Smooth dimming on red series

Not a Teams user, but more than happy to figure it out! It’s the least I can do :slight_smile:

I’m really happy to jump into this. I have countless use cases for the 5 button device and have been following it for a while. I have two spots in which I would use them as scene controllers and then a few dimmers I would replace to gain scene control and smart bulb control all in one single gang space. This is exciting stuff!

I am inundated with tools from various work projects for communication. I like the idea of keeping all Inovelli discussions within the same SSO and discussion framework. I understand that Teams is smoother for the rest of the… erm… team… so I’ll get on board with either method. But there’s a lot to like about keeping all things Inovelli encapsulated here.

Thanks so much!

Just wanted to add that I added some new LED bulbs to my ceiling fixtures this weekend:

And this became a MUCH more clear issue than it has been before. Set dimmer min to 45 and they are still like ALMOST off (like middle of the night can barely tell they are lit, but steps from 10% down to 1% are REALLY choppy. I understand that we are talking about sub-watt level dimming, but it’s definitely something that I look forward to improvement on!

ACTIVATE Inovelli Community!

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I have to echo @rpulivella – the ‘steppiness’ of the dimming is really the only flaw that I’ve experienced with the Gen 2 dimmers. It’s particularly exacerbated by LEDs that need their minimum dimming value set higher as there appear to be a fixed number of dimming levels that are then spaced over the same time period. I’d really love to see this be an area of focus for improvement in the upcoming products.

I’m happy to pitch in on this as well. Please feel free to loop me in if you are still looking for some additional volunteers to get more directly involved or help with testing. I don’t do embedded development professionally, but it is one of my hobbies.

It’s that “one thing” that I really look forward to seeing big improvement either as a result of a surprise firmware update or in a gen 3 dimmer. I’d even pay a small price for that firmware update and certainly will purchase gen 3 dimmers for specific circuits in my home someday when Inovelli announces/ships them!

The other key difference between LED and incandescent/halogen lights is that most dimmable LED bulbs do not implement any simulation of the effect that filament has on smoothing the perceived dimming. Even very short lower wattage incandescent filaments are long enough to smooth some of the perception of quantization. But LED bulbs usually are instant in their reaction to change in the phase controlled chopped AC waveform.

Just wanted to add here that @EricM_Inovelli has started a laundry list of enhancements across all our products in GitHub that we’ll be reviewing with the manufacturer now that they are back from CNY.

Smart Bulb Mode and this enhancement is our top priority.

Once we are set to start working on them I will definitely get the collective brain power involved!

@JasonL_Inovelli - this is one of the areas we’d like to work on that we’ll be discussing next Wednesday at our call.

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Ditto here. It’d be such a big improvement I would probably rebuy as well, but it feels like it could be fixable with existing hardware.

This was where I REALLY started seeing it, with replacing my incandescents (I know) with LED’s in our living room light fixtures and min set at 45 is JUST dim enough to get by.

Glad to see everyone is on the same page here. I really hope existing hardware can be implemented but I could see it being a rollout on new gen 2 hardware (gen 2b?) or gen 3 hardware (not sure what else could possibly be improved on the hardware side???).

Great news Eric - glad to hear this issue made the list even though I understand this is a bridge you crossed with them once before.

+1 to experiencing this dimming behavior.

Using red dimmer on 4 commercial electric led trims (ns01aa11fr1-259). Lights turn on around 30% and only really have 4 dimming levels up to 100%, very “chunky” or stepping dimming.

Would be happy to test out any firmware or configuration updates that become available.

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I was going to post this as a reply to this thread, but since it got kind of long and has other useful information, I made a new post instead: So I tested every recessed downlight from The Home Depot

@Eric_Inovelli I would love to be included as well if you ended up setting up the group.

I just got my first set of Red dimmers and they have been fantastic so far except for the stepiness of the fade. Count me in as someone willing to test a beta firmware.

I’ve not replaced all of our switches yet, so I’ll probably hold out for now until either this firmware gets fixed or the next generation gets released with a hardware fix.

Has there been any movement on this?

I am surprised this is blamed on MOSFET… They are used in audio amplifiers (even high end ones) and no one would accept such steps in music… maybe the overall hardware design poses a challenge.

Internally in a processor, something like the dimming steps must be represented by a number, say 0-255. So, changing from number 50 to 51 is a step, you can’t ramp between those 2 numbers. The number of steps depends on the bits you decide to use and the capability of the processor.