Sometime soon, we (electrician and me) will be trimming out the electrical in a new home. There will be several dozen z-wave dimmers. Most of them will be Zooz 800 LR dimmers. The exceptions will be the 3- and 4-way dimmers that will probably be Leviton ZW6HD dimmers (which aren't LR) coupled with Leviton DD00R companion dimmers.
I will buy a new C8-Pro (maybe two) for the new house and use my current C7 has a test hub. I won't be re-using any of the z-wave devices in my current house in the new house, at least not initially.
Are there any downsides to pairing the dimmers/switches with the new C8 ahead of time to make it a little easier on trim out day? I won't be setting up any rules, dashboards, etc. ahead of time.
I don't want to install the C8 at the new home until we've moved in. After the z-wave dimmers have been installed, will they all work like normal (on/off/level/3-way from the dimmer paddle) even if they have been paired but the C8 isn't there?
Once the C8 is installed at the house, will the non-LR dimmers create a "good" mesh?
If you are pairing them LR, you won't save all that much time. You need to pair them using the QR code. You can scan the code and do the minimal amount of data entry (naming the device) in about 45 seconds while the electrician is installing them, you will be waiting on them to finish. I recently did several that way, and it didn't take much time at all.
I'm loving your LR project! Wish I was there as well!
I would say there would be no downside to pairing all the LR devices, anyway, since they all will talk directly to the hub.
I'm not so sure about the Levitons. Would they get confused, for a little while anyway? They'd all have to get along by themselves anyway since they won't have anyone else to talk to, except each other.
Who cares? The mesh is dead. It'd be better if they talked to the hub direct anyway, if they can. If they can't, though...could always deploy an old non lr z-wave plug.
If you have not already purchased your Z-wave dimmers, I would suggest you consider Lutron Caseta dimmers, switches and Pico remotes. I have replaced nearly all of the dumb switches in my home with these devices. They have proven to be extremely reliable. I love that configuring 2-way, 3-way and 4-way situations can be done using a single dimmer and switch and accompanying Pico remotes. It is not even necessary to have wiring run to switch boxes for the remotes to function, although electrical code might require you have the wired boxes in place even if the wiring is unused.
In my dining room, the chandelier was originally wired for two-way control, but I wanted a third controller. I just mounted a Pico remote on the wall in that third location, no wiring required.
My thought was more of a logistical one. If you pair them all ahead of time, you need to label them all so they all get installed in the right spot. If you wait till their installed, the installer can just "grab another switch out of the box" without worrying about which one goes where.
Just my 2 cents.
I plan on labeling all the dimmers when pairing them from the comfort of my workbench.
I'm not a fan of the Caseta/Pico device physical design.
For 3- and 4-ways dimmers, I'm strongly leaning towards the dimmers that have companion dimmers (Leviton, Jasco, Inovelli, etc.) so that dimming can be done at all locations. Of those, I mostly like the Leviton dimmer because it has a separate dimmer bar and indicator LED's that show the brightness level. The one thing I don't know if the Leviton dimmer supports is double-tap to set the light to full brightness or a pre-set minimum brightness. It's also a disappointment that they don't support LR, even though they are z-wave 800 dimmers.
You can also use two Zooz switches in a 3-way setup, but the slave switches would just be wired hot with no load and you link to the main with associations or rules. Although there have been some reports of the associations being very slow recently (specifically in this setup with Zooz), I have not had time to test it myself though.
I have a sample ZW6HD and developed a driver that works for it. It does have built in douple tap for full brightness. I do not think you can configure it to be anything else like you can with Zooz.
Associating dimmers is so cool! (sheesh I sound like a geek)… but watching how smoothly/in sync the slave dimmer’s indicator leds illuminate, it almost looks like the two dimmers are hardwired together. However, I had issues with the slave device’s status not updating on HE - and since HE doesn’t poll devices, I had to set up rules to refresh the slave device when the master device is released. Have you experienced this and/or found a better way to handle this?
I think that's going to be dependent on the device and if it sends reports back to the hub or not. So what device exactly? Also, why does it matter what the state of the slave device is since its only purpose is to act a remote for the master device.
I had (2) HS-WX300’s with no load acting as masters to each other and a HS-WD100 with load. I could control the WD100 smoothly from either of the WX300’s, but the WD100 would not report its status back to the hub when controlled through the association. When controlled locally at the WD100, it reported back just fine. So, I wrote a rule that upon release of either WX, wait a second and then refresh the WD status.
I also had the reverse associations in place so that when the WD was controlled locally, the two WX300’s would show the change in state/dim level. Perhaps this reverse association was the problem. EDIT - now that I think about it, I don’t think I was able to do this reverse association - I had to update the WX300 status through another rule - the WD100 didn’t support that type of association IIRC.
In either case, I scrapped those associations because I also wanted to use the WX300s’ LED’s for status reporting for other things, and the associations kept messing with that.
My original plan was to use ZEN77 dimmers everywhere, including multi-way dimmers. However, I favor the implementation of the dimmer/companion over associations and/or multiple smart dimmers on a multi-way light circuit. I just hope they are reliable.
Also, I (i.e., my wife) like the ZW6HD/companions (LED indicators, separate level control) over the others.
I will still be using a lot of ZEN77's, ZEN34's, and ZEN54's where multi-way switches are not necessary.
