Red Series Dimmer stops controlling load but otherwise "appears" functional

I have about 25 Innovelli Red Dimmers installed for several months now. They are all running with v1.47.otz and v1.47.bin. They all have Neutrals wired and configured. Most of them are 3-way with dumb switch (toggle).

In the past couple weeks I have seen different switches at different times stop controlling the the load. What I mean is that the switch gives the appearance that its working (manual taps on/off/dim cause the led bar to respond as expected, zwave commands, polling, status, etc. are all responding) but the actual load remains off. This has happened with LED lights, CFL, and Incandescent loads. So far, I have only seen it on ones set up for 3-way, but to be fair, I only have a couple (out of 25 total) that are load-only so its not conclusive if its limited to 3-way or not

Basically it acts like the load wire is disconnected from the switch (switch is doing all the right things EXCEPT its not actually turning the load on/off). If I pull the air-gap to reboot the switch, then it starts acting normally again. As stated, it has happened on different switches at different times and can be reset via air-gap reboot. So I’m pretty confident its not loose wiring or bad switch. Something in the firmware goes brain-dead and stops switching the load even though the the other “smarts” of the switch are still responding.

I haven’t yet been able to determine a pattern or an event that causes this. It seems to happen after several days or weeks have passed, or perhaps it may be after a certain number of on/off cycles. But in any case, its happened enough times now and on enough different switches with different load types that I’m pretty sure its a bug of some sort.

Unfortunately, you are the 3rd (maybe 4th) person to report this in addition to me in the past few weeks. Same setup (3-way, neutral, toggle) and I experience the same thing. I was able to get mine replaced under warranty.

@Eric_Inovelli this is honestly starting to sound like a trend. You might start setting aside these returns to see if there is a hardware failure mode that is consistent.

Yeah, I’m seeing a trend here as well. It used to happen when people would wire switches wrong (ie: wire Gen 2’s with Gen 1 wiring instructions), but this new trend seems to only be happening with firmware updates, am I right?

I’ll start a thread shortly where we can troubleshoot – it honestly may be something with the firmware. This only happened after the new firmware was applied, correct?

Negative. Mine was riding the 1.47 firmware for months prior to this issue presenting itself.

Not sure if I could say which version it started, but its not immediately after a firmware update. It takes some time. I updated all my switches to 1.47 in early August and they ran great for several weeks. Then one by one this started happening. I’ve been updating those to v1.48 as it happens, but I don’t think v1.48 has anything changes related to this. As I mentioned in my first post, it takes a while of steady running, perhaps a couple weeks or so before they stop working. Air-gap reboot clears it up for another few weeks, so it has the feel of a software bug. BUT, the software acts like its all still working. It responds to hub polling, it sends paddle events and power reports back to the hub, it still controls the led bar notifications. The only thing it stops doing is actually turning the load on and off

Following up with another occurrence. Actually, two more occurrences on the same switch that has happened several times before. This switch was updated to v1.48.otz(target 0) and v1.47.bin(target 1) approximately 3 weeks ago and its happened two more times since then.

In my case, the offending switch is my “Driveway Lights” which has a mix of CFL Floods (over garage door) and LED candelabras (over side door). Total power load is about 90-100 watts. In the past, I thouthg that switching the dumb 3-way toggle switch made no difference, but now I’m not certain if that was true. These two most recent times, flipping the dumb 3-way toggle DID reset the behaviour back to normal. This makes me think there is something going on with the load detection and maybe (?) exacerbated by the mixed load type?

Also, this switch gets turned on/off via automation and via the smart switch several times a day, but very rarely is it controlled by the dumb 3-way. And once its reset, it takes around 1-2 weeks of time to pass before is comes back. The reason for this post is primarily to help me track it and maybe begin to find a reliable pattern as to the cause.

Hmmmm… yeah that is strange. A few questions for you:

  • When this happens do you lose both remote and local control of the load?
  • Also, can you let me know what bulb(s) you’re using on these switches?
  • Finally, how many of these are experiencing this issue?

Yes, I lose both local (physical paddle) and remote (z-wave control from Hubitat) control of the load. But as stated previously, the LED bar on the switch reacts as expected (i.e. the LED bar turns On or Off with local or remote control). Also, the switch reports back to the hub that it is “ON” or “OFF” as expected. But the actual LOAD is off and stays off until reset.

As stated above, its a mix of four 20w CFL floods (for driveway) and four 5w LED candle bulbs (for side entry door). The switch is set for “Instant On” and “Smart Bulb” mode to disable dimming the load. It also has all four Dimming Speed and Ramp Rate parameters set to 0.

Currently only this one is doing it repeatedly.

Happened again. Same switch. Beginning to look less like a firmware issue and more like a bad switch since this same one has failed 6 times in the past 30 days

@Courtney_Inovelli do I contact you for warranty replacement?

Yeah shoot us both a PM (@Courtney_Inovelli and myself) and we’ll get it swapped out for you!