Dimmer Switch (Red Series) | Project Lights Out (v2.0)

Switches General Discussion
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Introduction
This will be an area where we’ll discuss improvement opportunities for our Dimmer Switch (Red Series) in terms of hardware and firmware.

Feel free to list anything from examples you’d like to see implemented (ie: I want to be able to change the dim level based on certain times of day), hardware features you’d like to see upgraded (ie: 700 Series Z-Wave) or firmware features you’d like to see added (ie: instant on for the switch).

Looking forward to improving the switch!

Suggestions
This will be an area where suggestions are captured and commented on. Thank you all for the ideas and we’ll do our best to implement them!

Suggestion #1 - Individual Notifications Per LED
Credit: aruffell from ST Community

The switches should have the ability to have each individual LED show a different notification (similar to HomeSeer’s WD200+ switch). In addition, there should be a separate paddle that defines the LED’s better (ie: not blended like it is now) in case you like this look better.

Suggestion #2 - Ability to Disable Config Button
Credit: Ticket from Site

Allow there to be either a security setting to enter config mode or a way to disable it so that it cannot be edited in commercial (or personal) settings.

Status: TBD

Enhancements / Bug Fixes
This will be an area where enhancements and bug fixes are captured and commented on. Thank you for finding the bugs and here’s to squashing them!

Bug / Enhancement #1 - Keep Notifications Persistent
Credit: @Yooshaw - LZW31-SN Persistent Notifications

When a notification is running and you tap up or down (or hold up or down) on the paddle to turn on/dim the light, the notification clears and doesn’t come back.

Bug / Enhancement #2 - Trigger Scene from Aux Switch

Have a single-tap from the aux switch trigger a Z-Wave scene. If possible, a double/triple, etc tap.

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Why not just have the current LED bar cycle through the notifications? Garage door open after 8:30 pm? Set The LED Bar Red display for 1 second, Then cycle to yellow because the doors are unlocked, Then blue because a contact sensor is open, etc. This may already be how V1.0 is set up. Even if it’s not, sounds like a FW update to me.

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Hey @Ma2J – yeah great point! This will be available on the current version (you’ll be able to setup multiple notifications with different colors and effects and they can cycle), which is pretty cool.

I think the benefits of having the individual notifications is that you can have a solid color for each LED instead of the switch flashing at you every x seconds.

Ultimately, I think it comes down to preference. I’m more in the one notification at a time camp (where it cycles) but I can understand the desire for the multiple notifications without flashing/cycling.

Either way, the more customization and flexibility we can offer the better :slight_smile:

1 Like
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ill likely keep mine simple, but i have other devices that handle notifications currently. These are going in my kitchen and i do have actiontiles on a 10" tablet mounted to handle my alarm / smart devices. I alert on that as well as change bulb colors in my living room when garage doors are open etc.

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I know this would be a completely different device, but have you considered a touchpad based dimmer? Plum offered switches that you could slide your finger up and down on to dim and could pair multiple switches and use 2-finger touch to dim multiple switches together. The functionality was great. Of course that was not z-wave and so with the proprierory software and a company that appears to have gone belly-up, the switches I have don’t have much of a future. I’d love to see an Inovelli version with similar z-wave based functionality if possible

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My suggestions:

  1. Fix the red series dimmer to be able to work with LIFX+ bulbs. Currently we cannot shut off the LIFX+ bulbs (using the LIFX app) because the dimmer is somehow triggering them to turn back on every time. It’s not very user friendly to have a switch with “smart bulb mode” when it doesn’t work with smart bulbs.

  2. Create a parameter to disable the internal relay for remote control from the “hub” (already can disable it from the switch itself).

  3. When the internal relay is disabled, we would like the dimming level (and the LED on the switch) to still function normally. We want these dimming levels to change in the hub with instant status so we can program the dimmer level to control our smart bulb level.

1 Like
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I plan to install one of these with the relay disabled, but haven’t yet. I’m curious what you mean by this, can you elaborate? What about dimming doesn’t work the same way (but via the hub) when the internal relay is disabled?

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@NeighborGeek
When the relay is disabled, the LED on the dimmer shows full ON (Dim 100%) and cannot be changed. The dimmer is basically “stuck” in full ON mode. The buttons on the dimmer will only send scene control statuses (1 tap, 2 tap, etc), they will not change/send dimming updates.

When controlled from the hub, the dimmer relay will still function (still powers off the bulbs). The dimmer control will also still function from the hub, potentially damaging your smart bulbs if you accidentally change the dimmer level. I have not found a way to disable remote control functions (from the hub), at least not with my Homeseer system.

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@Eric_Inovelli - Possible bug identification: Dimmer shipping with parameters 21 and 22 not actually set to the defaults documentation claims they are.

Evidence:
My struggles with the random turn off issue being solved by setting the parameters OFF of default settings, and then TO desired settings.

Specific sequence I believe fixed the random off issue.

Initial positive results from another customer.

Aux switch not behaving correctly possibly solved using the same fix.

Edit: Also solved my own Aux Switch misbehavior issue

Keeping an eye out for new threads about the issue to continue to test the fix, but you all could reach out to those in the data collection thread to get a decent sized testing group right away.

I suspect the manufacturer would be interested in the “weird behavior” section of the first post I linked, as it may help them figure out what exactly is going wrong. DM me if you need clarifications of the weird behavior.

1 Like
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Yes to these! I want to use the dimmer to dim my smart bulbs, but not getting the results I had hoped for. Currently my dimmer is effectively working as a on/off. Would love to still be able to virtually dim and see that reflected on the LED.

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More indications that affect reliability

Wiring up a LZW31-SN in a weak-signal environment, the LED shows GREEN indicating that there is sufficient signal, but that seem sot be overly optimistic; the network (Zwave2MQTT-2.0.6 + Aeotec USB) shows some high error-rate, effectively marking the switch as dead.

I would prefer two indications:

  • SIGNAL: Signal is not just raw power, but fidelity on that link (spot the network guy here)

    • Is it possible to give the GREEN signal-OK indication to use a correlating portion of the LED bar, like how dim-level is probably shown, to show borderline signal cases? Currently it implies “you have zero signal” or “you have 100% awesome signal”, but really, I have so-so signal, and would benefit from a repeating network node somewhere between the closest hop and the LZW31-SN. Or maybe would. Who knows?
    • BER being a part of signal, is it possible to shade the part of the LED slider that would be unlit for “so-so signal” with RED indicating the number of bogus/error/bad/corrupt packets received?

  • Load current: you need ~25W load to get the proper current; how about some indication of what the current might be, or some way to see that Yes, the LZW31 has power to run, but the current is out of bounds due to load being too low?

My situation is not unusual, I don’t think: edge of the network, good signal, but errors on it, and the Load is close to 25W, and LZW31 powers up, but acts strangely, doesn’t show a non-neutral config (item number 47 or so in the sequential list :slight_smile: ) and may have other problems, but I can’t see inside the opaque box.

In any case, signal about the possible causes of failure is helpful so that we’re not debugging by smell, optimism, and lucky dice :slight_smile:

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More to my comment on looking for signal behind failures or unknown, the LED bar is probably a series of small LED segments, right? That seems like a way to get indications to of the LZW31: 8 bit error code? 12 bit? Even thinking monochrome on/off, that gives some indication of “dude. what’s wrong?” and the LZW31 can tell you.

Printing tick-marks on the side of the Wiring insert to match the position of LEDs can help us accurately read the on/off bit positions more clearly. Colors (modulo the colour-blind among us) expand the options.

Really difficult trying to count “that’s one yellow flash – is 1/2 second long, or short? – a longish pause, maybe a short flash… the same sequence now repeating or a second part of the current flash drum-beat? is that blue, or cyan, or aqua? marigold yellow, not sunrise yellow? :)”

I know I may sound like a Debbie downer here, and I am a huge proponent of your products and the ease of install (real fan of the air-gap in LZW31 so I can try, yet again, to enter the 12 taps on the config button) but it’s a way of not necessarily complaining but suggesting a software fix to expand to reduce that which frustrates me. I read that you can OTA firmware – another game-changer – I’d love to get more of towards failure-debugging.

An oddity: if you consider that you need different things when installing versus steady-state running, you could actually swap out install-diagnostic with post-install runtime features once the switch is installed, happy, despite I know that’s a bit of a logistical burden.

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This is definitely needed. I just installed 9 switches in my home and am very disappointed this feature was not included. Since most of the switches control outlets I have many smart bulbs to control with these switches . I had the exact same functionality with smartthings buttons as I do with these switches at half the cost. I have rewired the outlets I can and run those switches without a load to get the functionality that I need. Honestly thinking of returning the switches that I cant rewire.

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Just wanted to let everyone know that we’re submitting a large list to the manufacturer in the next couple of days and we’re starting the process of updating some of these. Some may have to move to V3.0 based on the size of the Z-Wave chip and the memory we’ve already used. But we’ll for sure keep everyone posted on the status!

Shoutout to @EricM_Inovelli for compiling this list and to all of you for helping us with bugs and enhancements.

1 Like
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By “V3.0” do you mean Gen 3 switches? or v3.0 firmware

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@Eric_Inovelli @EricM_Inovelli Some of the requests from the On/Off switch thread apply to the dimmer as well. Are those being taken into account here too? Specifically, looking for my personal favorite: Instant On/Off.

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Yes, that request is being addressed. Any updates that can be applied to both devices will be.

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How about adding parameters to allow for a different on ramp rate vs off ramp rate? I’d love for some of my dimmers to ramp up very quickly when turning on while fading out more slowly when turned off.

3 Likes
21

I’m using Gen 2 dimmers and notifications will not cycle.

If notification 1 is active and notification 2 is triggered and cleared. Notification 1 will not resume.

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I’d like to add a request in addition:

A tool to share common notifications/settings among switches. For example, let’s say I wanted a red pulse when the garage door is open. If I want that for every switch in my house, I have to individually set each notification up for each switch.

I’d like a tool or some way of setting every “Notification 3” to red, pulse, 100%, etc.

App could be a SmartApp called “Inovelli Notification Manager” or something.