There appears to be a non-configurable and rather long (IMO) delay before dimming begins when you hold a paddle. My guess is it’s about a second or maybe the default 700ms.
This annoys me pretty much every time I dim my light from the wall. I want to be able to make quick, small adjustments to the lighting as I’m walking into a room.
NOTES:
The configuration for double tap delay works but does not appear to affect how long you have to hold before dimming begins.
The configuration for dimming ramp rate works as intended. Once dimming begins I can make the lights dim very quickly. However, there is still a large delay before dimming begins.
I’m testing a switch that is directly controlling lights, so there’s no hub or automation adding latency.
You can lower the Button Delay which defaults to 700ms as you said. I have mine set to 500ms. It’s a balance between allowing multitap functions and time to start dimming.
It’s waiting to see if you release for multi-tap. You can configure to eliminate the delay entirely (single tap/hold only) or reduce the delay as stu said.
Hi Daniel,
I do agree, I have multi-taps completely disabled, and it still seems like about a second after starting to hold that the dimming starts. Have you set the maximum brightness for these bulbs? If not, this can make it worse - my bulbs appear to reach their maximum brightness at about 75% power. So, if you don’t have the max set, the dimmer spends the first 25% of it’s dimming time reducing from 100% power to 75% - but that doesn’t change the light output so dimming appears not to have started. (Easy test; is it slower to start dimming if you start from full on vs. from 1/2 dimmed)
@SandyB my switches have the majority of the range configured so I don’t notice that extra problem. But yea, when I timed it with a stop watch it may actually be more than 700ms, I think it could be a full second.
Here’s a video showing the responsiveness. I dimmed it to the middle first to remove any concern about what Sandy mentioned. The LED bar matches the response of the lights. I put it in iMovie I can see the detailed scrubber it does appear to be a full 1s delay.
I’m setting up my first Red Series switch today and also noticed this limitation. The delay makes it difficult to make small adjustment to light levels using the switch.
Just installed two blue series dimmers in my home, and I’m having the same issue. The WAF on these is zero because of this lag. Anyone in this thread found a solution? The button delay parameter is at zero and there’s the exact same delay shown in your video @danielscottjames
Hi @Eric_Inovelli, it sems like there must be a few more timers buried in the firmware, one or two to do with debounce - how short a push isn’t a push, how short a release isn’t a release (e.g. in the middle of a hold). Not sure how important these are, I can see them maybe needing updates as the switches age (and the contacts oxidize a bit).
Then there’s the one here, about when to turn a push into a hold. Maybe start using the same setting as the multi-tap wait? This would be a good reason for why you kept both the multi-tap on/off setting and the multi-tap timer (that could be set to 0)!
I have the exact same issue with the Red dimmers and it is the only thing preventing me from switching out whole house to them. Everything else is great, but this second long delay before dimming is incredibly frustrating. Hopefully it is a simple firmware update.
Apologies, I should have specified. I set the button press delay to 0, and ramp rates were the lowest they could go. The switch was also configured with Smart Bulb mode, and bound to a Zigbee group of Philips Hue bulbs, all of this done in Home Assistant. With the Zigbee group and smart bulb mode, HA was out of the equation for switch->bulb control. There was still a pause before dimming would kick in. Single tap on/off were near instantaneous though.
However, after some debugging, I noticed I didn’t have the neutral wire hooked up - only load and line. I’m hoping this was the cause of the buzzing. I’ll run to Home Depot and grab some wire connectors to properly route the neutral and report back.
I’m looking for a fix for this too for my VZM31-SN and VM31-SN switches. I have latest firmware, button press delay set to 0ms, and it takes about a second of holding down the paddle before dimming starts, regardless of what the ramp rate is set to, or where I am at in the dimming range when I start. Programming the switches from a Hubitat C8.
Quick update: I hooked up the neutral wire, and that resolved the buzzing problem. There are now four wires hooked up to the switch: load, line, neutral, and ground.
But the delay before dimming remains. The switch also has an absolutely awful squeak when pressing it.
I’m hoping a firmware update can fix this dimming delay problem. As for the squeaking, maybe I got a bad switch, or maybe a poor choice of plastic was chosen for injection molding, but that’s a problem for another day.
What I imagine is happening with the firmware is a hardcoded delay as some other folks have proposed. Likely a debounce. The logic probably goes something like:
A press has been registered
Start a ‘button delay’ timer
If a release is detected before ‘button delay’ timer expires, increase a ‘press count’ variable, and restart the timer and wait for another press. Do this up to 6 times for each press/release.
If a 2nd/3rd/…/6th press is not registered, publish a message with the button and number of presses (up/down/config + 1,2,…,6 presses).
If ‘button delay’ timer expires, and the original button is still being pressed, then start issuing dimming commands at an interval specified by the dimming up/down ramp rate based on whether the up or down button was pressed.
I’ve noticed that if I do a quick press + release, followed by a press + hold, dimming doesn’t occur.
Maybe the firmware can be updated to add a toggleable feature that begins issuing dimming commands (according to the dimming ramp rate) immediately on any button press?
That’s the purpose of the button delay setting, which you’ve already set.
There must be some difference between hard wired and binding, as I don’t notice any discernible delay in hard-wired dimmers, even with a 500 ms button delay. I don’t have any bindings, however.
If the issue is in the binding, it could be on either end, the switch OR the bulb . . . or just be the nature of binding . . .
I want to be very clear here. The button delay parameter DOES NOT affect what we are complaining about. The button delay parameter affects how quickly a double tap is registered.
The problem here is that there is NO configuration that adjusts the delay we are complaining about. The delay we are complaining about is the delay between when you press and hold on the paddle and when dimming begins.
If I am misunderstanding something, I’d love to be proven wrong via a video of someone dimming a circuit in < ~1s after holding the paddle down.