Home automation part 1 - Linear WS15Z Wall Switch

I'm starting to slowly automate my house (finally) - I've had some Z-Wave stuff around since the dawn of time, but my alarm system is pretty old and doesn't reliably do anything with them so I sort of gave up.  There's a lot of new (and cheaper) items appearing on the market now so I'm giving it a shot again.   I'm pretty happy with how well apps like IFTTT work (well, in general, the Android permission rules keep it from helping with my daily move between home, the outside world, and my locked down work lab without signal) - and this seems much more doable than it was even a few months ago.

The major player in the Z Wave switch world is GE - but their things are really expensive.  Each switch is pretty much a small computer so it's not cheap - a normal switch from Home Depot is $1, a GE Z-Wave switch is $50.

There's another company entering the market called Linear based in Carlsbad CA.  Their switches seems pretty good from the first look at least.  Big they are big,   Really big.  First switch I'm checking is the Linear WS15Z - which is the cheapest Z-Wave switch (you can save some with Zigbee ones - but not sure they work yet).

I was tempted to put a banana for scale, but for perspective that's almost the size of a normal electric box.  I can't fit this damn switch into where I wanted to originally, just because there's another wire nut in the back of the box and I can't possible cram this huge rectangle of stuff in with the wiring.  I ended up moving this switch to my office area - which tends to have a light running all day just because we forget to turn it off.  Even there, I had to pound the other cables down to get it to sit flush.

Important things to keep in mind with this (and all smart switches is)

• put the green on the bare copper ground.   please.  this helps throw the breaker if things go wrong
• the black wire is the power, this comes from the box.  it's supposed to always be black depending on your codes, but...
• the blue is the load - this goes to the fixture
• white is the common ground

Never trust the wiring in your house - there's some idiot like me messing with it always and putting random wire colors in.  Test the load/supply color scheme with a voltmeter before believing the colors - with the the switch off black should be hot and blue off.  Amazon claims this works at 220v, but the device is only rated for 120v so I won't do that unless you enjoy blue smoke.

So how is the switch?  It's pretty nice.  For $30 it has a pretty good quality.  The feel is solid and I like the LED when it's off so you can find the switch in a dark room.

The Z-Wave seems solid as far as I can tell.  Click the switch twice to join the network and just add the device.  When I get my SmartThings controller I'm moving everything over to it and we'll see how they actually work in real scenes as opposed to 'off/on' as my ancient GE XT security panel does.  The graphic below will link directly to the Amazon product, which is cheaper with Prime than Home Depot in Houston at least.