That’s next on the list after the install, methinks…