Firmware v1.47 (Beta) | LZW31-SN | Dimmer - Red Series (Gen 2)

Million dollar question. I haven’t found a way. @EricM_Inovelli any ideas?

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I just went to flash two dimmers for the first time after getting a zwave stick (joined to Hubitat as a secondary controller), just sits there on packet #1 and eventually times out with an “unable to receive” status. Any thoughts on what might be going on?

@djw - I had an on/off do the exact thing. I stood about 2 ft from the switch. I ended up having to air gap the switch, let it boot back up and within 5-10 secs started upgrading the switch. I also hit the Get button like 15 times until all the fields populated for the switch.

After updating both the otz and bin files in a non-neutral non smart bulb setup, I get flickering lights with this update. I tried both immediate on and delayed on settings but that doesn’t make a difference. Also, when I try to turn off the light, it looks like the switch crashes and reboots. I also tried setting the led to white which worked. but now I can’t change it back to any other color, it seems stuck at white. Any suggestions? I rolled back to V1.35 of the otz first and the led changed back to default blue and light responds at the switch ok and no flickering anymore, but I can’t seem to get the bin file to load to it anymore as I was trying to put the older 1.34 holtek. I tried to airgap the switch but that isn’t helping so I am at the point where the switch works via local control only with a 1.35 otz and I assume the 1.47 bin.

Turns out my issue was I needed to disable all the various security settings inside of PC Controller.

I had the same thing happen. I flashed the bin file a second time and the flickering went away. I am in a “neutral, 3-way, non-smart bulb” config and used the new Z-Wave Updater tool with Hubitat

Yeah the .bin file seems to be “less” reliable in flashing this time. Not sure why. The 2 keys for me were:

  1. Make sure the .otz is fully updated and you have physical control of the switch again (sometimes I would try too quickly).

  2. Make sure you air-gap the switch AFTER regaining physical control. This get’s it’s brain in order.

Sometimes it STILL took me 3 times to get it to fully and effectively flash. Remember at the end of the .bin the bar should cycle through green red blue or something to indicate it has successfully completed the update.

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Longtime listener, first time caller here. Does this firmware update for LZW31 Dimmer Red Series Gen 2 eliminate the minimum load requirement for non-neutral applications when the smart bulb feature is enabled? If so, are there any limitations or function losses as a result?

Thank you from a new & happy red series dimmer owner

So after many different attempts where the device stopped communicating via zwave, I was able to exclude and reinclude it. I flashed it per the suggestions above and ended at a point where the switch looked like it was communicating but the switch would not respond to either local or remote control to turn on the light. I could change other params like the LED color and that would work. I ended up setting both local and remote control to off and then back on again and the switch started to work again. It is almost like it had the wrong values in the various parameters locations after the firmware change. So currently, I am back at 1.47 otz and bin and I see an slight flickering from the light still but not intense. It is not as bad as it was when I flashed the first time when I started, but it is still noticeable. Waiting to see if anyone else experiencing this with 1.47 in a non-neutral, non-three way, direct load setup.

I was seeing this before as well. What worked for me was changing the automatic power reporting parameters. I had noticed in the logs that it was generating power reports every second (even though I had the parameter set to “0” - don’t send power reports). I thought that was fixed in one of the recent firmware updates but I haven’t changed it back. Currently the parameters are set to report power usage every 6 or 10 hours. However, my config is different than yours, so YMMV.

I haven’t seen them mention anything about that. What it seems to do is just make the dimmer always powered at 100% (technically, 99 in Z-Wave terms) if the switch is on. Most smart bulbs are designed to be run at full power from the circuit and dimmed via their own sofware, not “hard dimmed” from an actual dimmer, so this avoids that problem. It also avoids people getting confused over what “local control” and “remote control” means and should quench the “but I disabled the relay!” thirst from people who misunderstood this and ran into problems later. :smiley:

But I think the minimum-wattage thing is going to be there regardless. They might be able to use some hardware or software trickery to make the minimum lower, but given that there needs to be a path to the neutral somewhere (in the “non-neutral” setup, it’s passing a bit of power through to the load to get there; the load still has to draw enough power to keep the dimmer happy, which is where the bypass comes into play if yours doesn’t, or if your lights don’t like this and stay on or flicker when they should be off). At the very least, they haven’t mentioned any changes here. Maybe the next hardware revision of these will use lower-power 700-series Z-Wave and have different requirements…just wishing/thinking. :slight_smile:

Unfortunately there is no way to verify the bin version.

As for the power monitoring there is supposed to be a “safeguard” in place that prevents that many power reports from being generated. You were seeing that with the otz & bin of 1.47?

I haven’t changed the setting back to “0” (don’t send reports) on the dimmer that I have upgraded to 1.47 (bin and otz). The other dimmer is still on older firmware. Currently, I’m seeing the reports every hour (ish) - setting is 3600 on both dimmers.

Is 1.45 out of beta now that 1.47 is in beta then? I was waiting for a release quality driver before adding while color support. Please don’t stay in beta forever even though you have new features incoming. You are going to support these switch for years so I would recommend getting a solid “Long Term Support” type driver out instead of adding features or fixing minor stuff.

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I think the plan is to finalize the beta firmware and use that for their next production run and thus making the latest beta firmware as “actual”. However, I could be way off on that assumption. There were just little bugs/enhancements between each firmware that they wanted a solid firmware to have approved via Z-Wave alliance before posting final firmware.

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Yes, this is exactly correct. As of right now 1.47 seems like it is going to be the production version. We have had almost all positive reports regarding this version.

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Any chance param 51 could be a timing value instead of full on/off?
I’m thinking 250ms might be a good balance between double tap timing and delay after a single tap.

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We will work on adding this option in an alternate firmware but it will not make it into the production version.

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Can you provide some additional information on what “Smart Bulb” mode does?

I was expecting it to lock the dimmer at 100% output, effectively allowing me to “dim” the dimmer without actually affecting the load (simulate dimming, so that the LED strip shows the dim level).

Am I misinterpreting what the parameter does? If I enable smart bulb mode and press the off button, it still cuts power to the bulb.

@jtronicus - I believe you are correct with output power, but you still need to disable local control to prevent turn off of the load. Smart bulb mode doesn’t automatically turn off the local control.