White Series Switch/Google Home/Nanoleaf Bulbs

Switches General Discussion
1

I’m struggling a bit with my smart home setup with a white series switch, google, home, and nanoleaf bulbs. I’m just doing single-pole with no neutral wire. There was no flickering with my old switch, but now there is with the white switch. Is this typical? Do I need that adapter? Will the flickering damage the switch?

Also, regardless of whether or not I’m in smart-bulb mode or on/off mode, the bulbs are always on. I did setup the routine in google home and that has not changed anything. If I have it in on/off mode, the smart bulbs go from on to super bright/flickering.

Anyone have any advice?

2

So are you saying that when the switch is in the On/Off mode, pressing the paddle down will not turn off the bulbs?

3

Hi Bry, thank you for responding.

That is the case, yes. I have the switch wired to two nano leaf bulbs. When off, the bulbs stay on, and when on they get super bright and flicker

I was reading and it seems that I need a bypass. I purchased one, but I do not have access to the fixtures in a way that I could wire it there.

Are there other solutions?

4

How did you determine which conductor was the line in which was the load?

5

I have a voltage tester. I touched one the wires and it was reacting.

6

Ok, thx. And that went to Line, right?

Your symptoms are pretty extreme, so a bypass may not help. Typically, when the bulbs stay on they are very dim.

7

In that case, should the bypass be connected outside of the switch between line and load? I don’t have a neutral wire or ground, so I’m not sure where it would be going to.

8

If they are Nanoleaf Matter smart bulbs, they should always be powered. So you should never use the Inovelli swithc in “On/Off” or dimmer mode, but always in SmartBulb mode with full power to the load

If you power the Nanoleaf bulbs on/off they will disconnect from the thread network, causing the thread network to start a route re-calculation which can cause the bulbs to be non-responsive for quite a while (in my experience anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours). This can cause a cascading disconnect problem where any device that routes through them also goes offline.

The fact that you are seeing the bulbs “always on” when in Smart Bulb mode may be a result of the bulbs having become disconnected from thread in an “on” state, and they have not yet reconnected so they won’t accept an “Off” command or adjustment command. In this state, can you control the bulbs from the Nanoleaf app using bluetooth?

9

To clarify,
this issue occurs with normal LED bulbs, halogen bulbs, and the Nanoleaf ones.

I have tried, for example, performing a factory reset, putting normal (led, halogen) bulbs into my fixtures, and then placing the switch in on/off mode. In this case, I am still getting this “always on” behavior. I’ve tried a mixture of bulbs.

As for the Nanoleaf bulbs, I had the bulbs and the switch connected over thread/matter, and when the bulbs were at 100% and the switch was on, there was flickering both in the lights and the switch LED bar.

10

Ugh, sorry. If you have a non-neutral then the only place for the bypass is at the light. It needs to go in parallel between the hot and neutral.

11

I don’t believe what you’re saying is accurate. Currently there is no way to bind a smart bulb to a White Series switch. Enabling the Smart Bulb mode is great for being able to always keep power running to the smart bulbs at all times, but when Smart Bulb mode is enabled, you can NOT turn on/off the lights using the switch out of the box. This is because Smart Bulb mode is passing power to the smart bulbs at all times and without being able to bind specific bulbs to the switch, the switch has no clue that it needs to send a turn on/off light command to the bulbs.

The way I worked around this was using Home Assistant I setup an automation to turn the lights for that room on/off so that when I turn off the switch in the room, the automation to turn the lights off runs, and the same for turning on the lights. It kind of stinks because automations rely on Home Assistant and do not happen instantly so the rooms setup like this the lights turn off/on in a delayed manner but it was the only way I could make Smart Bulb mode work somewhat reliably.

This isn’t related to OP’s flickering lights of course, I don’t have that issue, I just wanted to reply to your comment about “always on” because it’s incorrect.

12

More accurate to say there is no “practical” way to do the binding for most end-users.

Endpoint #2 is a Matter Switch endpoint type 0x0104 which is used to bind actuator devices to other Matter devices. For most controllers, that endpoint is hidden since it can’t be used, but you can find it using HomeAssistant if you look in the Matter Server page. That endpoint #2 type 0x0104 can be used to send matter commands directly from the White series switch to a Matter bulb to turn it on/off and adjust the level. It can’t adjust color though. So, for example, if the Inovelli switch was in smart bulb mode, and the load was connected to a Nanoleaf bulb, even though the bulb is always powered, if you bound endpoint #2 to the bulb, the commands that originate from Endpoint #2 would turn it on/off and adjust the brightness (while, all the time, the bulb was receiving full power).

Problem is, no consumer-friendly controller allows you to set up the bindings. The only existing way to do it is with a command line tool known as “chip tool” and that is pretty difficult to use. More information in chip tool is here: connectedhomeip/docs/guides/chip_tool_guide.md at master · project-chip/connectedhomeip · GitHub and I’ve seen post from people who have used it to set up bindings. But its complex and doesn’t seem worth doing. Hopefully HomeAssistant, Hubitat, or others will add easier to use support.