Hi all. I bought about 12 blue switches to upgrade my house, but i’ve run into so many issues. I have an old house where some switches are wired to outlets and some are wired to lightbulbs. I have wired them correctly per the guide, and the ones that are giving me trouble are the single pole ones. All of my lights have smart bulbs. I thought this would be relatively easy, all my lights are smart bulbs and I have no need to physically turn anything off besides through software.
I’m lost guys. I need some help because I have no idea what to do. I have reached out to inovelli but one email per day i think is going to take a while to fix all my issues. I dont even know if I can return the switches now. Really sucks to have spent 700$ and not be able to get any of them to work.
Some of the things I have been having issues with:
The light that is wired to a light overhead the sink flickers when turned on, and when I turned it off I can no longer communicate with the switch. It seems like the switch has no power. I cant even find the setting in home assistant to change the maximum dimming level as it says to do in some of the guides.
I have two rooms that the switch turns off when there is no load. These are wired to outlets and only turn on when I have a lamp or something plugged in. One of the rooms switches doesn’t even give me any configuration options.
You haven’t provided the details necessary to troubleshoot, so I’m going to take a WAG at your configuration. Is the overhead sink light a smart bulb with a non-neutral wiring configuration? If that’s the case, is the switch in the Smart Bulb Mode? If it is and you have a smart bulb, you may need to add a bypass at the light.
Dimmers should not be wired to outlets. In fact, this is specifically prohibited by the NEC as it’s a dangerous practice. A switch controlling an outlet musts be able to carry the full capacity of the branch circuit i.e. the breaker. The Dimmer can’t do that. When Inovelli releases their On/Off switch, that one will be suitable for switch outlets. It will require a neutral configuration, but I’m guessing you have a non-neutral configuration.
A bypass? What do you mean? And sorry for the lack of detail. Tried to provide what I could… it is in the configuration you started and no neutral. The house is wired really weird. Some have neutral some don’t.
So you think replacing my switch with their on off switch version will fix my second issue? And you’re saying even the single pole wiring will require a neutral on the new switch?
So it sounds as if you have a hot and neutral at the outlet and then just a 2-wire back to the switch, also known as a switch loop.
You can add a smart outlet and then use automations to turn it on and off from the switch. If you use a smart outlet, then you can wire the hot and neutral over the two wire between the two so that you have a constant hot and neutral at the switch. The outlet will be constantly hot as well, but that’s not of any concern since it is a smart outlet.
If you take this approach, you can use the 2-1 Dimmer with the smart outlet since the Dimmer will not have a load.
Inovelli has a smart outlet project under development but it will be a while before it is available. Take a look at the Project Jambry thread. Other smart outlets will work as well.