Dual LZW31-SN Association - Local, SmartThings & Google Home Setup Questions

Switches General Discussion
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#1

First, a standing ovation to the Inovelli Team! The amount of features and settings packed into these Red Series switches is amazing!! The downside is I am now replacing all my GE switches and dimmers.

My setup is ST Hub, Google Home/Assistant, Google Hub and Speakers and Philips HUE. No Alexa.

So… I setup 2 of these dimmers in an association for my Landing Lights which originally were on 2 3-way switches (temporarily on a GE Dimmer/Add-On pair but those went away). I preinstalled the latest DH’s and SmartApps so I was ready to go when they arrived. Pairing was straight forward. I setup the Group 2 & 4 association. All went smooth.

My overall intent with this setup is… To have the Source switch, which is at the top of my Landing (hence the name) act as the central notification “site” for sensor monitoring and device control. For example, if any of my leak detectors detect water, my well pump and water heater shut off and my main water valve is closed (this is almost fully implemented). I have Notification LED Colors and patterns setup for various issues and the Upper Landing switch is the most centrally located device and the first thing I see when I come up the stairs. I intend on using this switch for visual notifications. This seems to be working well as long as I keep the "light on and off LED timeout very short. I do like how it goes back to the Notification after the On/Off LED function is complete. It would be nice to allow multiple notifications to alternative but with everything else programmed into these switches I’d imagine there is no space for this.

Here are some observations & questions (in random order):

I originally had the 2 switches named "Landing (destination) " and “Landing Upper (source)” but changed Landing to Landing Lower and created a “Room” in ST called Landing and a Lighting Group in GH also called Landing. (More below.) I also created a separate Virtual Room for the virtual (notification) devices. This keeps GH from telling me it turned on/off 8 devices.

  • When dimming from the Source Switch, both LED’s adjust accordingly.
  • When dimming from the Destination, only the Destination’s LED changes; Source switch doesn’t
    change. Can these be synced?
  • Can’t dim or turn off the source using the ST or GH APPs (Z-wave); I can only turn it on. But I’m
    thinking I wouldn’t want to do this anyway… But can I? It appears that the Group/Room (both
    switches at once) must be used, hence the “Landing” Group above.
  • “Hey Google” works for both lights and both LEDS when using the Room/Group name as long as
    both switches are in the same group.
  • Cannot control the switches individually using the GH App; again must use the Room.
  • If I dim from the physical source then Double Tap the physical source (setup via Smart Lighting to set
    light to 100%) the light goes full bright but the source LED doesn’t change. Do I need to add more to this Lighting Automation?

I have a couple questions:

  • I would like ALL lighting adjustments made via the Apps or Voice assist to be instant; no ramping. I
    also want on/off at the switch to be instant. If I set parameters 2,3 & 4 to zero will this effect other
    settings? I think I’m thrown off by using 101 = “Keep in sync with Parameter 1”.

  • How are you folks organizing your virtual devices? Are you creating separate groups/rooms or
    keeping them all in one place?

  • Which switch type should I be using for the Source and Destination? I have the Destination setup as
    Load Only (I saw that somewhere).

  • Does “Disable Local Control” basically turn off the Load “port” on the switch or is there more to it? Is
    this the same as “Disable Internal Relay”?? If not, what does disabling the internal relay do (besides
    disable the internal relay)?

  • Can I have this whole setup run locally and not use the cloud? If so, what is the best way to do this?

  • Looking at my settings, I have parameter 9 set to 99. So I’m guessing, regardless of the current state
    (brightness) a single press will always set the light to 99 therefore making double tap set the light to
    99 is kind of pointless???

  • Param 5 - Minimum Dim Level - My lights go off at around 18 %. I set this param to 25 but it still
    allows me to adjust downward past 25% until off. Is this the way it should work? When will it stop at
    25?

  • ** This is more of a ST question vs. specific to Inovelli… I notice when I change any DH from its default, the Execution Location changes from Local to Cloud. Does this necessarily mean that those particular devices no longer execute locally? And can I run devices with custom DH’s locally?

  • ** Another ST question… What is generally preferred for automatons; ST Automatons or the Smart
    Lighting SmartApp?

Thanks so much to Inovelli for some great products as well as the Inovelli community. I’m looking forward to future products.

Thanks again!
Steve

#2

Anyone???

#3

Sorry there is a TON to digest here.

The 3-way situation needs to be resolved with and additional group 3 association from the slave back to the master. That will ensure they are in sync at all times:

  • Master dimmer added to group 2 and group 4 of slave dimmer
  • Slave dimmer added to group 3 of master dimmer

If you want dimmers to be instant on/off, set parameter 1 to 0 and leave parameters 2, 3, and 4 as 101 (match parameter 1).

My virtual devices were placed in the room, but hidden/disabled from anything outside of ST rooms specific as everything was triggered by ST or Webcore (I am on HA now with a completely different setup). Virtual room with all of them is fine as well, just make sure you disable them in alexa/google home as they shouldn’t be acted upon by those interfaces.

Source and destination devices should both be set as 3-way momentary (not toggle). Confirm your wiring if anything is misbehaving, it is different than a standard 3-way setup.

Disable local control disables the physical switch presses from acting on the load. It still sends scene commands to the hub though (push/release or held/release). You can use those scenes to trigger anything with disable local control enabled.

Yes, the association is even better than that, it is local to the switches and THEN reports to the hub. You don’t even have to have a working hub once it is all set up, it works completely with the switches talking to each other directly.

Correct on parameter 9, this is the default level that the switch will turn on to when acted locally upon at the switch. Remember thought that this can’t happen if disable local control is enabled.

As far as param 5, the switch software/hardware does the scaling. So 1% exposed is then 25% load voltage. It’s working as it should (assuming you set it properly). 1% = 25% then it scales to 99% = 99% (or whatever you have in max param).

Correct, when you change to ANY custom DTH from a ST default, it explicitly does not work locally. This is something that is unlikely to change as they would have to load the DTH locally for the device on the hub hardware, and that isn’t something they would likely do.

So Automations on ST are in a bit of a rework period right now, where automations work in the cloud only (unless on beta firmware) but SmartLighting works locally if every device is local. Since you should be using the Inovelli DTH to experience all of the features/parameter settings, you are in the cloud either way, so either is the same. The only net benefit of SL is you can do two-way automations (turn on, then turn off later) vs. Automations require 2 individual automations for the same end use case.

Hopefully that helps.

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#4

Thanks so much Kevin!! Yes, I know it was a lot… Apologies…

I’ll play with some of this over the next couple days.

I will try out the Group 3 thing.

So if I set a minimum Dimming level, it will still shut off if I dim to 0 (zero)? I’d like to be able to hold down the paddle to dim and have it never shut off.

I might be confused on Parameters 1-4. The way I read the setting description, if I set parameter 1 to 0 would there be any dimming at all or just on/off. I want all Z-wave commands to be instant (no ramping) as well as on/off at the switch but have control over dimming level at the switch. I currently have 1-4 set as follows:
1=2 ← to dim faster
2=101 ← to Mirror Param 1
3=0 ← Instant on/off
4=0 ← Instant on/off

Since you can’t choose what devices in SmartThings gets exposed to Google Assistant, everything goes over (to GA). So when I tell GA to “shut off the landing” it now acts upon the lighting group and leaves out all the notification devices.

I have the Destination wired with neutral, hot, ground and the traveler wire connected to the Line leg with that going to the source Line leg along with the neutral in that box. The light is on the load leg of the destination. I think the wiring is good.

Thanks again Kevin. I’ll update later.
Steve

#5

Yes, I see that I would need both on and off routines for automations. I’m actually thinking of using automations to monitor and control the devices (valve, well pump, water heater) and then use SL to control the notifications and then shut them off automatically when things are back to “normal”. Thoughts?

It would be nice if the functions of both Automations and SL were combined. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I like that I can turn off an individual automation whereas SL is either all on or all off.

#6

Because SL will eventually be deprecated (is based on groovy code), my preference was always to use Automations since they will persist for the foreseeable future. They also are being actively touched via back-end code rewrites, so some things just magically don’t work anymore (see: Life360 presence requirement last week).

But Automations also have a limit (200 I think?) and are more “difficult” to nail the first time (in my very skewed perspective).

Alas, you will have to make the decision.

#7

The Group 3 Association appears to be working as far as syncing the LEDs between the 2 lights… Albeit with a little lag but it’s not terrible.

I was playing with the automations a little bit. It looks like if you choose both On and Off with the IF condiftion AND you choose On and Off for all the THENs (lights), it will toggle correctly. This appears to hold true only if the lights all start out in the off position since it’s just a toggle of the current state (assumption here). I didn’t test it with one of the LEDs already on but I will. Even if this holds true, with some of my critical automations that trigger lights I’ll probably stick with one automation for on and one for off. I currently have my Freezer sensor using “toggle mode” and it’s working fine.

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