As many of you have already seen, we released the latest firmware file, which is 2.14. Here are a few of the high level changes:
Leading / Trailing Edge Capability
There is no parameter to choose between the two at this time (nor can I promise there will be any time soon), but here’s the defaults for Leading / Trailing Edge:
- Non-Neutral (Single & 3-Way Aux) = Leading Edge
- Neutral + 3-Way Dumb = Leading Edge
- Neutral (Single & 3-Way Aux) = Trailing Edge
Full Sine Wave Feature
While we still do not officially support the use of these on motorized loads or outlets, the full sine wave feature provides a full sine wave output. This allows the switches to work better with ballasts (also not officially supported) and various bulbs that experienced the issue of not turning off all the way (or just constantly flickered). This can only be used in the Neutral, Single Pole setting.
Zigbee Bindings
We’ve improved the way individual bindings work and are processed at the switch. As mentioned above, if you have a large network, sometimes individual bindings struggle and you may see sluggish response times and/or just an all out failure.
To improve things, we put a memory function on the switch that allows the switch to remember what it’s bound to. However, if the neighbor table gets messed up due to high traffic, you may still experience bindings not working on the first attempt. Please try again and the bindings should work.
However, anecdotally, here’s my recommendation as I experienced some issues with binding and ever since I’ve followed the below steps, I’ve had zero issues:
- If you are binding 3+ devices (ie: 3x switches together, 1x switch + 2x bulbs, etc), please use Group Binding (ie: create a group and bind to it)
- Individual bindings are fine if it’s 2 devices (ie: 1x switch + 1x bulb, 2x switches)
Zigbee Network Optimization
This should fix the rebooting issues in theory as none of us could replicate it. The theory is that in large networks, with a lot of neighbors, the switches would become overwhelmed and reboot. We’ve doubled the memory allotted to processing neighbor devices, so I’m hoping this will work. Please let us know if you still experience this.
Non-Neutral Brightness
The engineer has optimized this as best as he can and we’ve spent countless hours testing this, so unfortunately if your room is still too dark, then there is no other option than to either return the switch or replace the bulbs. Some bulbs work better than others.
Here’s how the non-neutral will work:
- By default there is a 15% reduction in power – this is because there needs to be some power left in the switch to power the Zigbee chip (if the bulb is taking all the power, the switch will start to malfunction and the bulbs will flicker and Aux switches will fail to work properly)
- You can remove this throttle by turning Parameter 25 to 1 – if you start to experience flickering, then please lower the max dim level until it stops flickering. In my experience, I had to go to 85, which was where the throttle was anyway, so I just kept the throttle on
LED Bar Match
We noticed that the LED Bar didn’t match our Gen 2’s when next to each other at the same level. So we added a parameter that allows you to choose which version you’d like, which is Parameter 100.
Added a Parameter for Zigbee Binding & Default Levels
Parameter 125 allows you to choose how you’d like Zigbee bindings to work. We recommend 0 for on/off and 1 for dimmers.
I’m sure I’m missing a few things, but these were the highlights I could think of off the top of my head.
I want to give a shout-out to @EricM_Inovelli for quarterbacking this entire process and working hard with the engineering team to get everything accomplished.
This is, IMO, the most feature-rich switch out there and we want to also thank the community for helping us always get there.