Blue series brightness level reported incorrectly in home assistant

Hey there :wave:! I am having an issue with the blue switch that I wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing.

I use Home Assistant and have configured my switch so that the on-level is set to 254. This means that when the switch us turned off and back on again, it will be maximum brightness regardless of whatever level was set to before. This functionality works great. However, in home assistant I noticed that the brightness value is shown incorrectly. For example, if I do the following…

  1. Turn switch on
  2. Adjust brightness to 50%
  3. Turn switch off
  4. Turn switch on

I observe that the light brightness that I see in the room is maximum (as expected). But in the home assistant UI, the brightness is reported as 50% still.

I have several red switches configured the same way and they work as expected, and also report correct brightness values. So I wonder if it is a bug in the firmware?

One other thing i want to mention is that the steps I outlined above are using the home assistant UI 100% (remote control).

I tried the same test using the switch itself and found another strange issue. If I adjust the brightness to 50% by holding the paddle down and releasing. Then turn off the switch and turn it back on, the brightness is restored to 50% – ignoring the on-level setting i had set in home assistant. I suspect this is a related issue, because in that case the reported brightness is accurate since it was restored to it’s last brightness.

Upon inspecting the switch parameters in the manual I found that there are two settings for default level:

  • Default Level - Local
  • Default Level - Remote

But the setting in the home assistant UI is called “On level” and there is only one. So I suspect that this setting is not setting both parameters correctly.

It seems that the home assistant UI was built with an attempt to simplify the parameters. But I think it would be better to have a 1 to 1 mapping of settings from the listed parameters to the ones shown in the device configuration.

Did you end up resolving this issue or finding a workaround?

For some reason my switches are storing the brightness value at 1%, even if they are switched on to a different value.

So as an example, the switch turn on is triggered by Home Assistant, the switch turns on to 100% (previous value). As soon as the switch turns on, Home Assistant receives a brightness value update from the switch that reports the brightness at 1% even though the switch is at 100%. Therefore when I go to turn on the switch again, it incorrectly turns on to 1%.

Hey there,

No I don’t have a workaround. And until now nobody else in this forum has reported the same issue. I’ve just been living with it. Would love to get it resolved one way or another!

Are you using ZHA or z2m? If the latter, perhaps Firmware bug: defaultLevelRemote does not work - #15 by mathieu is related? Apparently, there’s code in z2m that overrides the switch’s default on brightness setting.

I’m using ZHA.

What firmware version are you on?

I’ve got 10 switches installed, all on 0x0102020e . Home assistant is set to auto-update to new firmware for me.

I’m unfamiliar with how ZHA reports fw versions, does 0x0102020e = 2.14?

I wasn’t aware ZHA had an auto firmware update option either. That seems very risky as a feature since you can’t control when the update is pushed and you’ll lose your device for 20mins while it happens. Even more risky if it auto pushes on the beta channel like this firmware would be considered.

So I’d say first double check to ensure you’re on 2.14.

Now I assume you’re using defaultLevelLocal/defaultLevelRemote settings to have the light turn to 100% when turned on instead of previous brightness state? Or are you doing turning it on with a light_on command from HA with brightness set to 100? Walk me through how you’ve got it configured and I’ll see if I can make mine do the same thing.

Yes, 0x0102020E is 2.14. see Blue Series 2-1 Firmware Changelog | VZM31-SN

Inovelli supports OTA updates for blue series via home assistant through both ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT. I enabled it some time ago. I have only noticed one of my switches updating one time, and it was no big deal. But I agree, it would be nice if it could be scheduled to only perform updates at 2am. But even as-is, the fact that all 10 of my switches will get the latest firmware update without me doing anything is worth it to me.

OK, It has been some months since i originally posted about this. So tonight I followed my own instructions and it is working as expected now. So I’m guessing a firmware update or home assistant update since then solved my problem. Thanks for following up!

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