Firmware v1.52 (Beta) | LZW31-SN | Dimmer - Red Series (Gen 2)

@EricM_Inovelli yup, that fixed my first switch but didnt have any effect on the other 4.

@jtronicus I’ll give this a shot and see how it goes.

@jtronicus I think you might be right. Just double clicked one of my switches at superhuman speed and it sent the scene command properly.

The problem I see with this approach is it makes it impossible to keep the LED strip is in sync with the bulb when controlling via zwave.

Ideally, I would add the bulb in groups 3 and 4, and when I want to control the bulb I send the command to the switch, which will in turn forward the command to the bulb (similar to setting up a virtual 3-way). With the current setup, I can change the brightness from 1-99 via zwave, or control things locally, but I am unable to turn “off” the LED strip via zwave. If I truly need to cut power to the bulb, I can always pull the tab at the bottom of the switch to physically cut power.

I also think a worthwhile enhancement would be for the switch to send a dimming duration value (in the multi-level set command) that matches the values in parameters 2 (when holding the paddle buttons to change the dimming level) and parameter 4 (when turning the light on or off). Right now, the switch sends a dimming duration of 0xFF (default), so there is no way to change the dimming speed of associated devices when controlling them from the switch itself.

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+1 for modifying firmware so turning off from zwave doesn’t cut power. It’s really useful to have the switch maintain an on/off/dim level that I can use in home automation, without the automation ever causing smart bulb to lose power. For instance an automation that turns everything off at night.

I’m in the process of installing the switches, and for the first one controlling a smart bulb (non zwave, so dimming is laggy but functional) I’ve resorted to hardwiring load to line (would be really nice to be able to change things in the future via settings rather than having to pull the switch out and change the wiring)

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Hmmm, seems like I may be losing a certain functionality here. If I’m understanding this correctly, enabling “smart bulb mode” now keeps the load power on all the time (unless a specific zwave command is sent to specifically turn it off). Previously, it disabled dimming (kept voltage at 120v) but still turned on/off. While I understand this probably makes more sense with smart bulbs (powered on all the time). I did like the way 1.47 worked where this setting essentially disabled the dimming of the load but still did a true power on/off via the switch.

I have several places where I’m using these switches with non-dimmable loads. I hear you asking “why are you using an LZ31 dimming switch and not an LZ30 on/off switch”? And the answer is three-fold:

  1. I buy in bulk and most all of them are LZ31. Its a bit of a nuisance have to buy single LZ30’s for the few cases where the load doesn’t like dimming (I know it sounds petty, but hey I’m being honest).
  2. I use the LED bar notifications a lot. Its a big feature that sets Inovelli apart and the main reason I chose Inovelli over the other brands. I know I can do some notifications on the LZ30 but its not the same as the LED Bar on the LZ31. The codes are different (what a pain) and it simply doesn’t look the same with one small LED compared to the full LED BAR … especially when there are mixed switches in a multi-gang box.
  3. I may later change bulbs in some of these locations (change non-dimmable to dimmable) and it would be nice to just change bulbs without having to replace switches when this happens.

With V1.47 I could make an LZ31 control a non-dimmable load by enabling Smart Bulb Mode. Everything else works the same and is consistent with all the other switches (and I like consistency :slight_smile: ) But with V1.52 I will no longer be able to switch on/off with Smart Bulb Mode enabled.

I really want to update to v1.52 to get the new settable multi-tap delay, but I don’t want to lose the “disable dimming” capability I have with v1.47 So my question is this: Are there other settings that will allow me to use an LZ31 with non-dimmable load and still be able to turn it on/off at the switch (without having to set up scenes on the hub for every switch)? Ideally, I think the “Minimum Level” setting would be the right answer, but unfortunately that is currently restricted range of 1-45. If I could set Minimum Level to 99 that would effectively disable dimming for non-dimmable loads while keeping all the other functionality. But that is not currently an option.

@jtronicus @joshfee @stu1811 and @mamber – I’m going to start a separate thread to discuss Smart Bulb Mode as we really want to get this dialed in and we’ve tried our best to perfect it, but it sounds like there is still room for improvement.

Hang tight, while I write up a post about it and I’ll look forward to the discussion as this is a major selling point and huge need in the industry right now.

Thanks so much for your input and suggestions, we really appreciate it!

EDIT: 5hrs later, I’ve finished writing all about, “Smart Bulb Mode”: Smart Bulb Mode Optimization Thread – I need a break from smart this topic for a minute lol. It was good to finally talk about it and write everything down though.

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You could create a scene for a single down tap that issues an off. The zwave off still kills power.

Thanks Eric, I appreciate it and look forward to participating in the discussion. I realize my use case is not really “Smart Bulb Mode” It just happens that the previous functionality of that setting was very useful to me as a “non dimmable load” setting and I think there is value in having some form of that

Yeah you probably missed this in my lengthy post… :blush:

ooo shiny. distracted. you got it.

LOL. I was thinking more along the lines of some combination of “disable relay”, “disable local control”, and “disable remote control”. Might get me close, but admittedly I don’t fully understand the meaning and function of those settings :thinking:

disable local control - Disables control of the relay via physical interfaction. Commands are still send to the hub via zwave and scenes work. This is useful when a switch is associated with zwave bulb. The dim, on, and off commands are forwarded to the bulb which then does what you want.

disable remote control - same as local except it blocks zwave commands vs physical interaction with switch

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Just so I’m understanding correctly, is it as simple as you’d like a way to turn on/off a non-dimmable load without using scene control? I’m likely missing something, and the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet lol.

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@EricM_Inovelli I’m planning on replacing pretty much all of my switches with Red Dimmer switches, even in places where I may not really care about dimming (since installing hardware takes some effort I’d rather have the red dimmers everywhere for future flexibility). This means I will have a variety of device types hooked up to my Red dimmers, and they’ll each need slightly different behavior.

Dumb bulb, dimmable

This one is easy - it should behave like the red dimmers behave out of the box. I should be able to toggle on/off, as well as set level locally and remotely. The on/off/level is reflected in the load.

Dumb bulb, non dimmable

For these I obviously want to control the load on/off (both locally and remotely). I also want to disable the dimming function so that the LED bar always shows 100% when on, and pressing/holding the paddle does not send level updates. If the I try to remotely set a level, the switch should ignore it. I believe this is what @mamber wants. I planned on just replacing my non-dimmable bulbs with dimmable ones to avoid this problem, but it would be nice if there was a setting for this setup.

Smart bulb

Smart bulbs should always be powered… always. No set of commands local or remote should be able to cut power to the device, as it is important for home automation that the device is always connected to the hub. This is especially important for non-zwave bulbs (unfortunately there are just not that many zwave bulbs on the market - zigbee is king for now). If I want an automation that will fade a zigbee light from off to on, it needs to be connected to the hub even when it is “off” (i.e. brightness 0%). If I first had to “turn on the switch” so the bulb can get power, the bulb will come on to its last state rather than ramping on.

Depending on your smart bulb, you may or may not want to disable dimming as well (in the same way as the non-dimmable section above). For instance, with a zwave bulb that’s associated, dimming works really nicely and I’d want enabled. For a zigbee bulb, I may or may not want dimming to be enabled (depending on if I’m okay with the latency when pressing/holding to change level).

My ideal solution

(While I am a software engineer, I know nothing about firmware development or what limitations you have)

The way I see it, I think that there are two distinct things that people want to be able to control. There’s the logical mode (whether the device keeps track of its dimming level), and the physical mode (how does the switch reflect its logical state on the load wire).

Note that the “Disable local/remote control” options are orthogonal to the logical state, and would still make sense. For instance: “I want the switch to be dimmable (logical option), but always send 100% power (physical option), but don’t let me change the level from the switch (local control option)”

For the logical mode, I think all that is needed is an option for “Dimming enabled” or “Dimming disabled”. When dimming is disabled, any attempts to change it (local or remote) are ignored, and therefore the level is always at 100% or 0%.

For the physical mode, I think there would be either 2 or 3 options:

  1. Always on - This is effectively the same as hardwiring load to line, but through configuration (which makes it easier to change later than having to rewire - i.e. when you go to sell your house and want things to “just work” for the buyer)
  2. All or nothing - Send either 100% or 0% depending on the on/off state of the switch. While the switch may or may not have “Dimming enabled”, the level is ignored when determining the load. I’m not 100% sure what the use case for this would be, but it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable option. @Mamber suggested that they like to be able to use the level LED display as a countdown timer, so this would be a great use case.
  3. Conventional dimming - Send a variable load depending on the level. When “Dimming disabled” the level will always be 100% or 0%, so this is effectively the same as “all or nothing”.

Depending on how hard it is to add new options, there are only a few combinations so a single option with the 6 combinations wouldn’t be too bad.

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@EricM_Inovelli I submitted a pull request on the SmartThings device handler to add parameter 50 :grin:

:laughing: Don’t jump off a bridge. LOL, I probably worded that incompletely. :blush: I understand their meaning individually. But it was comments in this other thread that muddied the water for me. :blush: LZW31-SN Internal Relay Disable - What's the point?

Yeah, pretty much its that simple. That’s how it works now with V1.47. The changes to v1.52 will break that.

My long diatribe was explaining that I realize the setting called “smart bulb mode” probably makes more sense to work like v1.52 so I’m just looking for another way to get the v1.47 behaviour which should probably be called “non-dimmable load” or “dimming disabled” or something like that.

One way to do this, which I think would be very simple - without needing to create a new parameter - is to allow the existing parameter #5 “Minimum Level” to be 99 (allow a range of 1-99 instead of the current restriction of 1-45). This would have a two-fold benefit:

  1. Some dimmable LED’s need minimum of 50 or more to turn on. (They can often be dimmed lower, but they don’t turn on unless the minimum is over 50)
  2. Allowing a value of 99 here would effectively disable all dimming but otherwise retain full control both local and remote.
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YES. This is the same situation I am in. Prefer to install Red Dimmers everywhere (for consistency and future flexibility) and able to disable dimming when they happen to have non-dimmable loads.

I mostly agree. However, I’m on the fence about the LED bar always showing 100%. I’ve grown accustomed to how it works now in v1.47 where the load is 100% on or off but the LED bar still tracks the logical level setting. Its another way to give some visual indication of things. Clearly a non-dimmable bulb is on or off, but one way I use this now is when the light is timed to go off after a certain amount of time. The way it works now with v1.47, the LED bar will slowly “count down” giving a visual indication of how much time is left before the light turns off. So even though the light is not getting dimmer, its still handy to see the “dimming” LED bar as a countdown indicator.

Having the LED bar continue to track logical level allows me to send a SetLevel() command and have the LED bar indicate various levels of something other than bulb intensity. There is currently no way that I know of to do that with LED Notifications parameters.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying its a requirement. I could be swayed away from it. But since that’s how it works now, I’ve been taking advantage of that “feature” and its never fun when we have to give up features :wink:

That’s a great use case, and would fit perfectly into the solution I described. You would set the logical mode to “dimmable” and the phyiscal mode to “all or nothing”. I didn’t originally have a good use case for the “all or nothing” option but a countdown timer is a really great one.

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@EricM_Inovelli can you make the v1.51 (or v1.49) firmware available? Looking at the release notes, it appears I can get the new “multi-tap delay” setting in 1.49 (or .51) without having to lose my “smart bulb with on/off” that goes away (always on) in v1.52

V1.52 - 01/22/2021

Modified Smart Bulb Mode so that the output can only be turned off by sending a BasicSet(0x00).

Fixed: Solve the problem that the power measured by the light is 5W when the load is not connected (caused by inaccurate power measurement at extremely low power consumption).

V1.51 - 01/08/2021

Fixed: Low brightness would brighten and then darken when being dimmed.

Fixed: Issue where the same value of parameter 5 (Minimum Level) appears inconsistently when both parameters 21 (Power Type =1 - Neutral) and 22 (Switch Type = 1 – 3-Way) are set to 1.

V1.49 - 12/16/2020

Remove local configuration mode (to make space for extra features).

Adding parameter 50 to adjust the delay when parameter 51 is set to 1. 1=100ms, 2=200ms, 3=300ms, etc.

In 1.52, you should still be able to press the config button 8x to “disable the local relay” and get the same functionality you were seeing in previous firmware versions.