Overload protection

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#1

On the Red series dimmers, pulling the tabs off to make it fix next to other switches in light boxes lowers the wattage the switch can safely handle.

My suggestion is to add a parameters in zwave to set a max wattage that can be set to match the number of tabs removed. So if it goes over that wattage it shuts down or maybe fancier doesn’t let that much power flows though it. Not sure how much room there is in the firmware.

The reason I thought of this is in my dinning room there is a light fixture that would overload a dimmer if standard incandescent bulbs where used. It will be fine with LEDs but it would be nice to know that if someone’s replaced the bulbs in the future it won’t overload the dimmer. I can and have implemented this in my hub but I always prefer safety features to work on device.

I can see the feature working on all your red series’s products that have a power limit like your new fan+light combo or Windy City when resumes production.

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#2

Dang, this is an incredible idea – thanks for sharing. I’m going to link it on the Windy City page as well as the wishlist for any revisions to our current products.

What we’d like to do is ultimately remove the heat sink tabs like GE did on their latest switches (hats off to them) but if we can’t do it, I’d love some internal fail-safe.

Thank you for sharing!

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#3

It would be nice if the tabs weren’t an issue at all! But either way I assume there would still be a wattage/amperage maximum for one reason or another, and if the device can self monitor its own power draw then indefinitely think it should have some overload protection.

Maybe a temp sensor to watch for over heating as well but that would only work with additional hardware so I could see that not making a final build.