Ok. 1st: Sorry, yes , I did read description of product. However, still unsure of what it actually does. Can you please help me?
I have BLINK system with 8 cameras, 2 video doorbells, smart plugs & lights, plus more cameras for outside & inside and MANY Alexa devices.
Gave information above because from what I read this device may help in some way?
Thank you in advance for your time and help in this matter, Amanda
You need a system that supports zwave, usually a zwave hub. Some hubs support a variety of protocols including zwave, but afaik, what you mentioned doesn’t cover this. You also have to know a little what you are doing, and the pitfalls and dangers of wiring stuff up yourself.
As to the device, roughly, it does 2 things, talking to that zwave hub. It can read a range of (low dc I think) voltages. And it can close a contact/switch, sustained or momentary I think. Although simple, this allows you wire up your own automation devices, or to interface with other systems.
A couple or so examples:
Before zwave garage door openers were common, you’d wire the output to your garage door opener. Program a zwave remote, so when you pressed a button on it, it’d talk to the hub. The hub then would talk to the mimolite, and momentarily close the switch. Your garage door would go up or down. Not entirely safe when done remotely, as most commercial systems announce what’s going to happen so you don’t maim or crush someone, but it’s a simple example. You can imagine this with a gate or other alarm. This example has nothing to do with the input side, it’s output only.
You can wire this to regular electrical relays to switch things on or off. Also, I think there are wifi ip detectors on amazon, so conceivably if your smartphone joins a network, that triggers a relay, that closes the circuit, the mimolite picks it up, and triggers a gate to open or an email to be sent.
Or with alarm systems. If you wire a water float, you can detect when it lifts and closes the switch, and the mimolite can tell the hub, which in turns can take action, like alert you, trigger a zwave alarm. A small techie DIY water level alarm.
You can trigger alarm panels directly, or take a zwave trigger to trigger a panel. In the latter, there are alarm panels that will dial out, so you can have a zwave action (like a zwave alarm triggers a zwave water valve to close), and action that to tell the mimilite to close, triggering the alarm system to call you (plain old telephone line).
I have an old furnace that locks out sometimes. It’s in a crappy basement. Usually, you have to go into the basement to see if the controller light is lit and reset it. PITA if there isn’t a problem and saves time worrying if the light might be lit. You can usually swap out the furnace controller with one with an alarm circuit instead of the light, the mimolite can detect the alarm circuit is closed, tell the zwave hub, and that’ll trigger an email or a zwave alarm upstairs.
There are some devices that output a voltage range, so you can detect when they get to a certain level before triggering an event. Some things like temperature to turning a fan off, but I wouldn’t use it to build a thermostat for a furnace.
Plenty of examples and things you can do, but you need to be using zwave to communicate with it.