Hey All,
Just moved into a new house with a ton of 3-way switches that use dimmers. I’d like to switch these out for zigbee or z-wave, and I’d love for them to dim on both sides, if possible. What are the best, cost effective dimmers to do this?
It seems like Leviton may be a good option, but I’m curious if anyone has experience with them. Thanks!
I think that Zooz handles this pretty well, but don't remember the details.
@hydro311 is a serious Zoozer, he may be able to help.
Unfortunately, I'm not a good multi-way guy ("phrasing!"), since I only have 2 3-ways in my small house and I long ago rewired those to do other more useful stuff.
Zooz has really good research resources available for their products and an excellent customer service team -- their online store is thesmartesthouse.com
Inovelli is another good option to consider, but they are priced closer to Caseta stuff.
If their stuff can meet your needs, I'd say you really can't get better bang for your buck than Zooz.
Thanks...they do have pretty good info on their site.
Tagging @jtp10181 who is a Zooz master, writes Zooz drivers, and also @Sebastien, IIRC he also uses Zooz frequently.
I was going to chime in and say Zooz also... here's a reference that's working great for me-
Zooz ZEN 72 dimmer association group doesn't work with double tap - 
Get Help - Hubitat
requires direct association though so you probably need to be using Z/IP (don't think the direct association has been solved in JS yet)
There is a "hacky" way to do with just two regular smart dimmers. The dimer that is in the box with the load to the light is the actual dimmer controlling the load to the light. Then use two of the wires from the 3-way circuit to send line and neutral to the other box. Do not use the red wire, just wire the black and white directly to line and neutral from the first box, just to get power over to the other box to power the second dimmer. Use a second smart dimmer in the other box connected only to line and neutral to power it. Tuck the red wire away in the box.
Then use the mirror app to mirror the two dimmers together. One has direct control of the light circuit, the other just has digital control through the mirror app, but you will have control from both dimmers if needed.
My three ways are using dimmers with a traveler terminal, and the other side is just an on/off switch that doesn't dim, however, I hardly ever touch the physical switches anyway since everything is automated with scenes and presence detection, so I didn't see a need for multiple physical dimmers that would never be used.
Smart dimmers are definitely the way to go! My go-to for this are Inovelli and Lutron Caseta (with remotes) for dimming.
Caseta is the more expensive option as their pro hub is required, but the work extremely well and the secondary switches use their wireless remotes so no wiring required.
Inovelli has auxiliary switches for dimming, or multiple units can be bound to each other. They are great with smart bulbs as well. They’re available in Zigbee, Z-Wave or Matter protocol. They have long and bright (dimmable) light bars that can be very useful for notifications.
I have a mix and match of Lutron Caseta, Inovelli Zigbee and Inovelli Z-Wave at home.
This in the main location:
This in the remote location:
Zero issues with these anywhere I have them installed. Full dimming functionality from either the main or remote dimmer switch.
I'm stockpiling LevitonZW6HD z wave dimmers and DD00R companion/add-on dimmers for the multi-way dimmers in a new home. Disclaimer: so far, all I've done is bench testing.
I like that only one smart dimmer is required (and will "support" several companion dimmers) so less setup/maintenance required, the separate dimmer bars, the brightness LED's, the smart dimmers and companion dimmers look/operate the same, a single smart dimmer and one or more "dumb" companion switches per multi-way setup result in a reduced number of devices on the z wave mesh, and the z wave 800 chip.
I don't like that it isn't long range, firmware/software lacks some advanced features compared to Zooz and Inovelli, and high price compared to Zooz and Jasco (but companion dimmers vs additional smart dimmers makes the overall price more competitive with Zooz).
I had the same situation with lots of 3-ways and also very old almond colored toggle switches I wanted to replace anyway. For the best cost savings I ended up just doing Zooz dimmers on the box with the line feed, and a new decora dumb switch on the remote box (no dimming). After programming everything with default levels, scenes, etc.... we almost NEVER use the paddles to dim the lights. In fact we hardly ever even touch the wall switches at all. I also got lucky that the feed box was nearly always in a convenient spot, and the remote would be less convenient.
The down side of Zooz is there is no "Companion" switch, but you can just use a second smart switch with associations or rules, by re-wiring the 3 way circuit to send power to the remote box.
I have one or two locations where maybe a second smart switch would be nice to have for button/scene events and maybe dimming but everything else is fine as-is.
Personally I would stay away from the new Leviton devices, they do not have any button events (double tap for example), and very limited settings. The UltraPro are somewhere in the middle, they have some extra features but not nearly as much as you can do with Zooz. The advantage of both of those brands is the companion dimmers.
Put me down as a huge fan of the Lutron Casetas and Picos. I have replaced almost every switch in my house with these (almost 40 of them, not counting the picos). They've been installed since 2018 and I've yet to replace a single pico battery (although I'm expecting them to start dropping like flies any day now, and will just do them all at once. 
) So far, I think I've had to replace just one dimmer, that was flickering. (Not bad for 7+ years.)
I have a 3-gang box containing a Leviton ZW6HD dimmer and two companion dimmers (wired as if it was a 4-way lamp circuit) connected to a lamp with a dimmable LED bulb that I use for bench testing.
To test this, I set the brightness level fairly low, then turned off the light. If I double tap the top of the paddle from any of the dimmers, the bulb turns on at full brightness.
Second test... turned on the light bulb and dimmed it. Double tapped the top of any paddle (while bulb was still on at low level), and it went to full brightness.
These dimmers are not enrolled, so I don't know what HE would have shown when I did this.
Also, I don't think the double tap "action" can be changed to do something other than turn on to full brightness or ramp up to full brightness if already on.
I bought these a few months ago and haven't updated the firmware (don't know if a firmware update is available).
I do agree there are less advanced settings than the Zooz ZEN77's have.
I use Leviton ZW6HD dimmers with DD00R-DLZ add-on dimmers. I have them a couple of them in 3-way configuration. They work quite well. Similar to @user2164's comment I wish they had some of the nicer features of Zooz, but the Leviton are rated for larger loads than Zooz, and at the time I bought the dimmers and switches (I reswitched the entire house at once**), Zooz wasn't producing dark brown paddle covers which was a hard requirement for the house aesthetics (***).
I have some Leviton ZW15S-1RW with DD0SR-DLZ add-ons in 4-way configurations and one 5-way setup. From a wiring perspective, they are identical to the dimmers. Just so you know you can add quite a few companion switches or dimmers to a single light control. But beware, you have to remap your wiring as standard multi-way switching (and dimming) is pass through from power supply in one gang box to load in the final gang box. Using modern digital switching puts the supply and load in one box for the load controlling switch with each companion add-on getting local gang box power for itself and sending signal only over the traveler wire(s).
** 46 switches with 11 add-ons, 7 dimmers with 2 add-ons, and 4 ZW4SF fan controllers
*** Dark brown paddles in metal oil-rubbed bronze plates to complement the ever so light tan interior paint and light stained wood doors.
Yes they internally support double taps but they do not report any button events to the hub so you cannot do anything else with it.
Does HE know when dimmer double taps have occurred? If I double tap the dimmer when the light is off, does HE see this and show the light as on at full brightness on the device page? Same question if I double tap the dimmer while the light is on (at less than full brightness) to ramp it up to full brightness.
I'm trying to understand what the implications are of button events not being reported. Is it that the double tap itself isn't reported, so the result of the double tap can't be changed to do something else, although the results of the double tap are known to HE?
The double tap is probably something the switch is handling at the firmware level and not reporting as anything different to the hub other than switch on to max brightness.
So the hub will presumably get updates on the current state of the dimmer.
It’s unlikely to know you double tapped on the physical paddle to get the dimmer to do that, though.
For a dimmer like the Leviton that does not support button events, the double tap will do the action on the switch (full brightness) and then the level gets reported to the hub.
So you will always get the correct level, you just don’t get a separate event to let you know the button action pressed. For example on some switches you can turn off the full brightness and use the double tap for something else. Or you can program a double tap down which I like to use for a preset dimmed level. Zooz supports up to 5x taps for button events.
If you don’t want to program any extra actions then they are pretty nice dimmers.
Download the Hubitat app
