You should’ve added some quotes around “disabling the relay”.
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Nope, I’m not gettin’ lumped into that camp!
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LOL! I honestly sit up at night waiting for the next, “disable local internal relay” conversation!
Yes, this was the latest dilemma we found with our manufacturer and we’re addressing in a new firmware update.
The problem was in a 3-Way scenario (with a dumb switch), there were issues of bulbs shutting off at random and what we found was that some bulbs needed to be maxed valued at 80-85%. This fixed the shutoff issue.
However, this presented a new problem with smart bulbs. Since the firmware maxed out bulbs at 80-85%, it did not provide full power to smart bulbs and some experienced the flashing/strobing issue. We noticed this on Hue.
So, we went back to the manufacturer and proposed a solution to where the value of the bulbs will be set for 100% if not in a 3-Way setting with a dumb switch (since you can’t really use smart bulbs in a 3-Way with a dumb switch anyway).
They then said, “sorry, there’s not enough memory left on the chip” – so we proposed removing a couple of features (invert switch locally and one other thing that no one uses) and they said that will work. So, we should be having a new release next week. The engineer said he needed 1wk and that was last Wednesday.
Perfect lol
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Does this mean that all of my dimmers are internally maxed at 80–85%? A setting of 99% on the device page — no matter what other settings/parameters have been adjusted — leads to 80–85% output? Or is this only in effect when certain other settings are enabled/disabled? All Inovelli dimmers in my home are running firmware 1.43 at the moment.
This makes complete sense and is an effective solution. It’s almost like introducing a special case “switch type” for smart bulbs.
I am shocked at how much you’ve been able to pack into/achieve using an 8051. That’s a very constrained architecture especially when there’s a full wireless stack to run! I’ll bet you’re looking forward to building switch/dimmer products with the 700 series as you get a lot more from the Cortex M4 than that 8051. Either way it sounds like you’ve worked out a solution with your engineer?
Wonder what that “one other thing that no one uses” is…?
I’m looking forward to it!
Yes, this is how I interpreted it from the manufacturer – @EricM_Inovelli – can you confirm this?
No, it’s permanently in effect now regardless of any other settings.
Yeah, our Fan/Light switch is running on the 700 Series, which is exciting 
Yes, we worked out a solution – they should have something for us early next week!
I just said this bc I couldn’t remember lol. I think we suggested, “default level z-wave” (ie: setting the default level on for zwave). But remember, these are just if you need to configure this via the configuration button. These settings will not be lost if you have a hub that will allow you to change parameters.
Unfortunately v1.45 did not fix the smart bulb problem I described here. See my post in the v1.45 thread for more.
I guess I just want to say that with 1.45 my switches set at 99% (nothing set for max value in settings) and disable local control enabled, I get a clean 124V in and 124V out, and my zigbee bulbs run happily using solely scene control via ABC Manager.
Not sure how/why/what is up here, but you should be able to replicate my setup without issue.
- Confirm settings for max value is 99 or default.
- Enable remote control so you actually can control the dimmer level temporarily.
- Dim up to 99%
- Make sure no automations or whatever are controlling the level of the switch. Hide from interfaces so it just lives at 99% forever.
That Should get you what you are looking for.
I don’t think this is the case. Perhaps firmware/software were revised down, but I get full line voltage on the load side at 99% dim.
I have a brief update to my struggle to report. I still am waiting for my Z Wave USB sticks to arrive from DigiKey. Until that time I only can update target0 aka the .otz file. I’ve now tested with several different load types in a non-neutral configuration and cannot get stable output from load less than ~50W much above 60% on the dimmer. This by extension would includes any smart bulb since the wall dimmer level has to be set to 99 to pass along clean power.
What seems to happen (and this is especially noticeable with smart bulbs) is that the wall dimmer goes into a reset loop. This sends any smart bulbs into a rave panic, conventional LED bulbs into a fast strobing flicker, and incandescent bulbs into a smoother pulsed effect. Above that 50W threshold or below 60% works normally with conventional loads so far but of course this does not help when trying to use smart bulbs which require clean line voltage.
I had hoped that in my non-neutral circuits (I sadly have a few) I could use smart bulbs with Red Series dimmers to enable better performance and features but perhaps I’m discovering otherwise?
Has anyone else had success in non-neutral situations with smart bulbs running v1.45 (or any other firmware)? What tricks were required to get it working and what is the overall wattage on that circuit?
Can someone confirm that with a neutral, smart bulbs work as expected without issue?
Definitely had this happen (on v1.45) with a non-smart 15w LED fixture with the dimmer wired to neutral. Had a very “club-ish” feel…
I finally have some updates to report! My ZWave Stick finally arrived from DigiKey. As I’m a Mac user I had to dig up a Windows 10 virtual machine from the ashes. Take took a little bit of extra work but I did get the ZWave developer tools installed and working on the VM. I managed to update all my Inovelli devices to current 1.45 firmware and update all the Holtek target1 firmwares too.
In all my testing I can report the following:
- With a neutral present and the driver in Hubitat configured appropriately, smart bulbs and low wattage non-smart LED bulbs work perfectly without any issues. This is a notable improvement over previous tests. Right now I am up to a few hours of run time in this configuration without any issues at all.
- Without a neutral the situation is worse for smart bulbs with 1.45. All I get this go around is a dimmer with its LED bar blinking red at a constant rate. I no longer see a rave mode from the light source and the dimmer appears to be very upset otherwise.
- Without a neutral non-smart LED bulbs still exhibit instability in the same way as previous firmware versions. The “75% threshold” seems to still hold true where at 70% most loads are stable and dim without issue. At 75% or more, with loads approximately 50W or less, the dimmer will reset as though power was lost. I suspect that is what is happening as when the dimmer becomes functional again it will obey the “State After Power Restored” value as set on the device page. In addition (and this is particularly related to smart bulbs) if that “State After Power Restored” value is set to 75% or more the dimmer will go into a reset loop where every time it reboot itself and raises up to that value it restarts the reset loop again.
Hoping someone else either can confirm my results or tell me what I can do differently to overcome these issues?
Thanks!
Try 1.47 and sit there and make sure it works for both updates. The .bin has been especially troublesome not completing for a lot of us. See the 1.47 thread.
Mine are all neutral so I can’t help on the particular issue. But it seems like the .bin might not be applying properly. I’d work to exclude from your hub, reset the switch (20+s config button until red) use the z-wave stick to update it on it’s own z-wave network (instead of being a secondary controller) and then do some testing.
Edit: Also since you have hubitat @bcopeland now has an updated driver to push both the .otz and .bin to the switches in the future. For this iteration to get it working I’d do it in it’s own little network.
@kreene1987 I updated all switches with both targets using a ZWave Stick and PC Controller prior to posting my last update. Just a few days ago I updated again to 1.47 all around. There have been several noticeable improvements but I have not yet tested smart bulb functionality. That’s coming soon…
@EricM_Inovelli I am thrilled to see the inclusion of a specific Smart Bulb Mode. I cannot wait to try it later this week!
I have been running Smart Bulb mode with Philips Hue and have had great results so far. Let us know how it goes when you do test it out.
Testing Smart Bulb mode has been “interesting” so far. With a neutral present everything has been stable and glitch free no matter what bulb is in use.
Without a neutral things are quite strange. The two dimmers I have installed on non-neutral circuits both do exactly the same thing. For the past week I thought that both might actually be bad dimmers in fact! They were purchased and delivered at the same time within the same order at the very end of the last batch just before stock ran out…
First up lets talk about smart bulb mode with a halogen installed. With a halogen bulb installed that works perfectly when smart bulb mode is disabled upon enabling smart bulb mode, disabling local control, then sending the dimmer to 99 on the device page, the dimmer goes into the familiar reset loop that until now I never experienced with this high of a wattage. Air gap resetting the dimmer breaks the loop and it starts over. However this sometimes it’s different — the reset loop repeats 6–10 times then the dimmer goes to 45% and sits there or the reset loop repeats forever. It’s a 50% chance one way or the other. If it does stabilize then I can set the dimmer to 99 on the device page. Weird!
Next with a Smart Bulb installed all I get is a red blinking LED bar and the bulb itself blinking at a matching pace (approximately once per two seconds). The solid red bar looks like the first phase of the dimmer’s normal boot sequence.
Only these two dimmers exhibit this behavior and both lack a neutral. The rest of my dimmers are solid but all other dimmers in my home have neutral wires. Also high up on the weird-o-meter is that both of these dimmers when set to 99 no matter the other modes/settings are not stable since upgrading to v1.47 no matter what the load – even halogen or incandescent (and I did try a variety of wattages). What I see is a subtle and somewhat random looking pulsation but that never goes away. I did open the panel, reseat the dimmer, check my terminals, etc and everything physically looks good. It only occurs when set to exactly 99. Any other value is stable.
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Can you explain a bit more? Are you using on/off switches or dimmers? Can you use the dimmers to dim the Hues (even if it takes some software config)? What settings are you using on the switches (default level, smart bulb mode, disable relay, etc)?
Either will work (dimmer or on off), but they have to be the red series. I usually set it the device like this:
Dimmer speed - 0
Default Level (both) - 99
Disable Relay
State after power restored - 99
Smart bulb mode - on
Then, in Rule Machine you set the automation to respond to scene commands:
Interesting, thank you!
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To add another data point to “Smart Bulb Mode” with no neutral, I’ve tried this twice on one of my LZW31-SNs running firmware 1.48 and it screwed up the switch so bad both times that I had to factory reset it to get it to work again. No amount of air-gapping or circuit breaking could reset it enough. What I’d see is that even though the switch would talk on the ZWave network (I could still control scenes with it), it wouldn’t respond to anything coming in over ZWave. OZW also would report RTTs in the 2000-5000s. Factory resetting then reincluding in the network would get everything back to normal (with a new node ID, thus requiring updating all of my scripts and automations).
Did you ever find a way to get this working well? I’m having exactly the same problem with my no-neutral dimmers trying to use Hue or Sengled bulbs. Even with 2x aeotec bypasses installed it’s still unstable. Same results on two different dimmers on two different circuits. Trouble with no-neutral smart bulb mode. Red series resets or flickers even with bypass