Admittedly, I haven’t read through this entire thread as I’ve been out of the forums for a bit, but yes, if you’re looking for a company that has a track record of being in stock, has an ecosystem that they can control the user experience, and is 4x the cost, then yes, I’d highly recommend Lutron. They’re a great company.
But I’d also be willing to put up the bet that there’s no other company out there with as many firmware and hardware features, willingness to work with its customers on upgrading/updating the switch in realtime, etc. We could have easily just put out a basic On/Off or Dimmer switch with basic functionality that, “just works”, but we chose to be different from the other brands in that we want to develop these switches together and be the best in the market from a firmware standpoint.
With that choice comes the burden of bugs – it’s impossible to test every single lighting scenario and hard to test everyone’s specific Home Assistant setup. Speaking of Home Assistant, people could say the same thing about that platform… if you read through our forums and their forums, on the surface it seems like they are a train-wreck of problems. But you know why people love them? Because they have an amazing community who bands together to fix things as well as founders who listen. Their willing to take chances that other companies won’t. That’s why they’ve become one of the largest and arguably the most capable platform to use.
So, bluntly speaking – yes, if you’d like a product that is simple, streamlined and, “just works”, we’re probably not the brand for you. But if you want something that you can have input on and customize to your specific setup and does 99% of the things right, then we’re here to help.
I wonder where they got their inspiration from on this line - their products look awfully familiar
PS - it’s not too late to cancel your Red Series order. I don’t want you to not be satisfied with your order as it seems like you are in reading through this thread.
Not sure how it got twice…looks like that draw most of your attention.
Lutron RA3 model has been released on Nov 1 2021, and considering development and release to production time I doubt that Lutron was inspired by Inovelli
Regarding my satisfaction or not - my setup at home (in many places for 3ways and 4 ways i do not have travelers, so RA3 won’t work in my case) requires virtual connection (Zwave association or ZigBee grouping), this is why I had a real hope with Red 2in1. In the meantime, waiting for Red 2in1 i bought 22 Blue 2in1, so for me there is not way back and I still waiting for another 20 Red 2in1 (mixing Zigbee and Zwave mesh). I did not have problem with 2.08 firmware and a lot of issues with 2.14. You probably saw that I am not the only one who have a problem. Together with constant delays with Red 2in1 release, I am frustrated, especially when I do not see much interest from your customer support to contribute into root cause analysis of 2.14 challenges.
Your comment: “it’s not too late to cancel your Red Series order” is very unusual way to maintain customer satisfaction
Again, for my current project it is too late to roll back, and I’m stuck with it.
For future projects I will definitely consider your advice
With 2.14 I have been getting buzzing noises on some of my Hue Ambiance 800 lumen A19 lights :(. Switch has load directly wired to light fixture and they are not 3-ways. Changing 3-way/sine wave, etc. doesn’t make a difference.
Yes, the choice between on/off and dimmer matters in SBM mode (with respect to determining what waveform the switch supplies to the smart bulbs) - it shouldn’t, but it does. Ideally you’d always get full sine wave in SBM mode (on/off or dimmer), but currently you only get it in on/off mode.
I’ve just written a new post about this:
Hmm, this is surprising - based on my testing, in SBM, setting switchType = “3-Way Dumb Switch” should get you back to the old leading-edge waveform (which your bulbs should be happier with).
Eric is just trying to help you. Inovelli makes great switches and provides great support.
I can tell you that Lutron’s stuff does just work, but it’s very limited and you’re stuck with cloud-integrated crap. Personally, it does seem that last minute changes to the RA3 were done to make it look like Inovelli’s switches.
Inovelli is worth waiting for. I’m using their Blue Switches and they’re the best switch I’ve ever used. Seriously - nothing compares.
Hi
Any update on 2.14 fix?
Some of my lights are buzzing (need really reduce brightness to stop buzzing) and are flickering in “mid range” (as I’ve mentioned before). My wife is already complaining and my argument “do not use it this way” is not working any more
Just to recap: I did not have this issue with Insteon, and did not have this issue with 2.08.
So far 2.14 has been excellent for me. It’s fixed all the issues I’ve experienced with 2.08, and reduced/eliminated flickering and “uneven dimming behavior” with my old LED cans.
I had switched to Blues from Insteon before, and have to agree that Insteon did have their s together, I had never experienced any problems with their dimmers, it just worked flawlessly out of the box no matter what lights I paired them with. But I’m glad the Blue performance is now on par.
Interesting. For me it is completely backwards - 2.08 was great, 2.14 is a disaster so far. Actually, one dimmer even dead by now (was nor fast enough to limit max power). Huge buzzing and dead.
I already mentioned, I have Juno cans with MR16, replaced with Philips LEDs (dimmable). Insteon was flawless (decided to get rid of them due to uncertainty and issues with home assistant) , 2.08 was good enough, Zooz Z-wave was no problem (but I do not like their feel and could not fix 3 way through association - I do not have travelers in many locations)
I bought 2 blue 2in1 dimmers for test (was 2.08 by this time). It was ok, so I replaced 30 dimmers and when 2.14 came. Now I’m stuck with buzzing and flickering. If I just could to roll back to 2.08…I have small hope that may be next update will fix it, if not I will be in serious trouble…
Which Zooz products? I agree the Zooz feature set isn’t as good, but their dimmers do use reverse-phase dimming. I have a couple of locations where a Blue 2-in-1 replaced a Zooz Zen27, and it was a disaster until 2.14 fixed the buzzing. imo 2.14 works the same for me now as the Zen27 (in terms of dimming), with no change in load type.
While the Zen27 was a trailing edge dimmer, it is has been discontinued. It was replaced with the Zen72 and Zen77. The Zen72 has a triac (leading edge) dimmer. Originally the Zen77 was a trailing edge dimmer, but the newer versions available now are also triac.
From their support site:
"Version 1.0 and 2.0 of the ZEN77 were MOSFET dimmers so if your bulbs work better with trailing-edge (or reverse-phase) drivers, those versions of the model worked best. Version 3.0 of the ZEN77 is now a TRIAC dimmer so if your bulbs work better with leading-edge drivers, this model will work better.
Why We Changed to all TRIAC: We found that newer LED bulbs dimmed better with TRIAC dimmers, and considering limited availability for MOSFETS, we decided to transfer the ZEN77 model to TRIAC as well."
I have 60 switches running latest (2.14) firmware and have yet to have any lights buzzing or any issue at all. I’ve had one switch disconnect the other day, but rebooting it fixed it and I have yet to have it happen again.
IMO 2.08 was way worse, I had constant disconnections on that version.
It looks like v2.14 was pulled from the prod repo.
What’s the status of 2.14 online OTA? I just unboxed 5 new Blues, and they came pre-installed with Firmware 2.11. Z2M Expose shows the new controls (bighter non-neutral, double-tap down), but obviously they aren’t in the old firmware.
When I try to OTA in Z2M, it reports the installed firmware is newer than the online version.
Is there a post from @Eric_Inovelli or @EricM_Inovelli talking about the decision to pull 2.14 and what we should be expecting? I have dozens of these things sitting in their boxes as I wait for the firmware issues to be worked out.
