Can these blue 2-1s that are faulty be used as dumb switches in a 3 way setup with other good working blues?
No.
You could potentially add them into your network and bind them together to act as a 3 way.
You could also repair the switches and gain about 90% of the rf too.
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I guess I was under the impression that they worked fine out of the box and only had a faulty antenna. i.e. working as a networked switch. So if they lose their binding I’m assuming they lose their functionality as a dumb switch as well.
Working or otherwise, the Blue 2 - 1 cannot function as a wired dumb companion or Aux switch.
I guess I"m confused. I thought the setup from the switch "hold on down paddle, tap config 5x, release) would program the switch to work as a 3 way from the switch itself and not through my coordinator (hubitat).
They will work as a single load dumb switch but they don’t communicate via the traveler so you’d want the switch to be connected to a hub in order to bind it with another blue series (or zigbee) product.
I’m still confused. Lol. Then what is the point of being able to configure it as a 3 way from the switch itself?
We’ll you could set up the faulty blue switch with another dumb (not blue or any aux switch) in a 3 way via paddle configuration.
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The switch on its own cannot determine if it is part of a multi-way setup. So you have to tell it if it is a 2-way ie just by itself, or a multi-way ie connected via the traveler to one or more dumb or Aux switches, which are companions to the Blue 2-1. Additionally, for multi-way setups, you have to tell it if it is communicating with dumb switches or Aux switches.
I guess that’s the breakdown in my understanding. If I configure it from the switch to tell it it’s communicating with another blue, then shouldn’t it work in a 3 way configuration without being connected to the coordinator? I don’t care about syncing status’ or anything like that, i just want to be able to turn on and off from the faulty switch and have full functionality from the good blue switch.
OK, a bit of explanation regarding mult-ways.
Say you are setting up a three-way with two switches. You put the Inovelli Blue in one box and in the other box you can you use either a dumb switch or an Aux switch. In this configuration, the two switches will communicate by one or two traveler conductors between the two switches, depending upon if the companion switch is a dumb switch or an Aux switch.
However, if you do not want to use an Aux switch or a dumb switch, you can use a blue 2-1 as a companion switch. However, in this configuration, the two switches do not communicate via traveler conductors. In this configuration, you can either connect the two switches together using Zigbee binding, or you can have the Blue that is acting as the companion switch control the primary switch via scenes.
Since you’re talking about repurposing a faulty Blue, my guess is that you won’t be able to get the faulty one to bind. And since scenes require a connection to the hub, that probably isn’t going to work either.
I am thinking that you believe two Blues in a multi-way can communicate via a wired connection, but that is not the case.
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You’re not configuring the blue as a 3 way. You are telling the blue what type of 3 way is attached to it.
Single pole = just the blue
3-way dumb switch = the blue plus a dumb switch
3 way aux = the blue plus an aux
The signal through the traveller wire will be different between a dumb switch and an aux switch.
Thinking outside the box a little, I’m not sure if it’d be possible to add a “emulate aux switch” mode to a future firmware version that would essentially turn the blue into an aux switch. But for now the only way to do it is to forget about having them wired together and just use binding. It’ll function in the exact same way.
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So the only way to get dimming at both ends of a 3 way circuit and get LED indicators is to run the communications between the two Blue 2-1 dimmers through a hub? Oy, smart stuff is so confusing.
You setup the binding through the hub but after they’re bounded no hub needed.
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Oh, ok. That’s better. Bit more setup, but should be fast and have one less point of failure.
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Thanks for the help. I understand now. : )