I’m assuming there must be a lot of people not having problems and it would be nice to know what their install situations are.
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The airgap wouldn’t cut power to the canopy module because there is no true load terminal. The line is always hot over that terminal unless power is cut via the breaker.
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I have the same wink fan controller, but I’ve never had issues with the RF portion not working, used to have the zigbee dropout every once in a while, but haven’t had that since adding two repeaters in the room.
Sorry for the confusion. I had regular LED bulbs in the fan which slightly Illuminated when I turned on the power even though the Inovelli switch was set to off. Turning on/off the Inovelli switch had no impact on the light level.
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My switch is installed in a plastic wall box. The housing of the fan where the canopy is enclosed is metal. I was able to route the antenna outside of the fan housing, but that didn’t help. The switch is around 12ft from the fan.
Alright, we’re going to meet internally on this at 4pm EST and we have a call tonight with the manufacturer to figure this out.
They are also actively looking at these threads. I’m going to start a separate thread shortly with some questions so we can have a centralized spot to collect data. I’ll update this post shortly with the link.
EDIT: Here’s the data collection thread: LZW36 Fan/Light Switch Canopy Module Disconnection Issues
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Thanks
BTW, I did not see that there was an update to the thread because you edited your post instead of adding a new post. Hopefully this will help others find the link.
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Add me to the list. I have 4 working modules and 1 troublesome one (same one I mentioned a few days ago in the pre-order thread).
All of my fans are the same model, so I don’t think that has anything to do with it. I have pullchains. My issues are with the fan and the light state not staying in sync with the switch. I found that most of the time if I physically push the switch on the wall, it works. If I’m away, it’s a 10/90 shot of it working. I tested a theory I had just being near the switch and it seems to work much more consistently when I’m near the switch (body reflecting the RF?).
The switch is 9.5’ away from the canopy, so well within the range. I have a plastic wall plate and I did stick my antenna through the metal canopy outside of the canopy.
Mine is defiinitely intermittent. It seemed to work all day today, but not this evening (once I tried to add automation to it!).
The other ones seem to be just fine though… my 2yo was driving me nuts yesterday turning his fan and light on and off over and over again and it worked through a few dozen cycles and didn’t miss a beat.
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What steps do I need to take to get a replacement unit?
I emailed the contact email address and also filed a ticket.
That should be good enough. We will respond shortly. We have a ton of tickets so we’ll get to you, I promise!
Should I submit a ticket for a replacement or wait? Fortunately this fan stays on most of the time during the summer so as long as the light isn’t stuck on I’m ok with it while this gets figured out. I do have a rule in HE to turn it off at 1:00am and it did that last night even though it was disconnected from the switch earlier in the day.
I’ve had success in fixing the issue of intermittent communication between the switch and the canopy module by disabling the 2.4 GHz network on a network access point that was in the same room (about 9 feet away). Since making that change I’ve had 100% success rate with commands being sent to the fan, so I’m cautiously convinced that it is/was an RF interference issue.
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I have not encountered any problems yet with my four switches, but only because I am not installing the switches until Saturday.
Four questions:
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Is anyone having issues using metal switch plate faces over plastic boxes?
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FCC/UL issues aside, is there an antenna test point or pad that can be extended outside of the switch if one has a soldering iron and wants to sacrifice their warranty in the name of science?
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When the manufacturer twisted Inovelli’s arms to go with 2.4 GHz for the fan module link to the switch, was this driven by them having a canopy module design for 2.4 GHz Zigbee on the shelf for re-use? Is their switch-to-canopy protocol close enough to Zigbee where the canopy module is getting confused by Zigbee repeaters/hubs in the air space?
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Are they using FHSS RF signals? If not, will the switch and canopy module move around the band automatically looking for the clearest frequency to use in a congested 2.4 GHz wifi/Bluetooth/BLE airspace? If not, can anyone tell us what exact frequency it is using so that we can move other stuff away from that channel?
Sorry for the long list of questions, but my electrical panel is in a REALLY inconvenient location and pulling the breaker every day would get old quickly if I also have this problem with any of my four new switches…
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I haven’t had time to install my devices yet either between work and a landscaping project. 
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100% of switches left in the original packaging apparently do not have connection issues. LOL.
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…and 100% of the holy grail of switches in my house will instantly fail WAF if she has to crawl into our half basement (where the electrical panel was stupidly installed) to toggle a breaker because the lights in one or more rooms don’t work! Hence, wanting to get a grasp on the scope/cause of this problem in case I’m one of the unlucky people.
If Inovelli is looking for a new product idea, I would be first in line for a 200 amp breaker box with automatic generator transfer and Z-Wave breakers with individual per-circuit and total panel power usage reporting… 
I don’t know how many they sold in preorder or how many have gotten installed so hopefully we’re in the minority. Fortunately for me my breaker panel is easy to get to. Even thought the fan is in a vaulted ceiling it’s not as bad to get to as I thought it would be. I know someone posted a picture of theirs in a two story tall room. I wouldn’t want to have to go up that high too many times.
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The Air Gap on the switch cures my communication issues do you have to use the breaker to clear yours?
Yes, I tried the air gap several times and it did nothing. I either have to flip the breaker or wait for it to reconnect on its own.