I purchased a Inovelli Red Series (VZW31) and aeotec bypass to install in my daughters room so she can control her Wiz Smart bulbs using a wall switch. Previously she had dumb bulbs and a dumb switch. The lights are part of her ceiling fan (there are 3) that has a separate circuit for the fan (pull chain) and one for the light. There is no neutral in the switch box.
The wiring from the switch to the fan looks like this:
After restoring power and putting the Inovelli into smart bulb mode, the lights will work fine when the color temp is daylight but flicker when warm. I tried other colors and scenes and most of these seem to be fine. But when I turn off the bulbs from the app or use scene with low light (candlelight), the switch will reboot (flash green and some other colors), then turn the lights back on.
I’ve also tested this without the bypass and the lights would always flicker regardless of temp or color of the bulbs. In addition, the led on the switch would also flicker (the bypass does fix this).
Is this a case where the bypass is still not providing enough load in some scenarios? I didn’t have a 2nd bypass handy to test if adding another one would fix this. I do know in a different room with the same setup but a neutral, the switch worked flawlessly and no bypass was needed.
In the end I had to put everything back so my daughter could use her room again and decided to return the switch and bypass. I have Home Assistant so I’m primarily looking for a way to allow the wall switch to control the bulbs in this room (I have it working in the other room with a neutral).
Since you’re running with smart bulbs and don’t want to control the fan itself (if you do, get a canopy module and a blue dimmer and connect the canopy module to the fan and then rewire following these instructions), you should be able to rewire at the fan to send the hot and the neutral down to the switch (no connection to the load). This will allow the switch to the fully powered at all time, the bulbs to be fully powered at all times and you can then use automations / scene controls to control the lights from the switch.
The canopy module and blue does sound interesting and makes me wonder if I should have done a blue instead in my other room. The main reason I went with Red was to avoid interference from my router and also the longer range (router and NAS running HA are in basement and bedrooms are on the 2nd floor). Hopefully there will be a red version of the canopy at some point.
As for having both the light and the switch always on, that’s an interesting idea. I do like the idea of the switch being able to control any bulb and not just smart bulbs. Taking apart the fan to add the bypass definitely took time and having to do it again if she decides to go back to regular bulbs if it were wired permanently is not something I would look forward to.
I’d strongly suggest the canopy module and the blue switch at that point. The canopy will be hardwired to both the lights and the fan itself, so if the bulbs are swapped to not smart ones in the future, you can disable smart bulb mode on the canopy and it’ll work without any rewiring. In this case, the switch would always be hot and the canopy would always be hot but the fan and the lights would be connected to the canopy.
Yeah, I hear you. I was all in on Z-Wave myself for a long time before finally giving in and adding some Zigbee. A couple of resources for you:
Inovelli’s current approach seems to be leading with Zigbee, then Thread and Z-Wave come later. They’ve not disclosed any plans to make a Z-Wave version that I’ve seen.
Thanks for the resources here. I’m pretty new to home automation and am just getting into it and starting to go into the deep end. I will look into the available Zigbee hardware options but it does sound like the canopy is the best option here.
But just to expound on one point … When you only have a 2-wire between the switch and the fan, AND the fan also has a light kit, you can’t have the fan/light combo directly wired as the load on either the Inovelli fan switch or the Inovelli dimmer. The reason for that is neither switch is rated to carry both loads. The fan switch can only carry a motor (inductive) load, not a light (resistive) load, and the dimmer can only carry a light load and not a motor load.
So the canopy is the only real solution, with the dimmer or fan switch wired without a load as @rohan described.
100%! I should have mentioned it for future reference, but didn’t since the diagram (correctly) showed the fan load connected directly to the line and not going through the switch.
In my case I only want to power the lights but with the flexibility of being able to use any type of bulb in the fixture. We use the fans during the summer in lieu of AC when we can and usually on low speed (the higher settings getting loud) so not having these on the smart switch isn’t a big deal.
