Red series dimmer with smart bulbs

Lighting General Discussion
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#1

Hello all! I just got some Red Dimmers to use with Hubitat and Lifx smart bulbs and I’m running into problems. Hopefully y’all can help

Switch: LZW31-SN Dimming Switch
Wiring: Non-neutral
Firmware:1.57
Hub: Habitat
Bulbs: 6 Lifx Color 1000 Lumens

My first question is whether I need the Aoetec bypass when disabling the relay and using it with smart bulbs. In theory there’s constant power being applied to the bulbs, right? Why would I need that? There are also 6 bulbs here at 9w per bulb so my total load is 54w. According to the site I don’t need it.

If I don’t need the Aeotec device, here is my issue:

After some initial difficulty, I have the switched paired to my hub. When powered on, obviously the bulbs start blinking and flashing. I went into the Hubitat device and turned off local control, set it to smart bulb, disabled remote control, and saved(I also have questions about the enable child devices for local and remote control and their uses). I still got the blinking. Even when set to full, the bulbs blink. I disabled the relay by tapping 8 times on the configuration button and got a red light. Since I got the red light from there, it indicates the relay wasn’t turned off through the hub, right? I tried to make the switch work again and still get the blinking lights. I also noticed I get an rgb cycle on the switches led panel. I cannot find documentation on what this means. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

#2

So 8x on the config button disables local control (what you are calling disabling the relay). Disabling local control just means that presses of the paddle won’t control whatever is physically wired to the dimmer. So basically the switch is now a scene controller. You couple this with turning on the smart bulb mode, which you did, to insure that the dimmer always puts out full power which you want for smart bulbs.

The red, green, blue that you are seeing is the switch rebooting. In a non-neutral configuration that means that more than likely, the switch isn’t getting enough power. Add a bypass.

#3

Thanks for the quick response! I’ll try the bypass. It should be installed at the lighting fixture, correct?

#4

That is correct. Parallel. So one lead from the bypass to the hot and the other to the neutral.

#5

Another option to try would be to upgrade the firmware to the latest beta, and set smart bulb mode to mode 2. This allows you local control, but it keeps the load at 100% output no matter what the dim level.

You can then set the light level based on the dimmer changed level, AND use scene controls to set it however you want (color change, etc.).