If you’re like me experimenting with home automation you’ll certainly have come across Philio’s 4-in-1 Multisensor PST02-A/B/C devices. They unite multiple functions:
- Door/window sensor (PST02-A, PST02-C)
- PIR motion detection (PST02-A, PST02-B)
- Illumination sensor (all three)
- Temperature sensor (all three)
Unfortunately it’s not only their Website that lacks any useful information, the supplied manual (available online at vesternet.com, eedomus.com and zwave.ie) is a prime example of Taiwan English that is very hard to understand. For example:
The PIR motion re-detected interval, in the “Test Mode” fixed to 6 seconds. In the “Normal Mode”, it according to the setting of the configuration NO. 8.
This makes use of the device quite challenging given that it is actually give flexible and powerful. Luckily the manual has some flow charts that give some hints. It gets way worse, however, in parts of the description of configuration parameter Nr. 6:
| Bit 0 | Disable magnetic integrate illumination to turn ON the lighting nodes in the association group 2. (1:Disable, 0:Enable) | PST02-A, PST02-C |
|---|---|---|
| Bit 1 | Disable PIR integrate illumination to turn ON the lighting nodes in the association group 2. (1:Disable, 0:Enable) | PST02-A, PST02-B |
| Bit 2 | Disable magnetic integrate PIR to turn ON the lighting nodes in the association group 2. (1:Disable, 0:Enable) | PST02-A only |
Got it? No? Welcome to the club, you’re not alone! There are a number of posts and pages on the Net discussing what the exact meaning of these three bits actually is.
This vesternet.com application note on using the sensor with VERA suggests that Bit 0 and Bit 1 would apply to disable lighting the sensor’s red LED when one of the two events happen — however the red LED normally does not light at all unless you’re in Test mode or low on battery, so that doesn’t make sense. And Bit 2 would mean “Do not combine PIR and door sensors” — now what is that supposed to mean?
What is rather clear is that these bits influence which events result in sending a “Basic Set” command to the devices in association group 2, telling these to turn on (by contrast to configuration parameter 5 bit 2, which disables Door/window change detection completely, and configuration parameter 3, setting the PIR sensitivity, where a value of 0 also completely disables PIR motion detection). Accordingly, bit 0 applies to for door/windows events (explaining why it is of no use with the PST02-B variant) and bit 1 applies to PIR motion events (explaining why it is of no use with the PST02-C variant).
Bit 2, however, remains a mystery: useful on the PST02-A variant only, it could be that setting it disables both but that is pretty redundant as one could just set bits 0 and 1 to 1 just as easily.
My observation is a different one: in my experiments with my PST02-A, it showed that I had to explicitly set Bit 2 to 1 for any of the other two bits to have any observable effect. The bit combinations 010, 100 and 110 did not have any effect, it had to be 011, 101 and 111.
This is what I document in my custom PST02 ZDDX file for use with the RaZberry software. I’ve also completely rewritten the option descriptions into proper English, making the PST02 way more accessible than when using the default file downloaded from the pepper1.net database (which also has a message “This database is not maintained anymore and will be shut down shortly. Please use the Z-Wave Alliance Product Catalogue as an alternative.”).
But wait, there’s more! Because the configuration settings are so comprehensive, I’ve created an all-in-one flowchart for the PST02-A (draw.io XML source file) that shows very nicely a.) the inner workings of the sensor and b.) which configuration parameter affects what. The flowchart and its source are licensed CC-BY-SA.
In addition, I’ve created a ZDDX file for the Qubino DIN dimmer device. This currently uses the manual’s English, eventually I might go and rewrite it into proper English, too.
All the files are available on Github — feel free to fork and send a PR!