I notice the same thing- most of my dimmers have a minimum of 25% or more and no higher than 85%. I understand Led bulbs are all different and this plays a factor but figured I’d mention this as another datatpoint.
I also experience the stepping on all dimmers.
Anyone tried to play around with the settings?
Hey guys, can you throw up a video of some sort so we can take a look?
Also, it would be helpful to understand the load you guys are using (ie: LED/CFL, Single-Pole/3-Way, Neutral/Non-Neutral, etc)?
I haven’t seen this specific issue, but would like to try to replicate it.
In my particular situation I was testing it on a 3 way neutral with 10w per light with 4 LED lights. I also tested it with a single pole non-nutral with 10w per light with 4 LED lights.
I’ve got similar issue. I have 4x13 watt dimmable led bulbs in a bathroom fixture (with Neutral wire). When dimming ‘up’ it seems there is no light until it slams into the 50% range in which it then reaches 100% very quick. Almost like an S-Curve. It takes a long time with nothing, then halfway-ish, then continues to brighten to 100 very quickly. Dimming ‘down’ I can control it at the lower levels easier.
Also, semi-related note is I cannot get the device to configure with Vera Plus. It complains about security keys and failed to configure. I have unpaired from Vera, factory reset device (red lights) and then repaired with the vera unit within inches and same issue.
Exact error code from the notification banner in Vera:
Z-Wave device 409 ERROR: Failed to setup security. Please exclude this device from your system, and then include again…Z-Wave device 409 ERROR: Failed to setup security. Please exclude this device from your system, and then include again.
Ah ok – I’ve seen this before too. It really depends on the bulb, but I’m not entirely sure as to why it does this (ie: the engineering reason behind this – I do have a note out to the manufacturer to have them better explain it).
What I did to, “fix” this is set a minimum dim setting (ie: 20% or wherever you notice the bulb turns on) and that makes it the lowest it will go (and it will start there when turning it on). Fix is in quotes as I realize you don’t get the very low dim settings that you likely want, but at least it won’t take some time for the bulbs to turn on.
I realize this is not the best answer, but as you can imagine, there’s 1000’s of bulbs out there and we tried to test as many as we could, but we couldn’t test them all, so the point of this thread: Dimmer Switches | LZW31 / LZW31-SN Compatible Bulbs Mega-Thread is to start to list out the ones that work and don’t work so that we can have an optimized experience for everyone.
@datzent83 @dan1282 @exo – and anyone else – can you list out your bulbs (ie: name-brand, SKU # if possible, etc) so that I can purchase them and test them out?
Thanks guys, and sorry for the frustration. I can say that I’ve definitely seen this before when we initially tested the switches out and when we swapped out the bulbs, it worked as intended.
Attached are the dimmable LED lights that I use.
The reason why I don’t think it’s the lights is because by my old Inovelli dimmer performs perfectly. I don’t have these issues with it. When I replace it with the new one I experience these issues right away.
If you can’t find these anywhere I am more than happy to ship a few to you.
My lights are Electric Zone. EZ-A615-BA-2700K-A6. I tested with an incandescent bulb and found that towards the lower end I can still notice it step quickly rather than have a smooth dim at the default dim rate. I will test a faster dim rate to see if it’ll make the transition less noticeable.
I can try that - I’d be more inclined to replace the bulbs with ones that work if that’s the case. But based on other comments, folks seem to have bulbs that worked with previous versions but not this newest lzw31 device.
Also, I am REALLY wanting to leverage this feature but can’t find the instructions on how to set it up:
Default Local Dim Level
Have your switch come onto a max default level based on the time of day. For example, if you don’t want to blind yourself at 2am when you’re going to the bathroom or sneaking a cookie, you can have your dimmer only turn onto 10% when you manually press it between the hours of 10pm and 8am.
Yeah… Unfortunately, the Gen 2’s are made by a different manufacturer and our relationship with the old one is not good, so I’m not entirely sure what the overall difference is, but I’m definitely looking into it.
@EricM_Inovelli should be adding this into the device handler for ST shortly - I let him speak towards the timeline 
What if I’m on the Vera platform? (VeraPlus on current firmware)
I’ve also just tried setting up the minimum dim level, using the at-device method as explained in the example on the instructions. I followed the procedure exactly, receiving confirmation blinks along the way (2 yellow for the configuration setting and then the 8 purple - setting to >8% - and then confirmation of green then yellow and blue blinks to confirm everything. But then when dimming down from either the Vera UI or the local device, able to dim down to 1% still. Possible I’ve got a lemon? Really trying to make this all work out here. :-/
Oh… I don’t think it’s possible then as there’s a special handler/driver that exposes child devices and then from there, you’d be able to control those child devices (setup a specific time of day for them to turn on/off). We’ll be meeting with EZLO at CES where we can talk further with them to see if we can somehow get this to work. Plus Eric M will be coming on full time starting next year so he should have some more bandwidth to look into this.
Can you try bumping it up to 20 or 30%? Basically, what should happen is that as you are bumping up the minimum dim level, the bulb should also visibly show the same dim level (however, if the bulb does not turn on, it means the dim level should be increased until the bulb turns on).
Then, this minimum level becomes your new 1% in the app. This may be why you’re seeing it listed as 1% in the UI.
In other words, once you set the minimum level to let’s say 20%, 20% now will show as 1% in the UI indicating it cannot be dimmed lower.
Make sense?
I’m not the best at explaining things lol
Ah, that does make sense regarding the ‘new’ 1%.
And sucks about Vera… really getting tired of being disappointed with their platform limitations these days… but after >100 devices and all the plugins and pleg/reactor stuff I’m not wanting to start over either. Feel free to pass that along to Ezlo at CES. The only thing holding people back is the re-work to start over… :-/
Thanks Eric
If you have the driver from old dimmers isn’t there a way to compare the old and the new drivers to see the differences?
I recently received both a lzw31-sn and lzw31. can confirm in two different LED lighting applications that the “dimming” is more of a stepped reduction or increase. not smooth at all. this flickering change is the same with brightness change no matter if using the paddle or zwave adjustment.also is noticeable on increased ramp or dimming time. in both applications leviton smart dimmers came out and were previously smooth dimming. Three way setup in both cases with neutral and dumb remote switch. seems that its ‘rigid’ in its dimming instead of a smooth transition
I still think it’s the driver issue. The old Inovelli dimmers work perfectly. If they can compare the two drivers, specifically the dimming portion, they can solve this issue.
For me this issue with the dimming is similar as described but almost seems to be by design?? Manual: “How fast or slow the light turns on when you hold the switch (i.e.: dimming from 10-20%, 80-60%, etc)”
For every gap of dimming it appears as though the seconds value is applied. For example if I dim from 0-100% the dimming happens in 3 seconds and appears to be smooth. If I dim from 0-10% it has 2 distinct obvious steps and still ends up at 10% over 3 jarring seconds.
I would much rather have a constant ramp rate that can be configured vs. a time to complete the dimming. ie. 0-100% takes 3 seconds 0-33% takes 1 second etc…
Any thoughts on this? (same deal when using home assistant and the wall as expected)
Hey, Eric/Ruster34?
I’m with you, using Vera for years and years. It’s a pretty “ok” platform, once anything is working on it, it’s like 100% reliable. Integrating new-is stuff is tricky. Like Inovelli.
I tried OpenHAB (it’s super open architecture but it’ll be a forever science-project with tons of CLI-language) and HABitat (like OpenHab combined with Vera, but still clunky).
So, I’m back at VeraPlus. their new UserInterface is really good, overall IMHO they are right now the best “compromise” out there.
If VeraPlus JUST WOULD BE WORKING with Inovelli, I’d be a happy camper.
Anyone have suggestions how to tweak it manually?
I believe another thread indicated that Vera want Inovelli to pay them to carry the OpenZWave artifacts that enable compatibility. Feels like a bit of a bully move. I wonder what the going rate is on a merge-from-upstream these days.
Inovelli is Partying it Up at CES right now, so probably won’t answer many threads until Monday.
