This will be a thread for listing out any bugs you may find and/or any enhancements you’d like to see for the Red Series On/Off Switch (VZW30-SN).
This is not a thread for troubleshooting personal problems – please create a new thread so we can properly help.
Team Inovelli
Apologies, I am new to these forums so I don’t know how to properly tag my posts, but this is for:
What is the latest firmware for the red series On/off switch? I can’t find the firmware on the GitHub repository or the inovelli firmware websites.
I have had issues where I have successfully installed and included the switches to my Home Assistant instantiation through Zwave JS UI. At first, the switch seems to be working normally and I can turn it on using the physical buttons or homeassistant, but then the physical buttons stop working and the LED bar turns off after the first time.
The Zwave radio is still responding since the switches show as alive and respond to pings. When I try re-interviewing the node, it drops the information it knows about the switch like the manufacturer. I want to try doing an OTA update to the latest stable firmware, but I can’t find it.
I have had similar variations of this issue now on a couple of these switches. For context, I’m trying to install in a bathroom with a broan fan that was installed cerca 2018. I have checked the wiring and the voltages several times and that doesn’t seem to be the problem.
I did notice that on this last switch, parameter 33 did show an “overheat fault” for a bit and then the physical buttons stopped working, but I don’t understand what is happening. The switch itself had just been turned on and wasn’t warm to the touch. I tried turning off the breaker for a few minutes and then refreshed the parameter and it claimed the overheat was cleared, but the physical buttons and led never came back online.
I’m out of ideas on what might be causing this unless somehow that Broan residential bathroom fan is somehow putting too much of an inductive load on the switch at start-up. That being said, it looks like the broan fans usually do not exceed 4-5amps of inductive load at start-up and are usually at .9amp so it seems like this shouldn’t pose a problem for this switch.
Any ideas or suggestions for what is happening and how/if it can be fixed would be greatly appreciated.
Hi @csd132, this sounds similar to a problem that we saw on the release of the VTM30 (matter on/off) that was resolved by optimizing the shut off timing in the firmware. The same optimization was put into the VZW30 but since the MCU is different maybe there needs to be another adjustment made. We didn’t see it occur in our beta testing, but now that the load types will be more diverse (many more users), it is possible that we might see it. I see that you have a Broan residential bathroom fan, but can you provide the model number?
Thanks, @EricM_Inovelli! I appreciate any insights and advice on this issue. I’m glad to hear you might have some ideas on what is happening. It’s a Broan 688-K. When I was researching it a bit, a lot of the articles said that they are electrically messy and that I might want to look into an RC Snubber but I’m curious on your thoughts if that would help or not to isolate the start-up/shut down induction or not.
As always, I really appreciate everything the Inovelli team is doing and I love your products!
3 of my 5-pack bathroom fan switches died when I tried to set this up this weekend.
Similar pattern as what you mentioned csd132 - it works until the first time you turn it off, then it never works again. Just a normal ‘contractor grade’ fan that was preinstalled when we bought the house year ago - nothing modern/quiet/fancy.
Home Assistant’s chart of the ‘overheat detected’ is always ‘false’ and the ‘internal temperature’ was always 27C for the entire time that the switch was installed. The ‘electric consumption [W]’ was 60 watts for the period that the fan ran.
@DonP , I’ll wait for @EricM_Inovelli to confirm, but the more I have looked into it, I think it’s the inductive load from the brush motor on the fan is frying the MCU. I found the beta firmware and when I attempted to upload it to the switch, it kept failing. This makes me think that the MCU is dead, but the Zwave radio which is a different chip is still working.
I bought some cheap RC snubber circuits on Amazon ( Amazon.com: HiLetgo 5pcs RC Absorption Circuit Module Circuit Anti Interference Protection Electromagnetic Surge Protection for Relay Switch Thyristor : Electronics ) I’m wiring it in parallel with my ceiling fan and then will try another VZW30-SN on/off switch. I’ll post back here tonight if that mitigates the problem or not.
if it works, here is a YouTube video explaining how to open the fan so you can wire in the RC snubber if you want to try it too (https://youtu.be/bz1sDv6uXko?si=E0GDb-05meBeOKAu).
***Update:***
So far, the on/off switch seems to be working. The inductance didn’t fry the switch’s MCU so far with the RC Snubber in the loop and the humidity and temperature sensor are continuing to report values. I’ll keep monitoring it to see if everything remains ok, but it’s now been 2 days with no further issues.
in some of the other bathrooms, I’m going to upgrade to a slightly better fan kit such as the broan BKR60 so that it has lower chances of having issues. I’ll still likely install the RC Snubber circuit in parallel with it anyway just to make sure.
@DonP can you get the manufacturer and model of your fan? Just to confirm, the switch will get stuck when turning off (but the LED bar will stay on), and will not respond to physical button presses? It can still be controlled via Z-Wave though but the LED bar always stays on? Rebooting with the air gap will fix it until the process is done again?
Or is it something similar to this but somewhat different?
I can try to take it out of the ceiling this weekend. I see NuTone on the bezel.
the switches completely die. The second I turn the fan off for the first time, the light bar dies, the switch no longer responds to local or remote control, and the transmitter goes in to a weird state where Home Assistant says it is alive and it updates the “last seen” timer, and the temperature / humidity charts claim they work but they actually are just stuck resending the last value sent before the switch broke.
I’ve disconnected power and flipped the air gap multiple times, it stays dead
@csd132 @DonP this sounds different than what we have seen with other switches. You are saying after the switch enters this state you cannot recover it even after an airgap reboot or a circuit breaker reboot? Could you test with the load disconnected to see if in that state the relay clicks on / off? If it is not recoverable I will PM you because I would like to inspect the state the switch is in.
Correct, the switches are all effectively dead after the first time I turn the fan off.
Home Assistant state:
I have a similar experience to DonP. Removing the load, pulling and reseating the airgap, and resetting the breaker doesn’t change anything. The LED is dead and the relay doesn’t appear to be alive/engaging. Effectively, the Zwave Chip is still on so there is some limited reporting, but using Zwave commands or the physical switch don’t work and firmware updates fail.