Single pole with neutral install controlling a light fixture that has a Hue bulb in it. 75 watt equivalent, 10watt actual.
The switch works perfectly fine as long as it’s not in smart bulb mode. When I put it in smart bulb mode and add the automations to the buttons in HomeKit according to the instructions, it won’t work.
Pressing the down button on the switch to turn it off just makes the bulb flash off and then immediately turn on again. If the bulb is off, pressing the top button won’t turn it on at all.
If I factory reset or turn off smart bulb mode, everything works as expected. But the reason why I bought the white switches is because of smart bulb mode to make the home accessible to everyone.
I reached out to inovelli support and the only answer they gave me was simply “add a bypass” and that the switches require 25watt minimum to work.
Is that really true? Is everyone who is using these in smart bulb mode using LED bulbs that are 25 watts minimum (seems crazy to me for a modern single LED bulb in a home to be 25 watts) or installing bypasses at each fixture?
If this is true I’ll have to return all the switches I purchased, so I’m really hoping it isn’t the case. For anyone using smart bulb mode, what’s the wattage you’re using or do you use a bypass?
The answer you received is incorrect. There have been issues with Hue bulbs in a non-neutral configuration, but there isn’t any reason for a bypass in your neutral configuration. (There are a few edge cases where a bypass might be needed with a neutral configuration, but that doesn’t apply to your situation.)
Your switch must be configured with the Smart Bulb Mode on to keep your Hue bulbs constantly powered. In this configuration, you can use the button presses to configure automations to turn the bulbs on or off or set varying dim levels.
I can’t help with the Homekit automation part. Hopefully a HK user can help here. I have seen several posts here and on Reddit with users having problems configurating the automations, so you’re not alone.
TLDR: 1. You don’t need a bypass with a neutral config. 2. You do need to keep SBM turned on.
Thank you. Perhaps the support agent simply misunderstood me or something. I had a suspicion a bypass wouldn’t do anything in my case.
Smart bulb mode doesn’t work:
switch works fine in regular on/off mode. The light is bright and no flickering. I can turn on or off the load with the paddle.
when I switch it to smart bulb mode, I can confirm that the light is always on. It receives power and tapping the paddle does nothing, as expected.
I then go into HomeKit and add the light to my Home. I then add the automations to the buttons. Simple automations such as top button turns smart bulb on, bottom button turns smart bulb off. I test the automations using “test automation” in HomeKit, and the lights indeed turn on or off as expected through software. Basically I follow innovelli’s instructions to a tee. Controlling Smart Bulb(s) from Smart Switch(es) • Apple Home | Inovelli Help Center
However, when I try using the buttons as assigned, it doesn’t work. The top button does not turn on the light if it is off. The bottom button will make the light turn off if it’s already on, but it turns back on immediately, like a flicker. Sometimes the bottom button won’t work at all, sometimes it seems to change the light temperature/color too bright white. It is really odd.
Troubleshooting steps taken already:
double checked wiring for line and load. It is correct.
Factory reset switch multiple times and re-added and redo set up.
Double checked thread connection: it is orange according to the switch, indicating OK but not good connection.
Basically, everything seems to work as intended except for the HomeKit automations assigned to the buttons. I told this to the agent and they said that I’d need a bypass, but again it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.
The only thing I haven’t tried yet is replacing the switch altogether with a different one.
Did you confirm which button HomeKit assigned to the switch. For whatever reason apple is not consistent on this. You have to go to the “button assignment screen” or whatever you want to call it and tap the buttons and watch for the illumination to tell you which one Home assigned to the buttons.
For example
In the attached photo on this switch my instance assigned “up” to button 1, “config” to button 2, and “down” to button 3
I also pushed the down button on the switch and you can see how it illuminates the single press on button 3 confirming the button push.
So it may just be that your automations work fine but your assignments are config for button 1, up for button 2, and down for button 3, which would cause enough confusion where in your assumption you’re pressing up but it’s actually pressing button 2 which you likely have assigned to the off command and your down press is doing nothing.
Thank you for the help. I did have the mappings all correct and it still wasn’t working, but I did manage to find the issue.
Initially i ended up just swapping the switch out to a different one i had, and that solved all my problems. I exchanged the one i had issues with, thinking it was defective, but I think i found the issue.
For anyone possibly looking at this thread later on, it might be the air gap reset that’s causing the blinking/flashing when turning it off.
I bought another batch of white switches and had this same exact problem with one in my second set.
I noticed if i fiddled around with the air gap it seemed to be more consistent, so i pulled it out completely to turn off the switch manually. I pushed it back in forcefully, and that fixed all my issues.
It seems that this is an issue that happens during shipping or something. 2/11 switches had this blinking when turning the switch off issue. I managed to fix it by resetting the air gap.
