3 way and 4 way wiring with dumb switch woes

Hey Eric, haven’t had the time to try this again unfortunately due to other work happening on the house.

I ended up ditching Z2M and going back to ZHA because Z2M wasn’t playing well with my aqara sensors.

Will try to find time this weekend to try this again and replace the lights. Which actually, would simply taking the lights out of the sockets also work? All I need to verify is that the inovelli switch is turning power on and off to the sockets which I can do with a contactless power tester.

You could test the circuit, but I don’t know if you can test to see if the flashing issue is resolved until you have the load connected. You mentioned that the “light flashes quickly on and off repeatedly until the switch is returned to its previous state”. That would only happen when the bulbs are attached. It will happen when the dumb switch is in one position, but not the other (which is what the “returned to its previous state” makes me think of.

OK, is this correct

  • Lights are on.
  • You switch off a dumb switch.
  • One of the lights starts flickering continually.
  • You don’t hear the relay in the Inovelli clicking.

That seems unlikely to be a Blue dimmer issue. The relay in the dimmer switches the dimming electronics to be connected to either the load or traveler terminals. So, say the dimmer relay is connecting to the load terminal and is powering the lights. Switching the dumb 3-way connects the lights to the traveler terminal. In the dimmer, the traveler terminal isn’t connected to anything unless the relay switches, so it seems unlikely it could be powering the lights.

Understood, I’ll test with known working dimmable LEDs and report back.

The steps you described are correct.

I’m going to try the suggestions with different lights, because the S2 circuit in the diagram showed similar problems that stopped when I replaced L2 with a newer dimmable LED light.

I’ve also found more accurate instructions on how to set the switch using the config button instead of HA.

If life doesn’t throw a curve ball I will be trying all these again this weekend, and if I have issues I’m planning on taking photos/video for more details.

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Sorry about the late response.

Saturday I spent a couple hours trying again.

I got dimmable LED bulbs from homedepot - https://www.homedepot.com/p/EcoSmart-60-Watt-Equivalent-A19-Dimmable-Frosted-Glass-Filament-LED-Light-Bulb-Soft-White-4-Pack-11FFA1960WESD01/318284624

The same-ish problem again. The smart switch doesn’t do anything to affect the state of the lights. The dumb switches do affect the state of the light, though now instead of blinking on and off the lights flicker in a not as bright state. I took video this time so those are linked below.

This shows what happens with the smart switch and dimmable bulbs. Its hard to see how the light gets dimmer and flickers due to the camera adjusting exposure. I also showed how I used the config button to set the switch to three-way-dumb and on/off mode.

Here’s another video with the setup using all dumb switches working as expected