I have a non neutral setup using a dimmer switch in series to 5 Philips hue white tunable bulbs. I installed an aetoc dimmer at the load in anticipation of stability issues and when i powered everything on, the lights started turning off and on (not flickering, more at like a .5 sec interval; like disco). I turned the brightness down and the lights became stable until about 40% brightness when a few started turning off/on again.
The switch work fine and shows up in HA through ZHA. smart bulb mode is on, increased neutral output is turned on, and it is in on/off mode. I asked ChatGPT and it told me to remove the bypass as it is incompatible with hue bulbs, which i think is incorrect. It was a huge pain to install the bypass into the light fixture so I would like to figure out a solution before I mess around in the fixture again.
I can provide more information as needed. Thank you.
I would have tried it without a bypass first, particularly with 5 bulbs. I understand it’s hard to get at the fixture though, so I understand why you installed it initially.
Just making sure . . you installed the bypass parallel to the light, right? That means one bypass conductor on the hot and the other bypass conductor on the neutral.
I only know of one other solution when the bypass thing doesn’t work, rewiring to to send a hot and neutral to the switch. (This doesn’t require additional wiring, just a changing of connections at the light . . . just noting this as it tends to confuse some people . . )
At the light box, re-wire to connect the hot and neutral to the light, so that the light is powered full time and unswitched. Connect the 2-wire going to the switch in parallel to those connections so that the switch now has a hot and neutral.
The downside to this is that the only way to cut power to the light is to throw the breaker. However, you can augment this installation with a smart relay in the light box to cut power to the light when required for maintenance.