It’s REALLY hard to capture the difference on camera (I need to get a neutral filter), but for me, the difference is being able to stare directly into the bulb in perpetuity on the Blue, whereas it hurts my eyes and I have to look away within half a second using the dumb switch. For my use case (ceiling lights in the garage) it really just doesn’t get very bright using the Blues, to the point where my SO, which is incredibly insensitive to hardware changes, asked out of the blue “is the garage dimmer than it was before?” Yes, yes it is.
Here are the photos I’ve been able to take in RAW mode (same ISO/shutter across shots). The only thing you can really notice is the size of the hotspot in the middle, which is noticeably larger on the non-Inovelli setup:
Dumb switch: https://imgur.com/Gf5KxEg.jpg
Yes, it appears so. Just says, “power output issue for non-neutral at max value”. The more I thought about this, the more I think it did fix the dim level on one of my setups.
That’s the problem with having a smart home but also using it as a beta testing house… I can’t remember what switch is on what version lol.
I had a chandelier that has 6 Philips Candelabra bulbs (non-smart) and I had some flickering at the highest level (I know it’s slightly different than yours) and the only way to fix it was to minimize the max level. I think I went down to like 60% output. It didn’t seem like it was much of a difference, but I do wear glasses, so who knows. I know some people are more sensitive to lux (not making fun, I’m serious).
Anyway, I know for a fact I updated that one to 2.10 and it eliminated the occasional flickering and I’ve had it at 95% ever since and did notice a difference in brightness.
But the one I want to test is my basement stairs – I believe that one is on 2.08 and it is dimmer than it was previous with a dumb switch. I made no adjustments to max level on this one so I will be able to tell right away if it gets brighter after the firmware update.
Yeah no problem, let’s hope we can get to the bottom of this! Ping me here if you don’t hear back in a few days. I don’t mean to forget, I just get side tracked easily!
@Eric_Inovelli, @SandyB and others, I’m back with some hard data and a somewhat startling discovery. tl;dr: The brightness drop is associated with a non-neutral setup, and it’s pretty significant.
I used an ESPHome illumination sensor connected to a battery power bank to measure room lux. And I installed a new Blue 2-in-1 in a room with a neutral connection. So I have three configs to report:
Original Insteon setup with neutral: 93 lux
Inovelli Blue setup WITHOUT Neutral: 59 lux
Inovelli Blue setup WITH Neutral: 89 lux
Here’s all three together:
So comparing Insteon to Inovelli Blue without neutral wire, this is a 34 lux, or ~37% drop in brightness.
Comparing Insteon to Inovelli Blue with neutral wire, it’s only a 4 lux, or 4% drop in brightness (which I don’t notice).
I’m hoping this is helpful, and that there is something that can be done to fix the non-neutral setup. I was going to change all of the lights in my house to Blues, but about half of them are dumb switches without neutrals, and I don’t think I can do that if the lights only hit 63% of max brightness.
Thank you – very helpful. I’ve passed this onto the engineers as well. I wonder what that reading would be if a bypass was installed. I’m happy to send you one to test.
Happy to take a bypass and give it a shot. Let me know what I can do!
In the meantime, I’ve confirmed with another of my Blues - I had originally set it up without a neutral, but there was a neutral in the switchbox. So I took some lux measurements without the neutral, and then connected the neutral and took more measurements.
The lighting conditions are a bit messier, but the overall result is similar: 30lux versus 48 lux, or about 35% loss of max brightness.
Yes, so the firmware that I tried unfortunately didn’t fix the issue. However, we just got new firmware for the Red Series that the same logic can be applied for the Blue Series.
Tomorrow I’m going to swap the Blue Series switch out with the Red Series and see if it makes a difference.
The engineer claims he managed to get the difference in brightness within 15% of a neutral setting, so that’s a good start.
If the Red Series switch works, he will work on a new firmware version for the Blue Series.
Thanks for providing the update, Eric! Will keep fingers crossed. Definitely interested in hearing if a bypass helps (and still willing to test if that is helpful).
And I agree if we can get to a drop of 15% from max, that’s a significant improvement from what I’m seeing now (37% of max), and may not even be noticeable day to day.
Any follow up with this? I had issues with my hue bulbs flickering with a non-neural blue switch (and bypass) install and this reduced voltage issue was never disclosed. My switch has been a paperweight ever since. This seems like a very likely source of my problem.
2.14 Firmware was released the other day. I would try updating to that. They have a fix for the brightness and flickering. I have all neutrals in my boxes, so I can’t test the low brightness, but the flickering has all but gone away from me. The only flickers I see now are the cheap LED bulbs I’m too lazy to get a ladder out to change. Even then, the flickering on those bulbs have reduced so much, I doubt I’ll make an effort to swap those bulbs before they die.
Yes! Version 2.14 was released a couple of days ago, and directly addresses the dimming flicker AND the non-neutral brightness issue. Firmware update available now.
It seems with some implementations (e.g., Z2M in Home Assistant) you need to wait for the next mqtt update for the proper controls to be exposed to enable the settings.
