I just received a LZW31-SN and LZW31 black wired for a three way switch controlling some philips hue bulbs with the goal of keeping power to the bulbs and being able to control them via home assistant. I have everything powered on and have paired both switches with home assistant using a HSUSBZ-1 and the open wave beta add on and integration. I am new to using zwave with my setup and admit that I don’t understand it’s capabilities well, but I am struggling to see what the LZW31 black dimmer’s advertised “smart bulb” functionality is supposed to do as it seems to turn the relay off, leaving no other functionality without scene control. Am I wrong on this?
Additionally, it seems that the other option I have is to associate the switches, but I don’t see a way to do this using my current setup. Does anyone know how?
The Black Series does not send scene events for button/paddle manipulation on the switch, so Z-Wave Association is really the only way to use smart bulbs with that device (or you could hardwire it on yourself, not disable local control, and “mirror” the switch and dimmer state back/forth to the actual bulbs, but that may or may not be to code in your area and might be a bit of work to set up; I’ve never done anything like that in Home Assistant and can’t speak to that).
The Red Series can do what you want with any bulb, with or without Z-Wave association. The other feature you’d get compared to the Black Series is the “notification” parameter, which lets you configure the LED bar/strip to do temporary or indefinite “effects” of your choosing.
@chriscgoodson You’re not wrong, there are several threads right now on this. If you disable what they call the local relay then the dimming function on the LZW31-SN disappears, you only have scene control.
They need to call this out in their marketing materials.
Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of using Z-Wave switches/dimmers with Zigbee smart bulbs at all. As much as I like home automation, I want my switches to keep working like dumb switches even if my home network or Home Assistant are down.
You can generally think of the ‘smart bulb’ mode as a convenience feature to allow the load to still be connected to the switch rather than load simply being wired directly to line.
Ultimately, what do you want to be able to control about the hue bulbs from the dimmers, on/off state, brightness, color?