@zavex this has to be related to my other thread here:
I think we are experiencing the same issue. If the wattage is high enough then the boot loop does not occur. Even if the wattage is low if the intensity value remains low too then the issue does not occur. With a neutral I have no issues. Without a neutral the dimmer falls into a reboot loop at higher percentages (and always if the intensity is set to full). I thought that it could be helped with some diode protection or isolation on the ground but that did not seem to help.
Hey @zavex – I’m super sorry, I remember reading your reply and then got distracted and then went up north to the UP where there is no service. I knew there was a thread that I needed to respond to.
Let me have the manufacturer look at these two threads and see what we can come up with.
No, but let me create a PM with you and the manufacturer so that we can push this along. They’re out until the 8th I believe for Moon Festival, but I think they’re still responding.
Just posting again since I haven’t gotten a response from support e-mail in a while. I bought a 10 pack of red dimmer switches and out of five that I’ve tried, only one has worked as expected. Three of them are stuck in a permanent boot loop regardless of load (180W of incandescent lights still causes boot loop). One of them reboots whenever the LED lights are turned off. The last one is hooked up to a florescent bulb and working fine.
@stu1811 I’ve been wondering what Smart Bulb Mode does, but for the three switches I have in boot loop I can no longer change settings since they don’t stay online long enough.
@Darklyte It may boot with an incandescent. Mine does but acts wonky. Which hub do you have? I can set params in ST and they’ll take even when the switch is rebooting. Final option is to smash the down paddle as it boots to set the light off. Final final option is to disconnect the switch and wire it up on a test bench with a neutral.
Smart bulb mode is set the load to always get power. You want this if you the illum, hue, or other smart bulb. You then setup an association between the bulb between the switch and bulb.
I use a SmartThings hub. I’ve tried getting the boot looping ones to stay powered on a heavy load, but that isn’t working.
It is absolutely Smart bulb mode. I decided to finish my 10-pack and test as many things as possible. Enabling Smart Bulb mode essentially always causes the switches to start boot looping, even on load.
@Eric_Inovelli I’m experiencing the same boot loop as others here have noticed. This is on a non-neutral Red series dimmer, with 3 12W Cree LED bulbs as the load, on firmware 1.47. Of the 15 switches I’ve installed, this is the first time I’ve seen this issue (although I’ve got a neutral pretty much everywhere else). Any ideas?
It “stops” if I set the max dim value to 85%, but this doesn’t quite work for the room. Thanks!
I have three fixtures with a similar setup to what you have described. Get the Aoetec bypass, and change to either a brighter bulb, or cooler color temp. Even with the bypass I can only get 85% out of the dimmer. Brighter, cooler bulbs were still need to compensate. Without neutral you don’t have much of an option.
Same experience here. Non-neutral setup, LED fixture rated at 24W. Anything above 73% will cause the switch to reboot. On the latest firmware: v1.48 (Beta) for LZW31-SN.
Smart bulb mode (or otherwise setting the dimmer to 100% aka 99 in ZWave) with a non-neutral wiring configuration with any loads less than 50W causes a boot loop here too. I thoroughly tested today using 1.52 firmware dimmers.
I suspect that this is a hardware limitation based on how power stealing is implemented. Seeing the oscilloscope traces (from the other thread about “smoothness”) nearly confirms my suspicions. I highly doubt these dimmers will function reliably with low wattage loads or with any amount of smart bulbs (due to how they sip power at low intensities) without a neutral wire.
I hope I’m wrong and your manufacturer can make some firmware adjustments for this. But otherwise it’s the boot-loop-of-death and I have to suspect additionally that such a boot loop could kill the MOSFET inside the dimmer after some extended use.
What would be better is to add to some future hardware a relay that bypasses the dimmer switching entirely when smart bulb mode is engaged. This too would require a neutral wire or some other more ingenious way of stealing power from the line along the way to the bulbs.
I have the same problem with a boot loop with a Black Dimmer without a neutral line in the switch box. I have a LUT-MLC bypass installed in the junction box, and two 60-watt equivalent Phillips bulbs in the fixture.
