I’ve recently rebuilt my house and an electrician rewired all my circuits. I had originally planned to use the Inovelli Red and Black series (I have Series 2 dimmers and on/off) switches for my lighting control with dumb switches for 3-way or 4-way circuits.
I just now realized that the electrician wired the Line/Neutral into the “wrong boxes”. Meaning that my smart switch would be in a location which is not useful for me in order to leverage the dimming paddles, the scene controls and more importantly the LED strips.
So I am looking instead at using multi-smart switches. What I don’t understand if is I am bound to use a hub to manage the load control when using multi-smart switches on the same circuit. If my hub is down for whatever reason, does that mean that other smart switches in the same circuit will no longer be able to manage the load? My goal is that all my switches work with/without any reliance on an external hub.
I know I can use AUX01 switches, but these do not have the LED strips which are quite important to me and I have grown fond of for a myriad of automation indications.
On a related note, if I have extra ON/OFF (ex: LZW30) switches - can they be wired as an auxillary switch to an LZW31-SN.
I believe if you use either the zwave or zigbee switches, you can associate or bind them together so that they should operate without a “hub”, but your “hub” will need to be able to do the associations or binding.
I would think that installing a lzw30 to power and neutral should work as a wired “remote” when associated to the main switch controlling the load. You would want to put it in smart bulb mode turning the internal relay on all the time (to avoid clicking), and turn the output mode to “Dimmer”.
You might also be able to turn on Local Protection instead of Smart Bulb mode, as this will disable the control of the internal relay, but not sure how it will behave when used as a remote.
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This only matters if your switches are wired in a “dead-end” configuration and would require you to put the controlling switch in the first box with both line and load, but if the neutral travels through the boxes, you should be able to move the controlling switch to any of the boxes along the way.
LZW30s can’t do that. They don’t have the ability to change their output mode to to “Dimmer”. You’ll need a gen3 switch (VZW30 or VZM30) if you want to use an on/off for this functionality.
Note, that no inovelli smart switch can function as a wired remote for another. You can only wire it to line/neutral. All control commands will be sent wirelessly.
As I don’t have any of the ZWave switches, I was unaware that that was a difference between the newer and older units. Sorry for any confusion.
I was using the term “wired” loosely, only meaning that is connected to power instead of powered by batteries, but yes, I know that only the Aux switches would act as an actual “wired remote” by the stricter definition.
I’m not sure I undestand? In a multiple 4way switch configuration, if the line is in box 1 and the load is in box 4, and between box 1, 2, 3 and four there is 3C wire, am I able to place the the smart switch in any box that has a neutral and use dumb switches for 3 others?
For instance, if I want to place the smart switch in Box 2 (assuming it has a neutral), how am I supposed to get the Line power from Box 1 to Box 2 to power the switch? I need the 3C to wire the dumb switch from Box 1 to Box 2 (2 traveller and 1 common). What can I use to pull line power to the switch? Don’t I need to have the Line Power in Box 2?
Any insight would be very helpful. Electrician coming back tomorrow morning to continue wiring other parts and need to have a discussion with him if necessary.
Yes. By “dumb” switch, I assume you are talking about an Aux switch, not a standard switch.
In Box 1, you would use an Aux switch… you have power coming in, but you would use the 3 wires going to the next box as a Traveler, Line, and Neutral. You would use this setup until you reach the box where you want the Dimmer. From there, you will would send the Traveler, Load, and Neutral to the later boxes, connecting the romex going to the light to the Load and Neutral.
Let me know if this doesn’t make sense and I can try and draw up a diagram to illustrate it.
Ah - that’s the misunderstanding. I was hoping to avoid the additional cost of the Aux switches and just use dumb 5$ off-the-shelf 3-way switches. I haven’t been able to figure out how to make this work with standard dumb switches.
If AUX01 is my only alternative, that means calculating which is worse - figuring out how to pull power to a different box, or the extra cost of 3 or 4 AUX01 switches in the configuration. Plus I have to make sure I have a neutral somewhere in the box. That I’m know I told the electrician I wanted neutrals in all my boxes, but looking at the boxes he wired, I’m not convinced that he listened to me.
Is there maybe a way to combine AUX01 and dumb switches in this configuration? For instance use AUX01 in Box 1, Smart Switch in Box 2, and dumb-switches in Box 3 & 4? Could that work to help reduce costs?
Assuming you have the same settings as I do on my Gen3 Blue switch, you need to set the switch to use either the Aux switches or “dumb” switches, not a mix of both.
If you end up having a switch circuit that doesn’t have a neutral, you can still use the Aux switches connected to Line and Traveler instead of Traveler and Neutral. And with this kind of hookup, you can still l move the main Dimmer to any of the boxes… instead of Line/Load, Traveler, and Neutral, you would instead use the 3 wires as Line, Load, and Traveler.