Nov 25, 2012

Setting up Telldus Tellstick Net

This is a very quick post on my latest gadget purchase, the Telldus Tellstick Net.  It's a networked radio signal transmitter, designed for home automation - which is what Telldus is all about.

The device is small, it can run on USB power or from the mains, and it has holes for wall mounting. Great start!

After installing the device, which is a breeze, just login to live.telldus.com. It should already have detected a tellstick net  from your location. I just clicked OK and it was activated. Smooooooth - no need to punch in that nasty 24-character ID.

I had a little trouble using live.telldus.com from Google Chrome, but IE9 was fine. Another problem is that if you register using google, as I did first, you get an e-mail with a password, but no indication of this from the web page. So I was unable to log in with my google account and registered a regular account,when getting the password, I saw that one was already sent to my google account. This is something the Telldus guys should fix.




Once logged in, start by adding devices. What's very cool about the Tellstick Net, is that it doesn't only support Telldus and Nexa devices - it supports a wide array of on/off switches, dimmers and sensors. Check out this list!

 I first added my devices from the Nexa  "code switch" (which I guess is more commonly referred to as "remote") , but was unable to find the "house code" on it. You have to look under the battery cover for it.

A downside using the code switch is that you only get on and off state. If you want to dim the lights, you have to have a dimmer (duh!) and also install it as that - not via the remote.

But that's also very easy, just click on the learn button in the web page, and then the learn button on your dimmer (on the Nexa one's it's a green light). The light will flash when a successful match is made. This does not override your remote unit number, if you have already learned it there, so you can still use the remote.

Now you can add a group device also, which is currently in beta, but works just fine. For instance, create a group called "lighting ground floor" and make it switch off  every night at 10:15 PM. I've not tested if this works only when the internet connection is up.

Other cool stuff: You can install XBMC Light Controller plugin to make the light dim when you watch movies from your XBMC. Read more about it in this forum post. Excellent work, Henrik!

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