LZW31-SN With 4x Hue Canless downlights

I have a Red Series dimmer switch set to no neutral and connected to 4x hue canless downlights (with a Aeotec bypass resistor). I have the switch set to “smart switch” and I use homeassistant and node red to capture the up/down taps to set my lights on/off. I have tried firmware 1.57 and 1.61.

Initially it worked (maybe a few minutes) but now when I turn off the lights the switch displays a red, green, blue pattern. When I paddle up it will sometimes turn on the lights sometimes just one light, sometimes nothing.

I am not sure what this pattern indicates.

Update: With the switch set to On/Off it sort of works. It will go off normally but when turing on sometime it runs through the Red, Green, Blue sequence and then comes on. Sometime the lights just flicked when on and sometime it turns on.

The red, green, blue is the switch rebooting. This is indicative of the switch not receiving enough power as a result of the non-neutral. You use the bypass, which is correct. It’s parallel to one of the lights, right?

I’m not sure what your solution may be, but if you want to test the not enough power theory, temporarily wire in an incandescent to test. The easiest way to do that is to get a bulb socket with two leads and temporarily attach it in parallel to one of the lights.

That is a great idea. I will try to wire an incandescent in the loop.

The Aeotec resistor is wired between the neutral and the load for the the light. What I don’t understand is that the power seems to be different with on/off, smart switch setting, and whether or not the hue lights are on (though they always have some power).

The fact that you’re getting different results based upon the settings may just be that they are different functions. I’m not certain, but it’s entirely possible that sub-par power may affect the switch differently based on the configuration.

I think your thought process on not enough power is right. I just added the incandescent bulb to the circuit and the switch works fine.

Now the question is how to fix it with the hue lights.

A couple suggestions:

  • Some people have wired in a second bypass. I have no idea whether or not this will solve the problem.

  • if you can get to the box where the power is supplied and the 2-wire is fed to the switch, you can rewire to remove the switch loop and instead provide a hot and neutral to the switch. The downside to this is that the light fixtures remain powered at all times. This is good because they are smart bulbs but the only way to cut the power to them is via the breaker. The switch will work perfectly, as it does not need a load to function.

I thought about option two and don’t really like the idea of the lights being super hardwired. They aren’t like bulbs where you can unscrew. I might try a second resistor or just rewiring with a neutral to the box.

1 Like

There’s always an option for a smart relay. We don’t suggest (normally) wiring the bulbs for full time power but it’s an option. You’d have to open the circuit breaker to do anything extreme which is normally done anyhow.

Maybe a stupid question but do the blue series switches have different power requirements? I have a few of those I could swap out but haven’t played around with their Home Assistant integration yet so I went with my Red Switch.

Great question. I don’t think the power requirements for either have ever been published. As easy as it is to swap out a switch, it’s worth a shot.

Does anyone know the maximum resistance that is needed? The Aeotec resistors are pretty high compared to the bulb? Two did not work.