New/Current Hubitat users and our switches !PLEASE READ!

I didn’t read that…must’ve missed it. Man, I thought dealing with Sailors was hard enough…

I think it’s still a good idea to call out for new users somewhere the fact that while Hubitat has built-in drivers for your devices they are no where near complete and if a user wants to take full advantage of the hardware capabilities especially Red Series that they should download and install the drivers from here and switch to those instead.

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I agree… But I think that point got lost in this thread, somewhere, a while ago… LOL!

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I had started to pose a question here about removing child devices, but figured it out myself: if the old style child devices (for notifications) were previously in use and defined they can be removed and replaced by the new style ones by setting the Parent device “Effect Type” parameter to “Off”.

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Does anyone know why Hubitat doesn’t use the full-featured driver as part of the app? I’ve been curious about that…

My guess is to avoid any licensing concerns they write all their own apps/drivers without really looking at the 3rd parties apps/drivers but don’t put as much time into it as the manufacturer or community members who want the full capabilities available.

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They write so many drivers for so many different devices that they cant possibly support every “extra” feature of all those devices as they are constantly changing. Its a logistic headache and they are just a small team.

So they write drivers that will cover the basics of the devices and try to use that generic driver for as many devices as they can.

The good thing is that they then allow the community to publish other drivers that take advantage of all of the advanced features. I’m ok with this as I am able to look at the code and modify it to work like how I want it to work.

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I assume you mean as part of the hub firmware, and besides the above (which I really think they could still do if they wanted to given the licensing), my guess is also the preferences of staff: they have stated a few times in the forums that most users are unlikely to remember anything beyond a double-tap. To that end, the platform has only support for pushed, held, released, and doubleTapped as button events. To support the Inovelli (and similar >2 multitaps that many other vendors are also doing now), they would need up to some “quintuple tappable button” capability that I once half-jokingly half-seriously mentioned to a staff member once. :slight_smile: Otherwise, you need workarounds like assigning different button numbers to multipe taps or (ab)using button events (held, released, etc.) for things beyond their original intent, which Inovelli was forced to do in the creation of their driver. I can imagine why Hubitat would not want to make native drivers this messy.

They do support notifications with the native driver (setIndicator() command using the calculated value) as well as many Z-Wave parameters. For the latter, I’m guessing they just picked which it seemed most likely people would want to set. There’s always the Basic Z-Wave Tool to use to set something not provided specifically by a Z-Wave driver.

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I think that is right. In general they seem to have gone for breadth more than depth. See the videos of them unboxing stuff from whatever vendor of the minute sends them.

At some point it seems they should review what devices are getting used and then go for depth. It adds to system capability and user satisfaction. Your Hue integration is a perfect example. Hue is probably the most widely known brand of Zigbee bulbs and they are an on ramp for many into home automation. Every enhancement that you’ve made should have been included in the base by now.

In any case, the quality of 3rd party drivers and other apps is really high these days. I just installed an Inovelli dimmer for the first time yesterday and the drivers seem to work well (except that buttons 6 and 8 seem to be reversed in the documentation).

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Makes sense! Thanks for all these answers!

Hello, I just ordered a few Red series Dimmers and Switches. Have a few questions Should I update the firmware before adding to my Hubitat Z wave Network for convenience of not having to exclude from hubitat zwave network. is there still a need to flash the firmware twice? Is there known issues with the firmware the switches are shipping with that make it worth upgrading the firmware? Also when using the Inovelli driver from Github there’s no need for the child switch Correct?

Hey thanks for taking the time out to post in the forums! Welcome :slight_smile:

I’m not a current Hubitat user, but I’ve read through a lot of these threads and think I know the answers to most of your questions – I’m sure others can pitch in if they’re incorrect.

From my understanding, you can now update the firmware via @bcopeland’s firmware updater which instructions can be found here: [RELEASE] Hubitat Z-Wave Firmware Updater

No, once should be fine.

Yeah, there are some known issues that have been fixed that are currently in the market right now. The two biggest ones would be:

  • Dimmers: If you setup notifications and they’re active, they’ll be dismissed if you use the switch to dim
  • On/Off: In rare cases, the device fails in a 3-Way setting to detect using a dumb switch and you’ll notice that On/Off gets out of sync – we’ve added a manual option for configuration if this happens

Notes on what have been added/fixed can be found on the firmware pages:

This one I’m not sure on – I believe the answer is no, but @harjms or @BertABCD1234, or @EricM_Inovelli would know the answer here better.

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Correct, no need for the child switch driver. I believe Eric or Brian made the change a few firmware updates ago to use Hubitats native one (or whatever code lingo is used here, I’m not a coder).

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Thanks guys, I really appreciate the info just received the switches and dimmers.

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The tool requires a direct link to the firmware location. @Eric_Inovelli, currently, your web site doesn’t seem to easily allow access to this download URL (as far as I can see…). It only allows the download of the driver. Is this something that could be changed?

The tool to update firmware directly from Hubitat is really great! It works great to update the Inovelli firmware (there is a special procedure required for these switches, but it gets easier once you’ve followed it a couple of times).

If @bcopeland is ok with it, I’ll happily add it to the website as he developed the tool :slight_smile:

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I’m cool with it … but that’s now what he is asking…

@SViel to get the firmware url from the download click here:

Yes, the link is what I am looking for. I unfortunately don’t have this as an option in my windows or iPad browsers… I wish I did!!!

805819D4-9589-41F8-8C3A-0EB3B94E960D

That is why I am asking if a link could be added directly on the web page… the community has been really awesome at providing links in the interim however!

Erik’s been putting them at http://files.inovelli.com/firmware/LZW31-SN_1.44.otz which should work.
Firmware v1.43 (Beta) | LZW31-SN | Dimmer - Red Series (Gen 2)

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Suggestion for the drivers:
Add an optional child for LED intensity when off (and perhaps for LED intensity too).

This would allow me to darken the LEDs at night at brighten them during the day.