Trouble with non-neutral momentary switch setup

Hi,

I am have installed 3 red series dimmers in my house and have had no issues with exception towards 1 one of them.

The issue I am having is with 1 switch which is in a non-neutral wiring with a 3 way momentary dimmer. The main switch box actually does have neutral in it, but it is wired with both line and load at the main box, and due to the location of the two switches, I would prefer to have the smart switch in the remote box location and the auxillary switch in the main box. To accomplish this, I figured I could use the non-neutral with momentary switch configuration along with a bypass since the fixture has 24 watts total.

For the wiring, I used the wiring schematic for 3-way installation with non-neutral wire setup, with some modifications to enable the smart switch to be physically located in the remote box location. I installed an Enerwave Auxillary switch into the main box, wired with the common line going into the neutral terminal. As I actually have a 3 wire romex to the remote switch, I then tied the common line to the white wire of the romex, with the traveller remaining as the standard red wire. The wire to the load is tied in from the remote box’s black wire to the load’s black wire. Lastly, for good measure, I tied the bypass from the load’s black wire back into neutral in the box.

In the remote box, I installed the smart switch with the red wire in the traveller terminal, the white wire as the line, and the black wire is connected to the load.

Once powered back up, I paired the switch to my hub and made sure to configure it accordingly, with the AC-setup set to non-neutral, and the switch type set to 3-way momentary.

At the smart switch, I am able to turn on/off the light, as well as dim and un-dim as expected, with one weird caveat. When the light is at full or near full brightness, if I click to turn off, the switch dims the light to more than half way and then returns it back to the original brightness level. To turn off completely, I first have to dim the light to a certain level, or otherwise press the off switch twice (second time as it is dimming) to get it to turn off fully.

At the momentary 3 way switch, I am able to use the lower button to dim and turn off the light, with the same caveat mentioned above. The upper button does not seem to respond at all.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated. I hope my descriptions help to properly convey the wiring. If needed, I can try to draw up a schematic and upload it.

Thank you.

Not sure what you mean by momentary and what setting are referring to in this statement

and the switch type set to 3-way momentary
A quick sketch would be helpful. Hint use a dashed line for white and ignore the bare copper / green safety ground.

John

For the switch type, I am referring to parameter # 22, labeled “Switch Type” in the manual, which has 3 possible values, 0 for single pole, 1 for multi-switch (dumb switch), and 2 for multi-switch (auxilary switch).

By momentary switch, I am referring to the multi-switch (auxilary switch) option. On my home assistant hub, this particular option name is called “3-way momentary”.

Sorry for any confusion in this regard. I’ll try to draw up a quick wiring schematic to show the actual wiring in the 2 boxes.

Thank you.

Here’s a wiring diagram of the setup:

Wiring looks good to me.

Couple of thoughts…

  1. Did you change Parameter 21 as well?

  2. I’ve read others have had to set the parameters a couple of time as they sometimes don’t “take” on the first try. Can HA read the Parameters to verify they are correct?

John

I had set parameter 21 to non-neutral.

I decided to do some troubleshooting and disable the auxillary switch via the config parameters. After changing the switch type parameter back to single pole, I was able to disable the auxillary switch. After doing this, the issue I encountered when attempting to switch off the light resolved itself.

In this current configuration, it appears to be operating fine other than the fact that the auxilary switch is now disabled. I’m starting to wonder if the auxilary switch I had chosen, the Enerwave ZW3K-N simply cannot be supported for non-neutral setups.

I had assumed it would work, as there was reports of success such as from here: Dumb switch for 3 or 4 way setups?. However, it was with a different configuration. I have a Honeywell by Jasco Aux switch elsewhere in the house. I’ll try swapping it out and seeing if that one has better success.

Thank you for your help thus far.

I haven’t seen a list of Aux switches that are known to work but your wiring seems right.

This looks different at a glance but it actually the same wiring as yours.

You can find it on Inovelli’s site:

Red Series

Look at the bottom for “Installation Instructions” then “Wiring Schematics”

I managed to resolve my issue.

I took one of my older Honeywell by Jasco Auxillary switches and swapped it with the Enerwave switch.

With the Jasco switch, everything is working as expected. I put the Enerwave switch in the Jasco’s original location as well, and that switch is operating without issue in that location.

I am guessing that there are some Auxillary switches that are suited towards non-nuetral use while others are not.

It would be great if there was more extensive compatibility testing for Auxillary switches since Inovelli does not have any intention of creating their own.

Glad to see you got it sorted it out.

Perhaps @anon64478871 can make a pinned post of what you’ve found so others can benefit from your effort.

John

Actaully, I may have spoken a bit too soon about everything working great as expected. It is certainly better than the Enerwave auxillary switch, but I’ve noticed an odd issue with it.

The Jasco Auxillary switch can reliably turn on and off the light. It can also dim the light. However, it appears to have an issue with increasing the brightness (un-dimming?).

If the light is already on, but less than the maximal brightness, I am unable to increase the brightness from the Auxillary switch unless I first toggle the light switch back to off.

If I push and hold on the upper paddle of the Auxillary switch when the light is off, it will turn on the light and then increase it’s brightness from the default. However, the switch does nothing when I do this while the light is already on.

What is also strange is that if I hold the upper paddle of the auxillary switch while the light is on, the switch will report back to my hub that the light is now on with minimal brightness, though the light brightness does not appear to be affected at all.

The strange behavior with how it causes the switch to report erroneous status to my hub makes me wonder if there’s a bug somewhere in the firmware that affects switches which affect this particular use case (i.e. Auxillary switch use with non-neutral set-up).

A new update. I think I have just confirmed that this odd behavior is a firmware bug that appears related to the default dimming config parameter for the switch (parameter #9). I have not tested whether or not the z-wave default dimming level affects this, however I get this behavior when the local dimming level has been configured.

I first reset all config parameters back to default (aside from the AC Power Type and Switch Type). At that point, I noticed that all functionality from the Auxillary switch had been restored. It was now able to turn off, on, dim, un-dim as expected.

Then I set the default local dimming level back to my preferred setting. At that point, I’ve started noticing the issue relating to the Auxillary switch. The switch could perform all functions except un-dim the lights. If I held the upper paddle of the Auxillary switch while the light was on, the light would actually dim to the lowest setting.

I had previously reported that the light remained the same and the switch mis-reported the data, however I think that was incorrect. I had previously set a minimal brightness level that may have made it difficult to discern the minimal brightness from the current brightness.

Once again, once I reset the default dimming setting back to 0, all these issues go away and the Auxillary switch works completely as expected.

Is there another location where I should post this info to? I think this issue is no longer an installation issue, but has become a firmware issue now.

I think its should be flagged to:

@anon64478871 and @EricM_Inovelli

John