I am having an issue with the White Series dimmer switches and “instant on” mode not working as intended while in smart bulb mode, causing a very noticeable delay from when the switch is pressed and when the light turns on.
I have some matter over thread smart bulbs I am controlling with my white series switch in smart bulb mode. The switch is in “instant on” mode and all on/off transitions have been set to zero (confirmed in home assistant). Connection strength is very strong. Even with all these setting there is still a noticeable delay.
When I monitor the logs in Home Assistant I can confirm the delay. When a paddle is pressed up/down, there is a 500-700ms delay before the button press is registered in the Home Assistant log.
I previously had a Leviton WiFi smart switch installed before I swapped it for this Inovelli switch and it more or less instantly turned the lights on and off. Thread should be faster than over WiFi. I also tested the switch with smart bulb mode off and confirmed it works instantly.
I am 100% confident that “instant on” mode is not functioning while in smart bulb mode. I don’t know if this is intentional, but it would be amazing if this could be fixed in a future FW update.
I can’t speak to your issue directly. But since you asked for a workaround in your Reddit post, you might consider simply wiring the load conductor to the line terminal’s second hole, allowing you to turn off the SBM. You’ll have to flip the breaker to cut power to the bulb(s), but that might get you going until this gets figured out.
So, I just rewired my switch and was hopeful the delay would be gone, but it is still present even after disabling Smart Bulb Mode.
It appears that the delay is not part of Smart Bulb mode, but just how the switch functions in general. here is what I mean:
When the switch is setup “normally” and sending power to the load when it is switched on, there is no lag at all at the fixture because the switch is physically powering the load instantly, but even in this case, there is a 500ms delay before the thread signal is received and the device is updated on our smart home hub. So any lag wouldn’t be noticeable in this situation because it would only be showing up on the hub, not at the bulb/fixture. but once you setup the switch as a scene controller and it is no longer physically controlling the power to the load, then the lag is very noticeable because it is relying on the hub to send the signal to the light to turn on.
Makes perfect sense to me. With the SBM out of the equation, it seems to me that now there are several possibilities for the delay. The switch could be delayed in sending the message, the message may get delayed going through a TBR or HA may be delayed in processing and logging the message.
I have no idea how you isolate the cause. Just throwing it out for discussion.