Red Series dimmer & SmartThings newbie questions

Hello all,

I am new to Inovelli and SmartThings. I have a lot of experience with Lutron, Kasa and other WiFi smart home tech. I have been a programmer and SW manager for 40 years and have a lot of networking experience.

I have bought and installed 3 Inovelli Red Series dimmers and a SmartThings V3 hub. These switches have no neutral wire. That is actually the reason I bought them. They are about 12’ from the hub with one drywall wall between them and the hub. The tree switches are all within 8’ of each other in an almost equilateral triangle configuration, so they should all easily be acting as Z-wave repeaters for each other. All are working, but I have a few questions.

  1. The LZ31-SN device handler has been installed using the IDE and the classic app. Are there other handlers that need to be installed? Child Service Handler? Smart apps handler? Others?

  2. All 3 of the dimmers are running loads of less than 25W. I have tuned the max and min parameters and have no flickering problems.
    Is there any reason that I should still consider installing the Aeotec Dimmer Bypass? The house is old and the work boxes are shallow. Two of the dimmers are controlling lamps connected to outlets controlled by the dimmers. The bypasses are expensive. I would rather not have to deal with installing them unless really necessary.

  3. Although the switches all work fine for everyday use, one of them has a strange result when I check signal strength by pressing the configure button for 5 seconds. First the LED strip goes bright green for a quarter of a second or so, then bright red for another quarter second. The lamp turns off for less than a second. The LED strip flashes blue and the lamp turns back on. I have no idea what this means.
    Can someone please explain?

Sorry for the long first post on this forum. I am just trying to provide as much detail as possible.

Thanks

Eric H (no, not that Eric H)

I’m far from being an expert but I have 16 of these switches installed, 3 being non-neutral.

  1. There are two device handlers, the main one and a child one that you need to setup notifications on the led bar. As long as you have both of those you are good. If you plan to do associations with the switch you need the two smart app associations tool scripts.

  2. If everything is working as expected then I don’t believe you need the bypass. I’m pretty sure it’s only if you are having issues. I have the bypass on all 3 non neutral setups I have. I only had issues with certain bulbs but ultimately needed them for the bulbs I wanted in place.

  3. Sorry I’m useless on this one.

Hope that helps!

@flipontheradio thanks for the reply.
I am still hoping someone can answer my question #3. It only happens when the lamp is on. If I check signal strength when the lamp is off, I just get the green LED strip.

@EHaberfe - When you say lamp, do you mean a lamp that is attached to the dimmer as control or the LED built into the dimmer?

I reported the signal strength issue when the dimmers first came out to @Eric_Inovelli and @EricM_Inovelli. I have the On/Off switches right next to the dimmers and they reported “GREEN” or “SAT”. I can also control the dimmers without issue. I never heard anything back from it.

So to answer your No. 3. My dimmers show the exact thing. Green for a split second, then red. However, the lights connected to load do not turn off when testing signal. They remain on.

@harjms thanks for responding. By “lamp” I mean the lamp that is plugged into the socket controlled by the dimmer. My other two Red Series dimmers just show green for good signal. One is controlling another lamp plugged into a dimmer controlled socket, the other controls a ceiling fixture.

I am not overly sweating this, But I would be interested to understand why there is a difference.

Is there anything different regarding the physical configuration? or which z-wave configuration settings have been changed?

@EricM_Inovelli There is no difference that I can think of even the bulbs are the same for the two switches that are controlling lamps. As far z-wave settings they are as far as I can tell the same on all my dimmers.