Been migrating my automation from Vera to Hubitat. Very happy. I’ve noticed something in observing logs trying to get my motion controlled lights working. First capture/restore does not seem to work as one would expect. Capture what, when, how long to wait…. Restore is unobservable. I wish there was a way to see what was captured and what is restored. I gave up using it and then just set my dimmers (only 6 total) based on global variables set based on modes.
Why do the logs report setting of dimmers inaccurately? Everything works correctly, but the logs do not reflect what actually happens. BTW, these are all zwave and not zwave+ necessarily.
Hubitat doesn’t poll Zwave devices by default. It has to be explicitly enabled using the Zwave Poller built-in app. I suspect the “discrepancy” you’ve experienced with these Zwave devices will disappear once you enable polling.
With that said, the preferred route for a superior automation experience is to replace 100 and 300 series zwave devices with modern equivalents.
Turned on polling with the zwave poller app. No change in logs. Interesting thing is the devices all reflect the correct current settings. Oh well. Out of the 6 dimmers, 4 are apparently compatible with the poller app. Just ordered 4 zen77 dimmers for replacements. Thanks for the feedback.
Seems the poller causes more problems than helps. While I didn’t try to change things in my rules, the poller caused lights to not activate properly and seemed to introduce random delays. After turning off polling, the anomalies have stopped. on the zwave poller.
Also, not sure what you are trying to do exactly, but if you are trying to set different levels by mode/time of day I would suggest checking out Room Lighting. I use it in my kitchen for 4 different preset levels based on the mode and it works great.
Thanks for the feedback. I am fairly basic on dimmer functionality, but I’ll check out the driver.
As for Room Lighting, I gave it a try and again I think my old GE/Jasco dimmers are the source of most of the issues I have with capture/restore and polling. I suspect Room Lighting had the same issues my own programming had. I’ve got things working exactly how I want currently using hub variable dimmer settings based on modes and have zero issues except when I turned on the poller. Once I get all the dimmers up to date, I will go back and give everything another go and report back.
Damn! Should have researched more. I have to rewire all my dimmers to accommodate the Zen77. Sure wish they had been around way back when I rewired to accommodate the Jasco/GE dimmers with the low voltage traveler. Ugh. Blew up two Zen77’s already trying to reconfigure everything. Oh well. Expensive learning experience.
Seems to be working as expected now that all 3 dimmers are these Zen77. That is after I freakin blew up a couple and got replacements. Someone told me a long time ago to shut off the power when changing these things. I’m learning….
Although I will say these dimmers are in a group called Kitchen Lights. Using the group to capture/restore does not seem to work versus capturing the individual devices. Is that a thing?
If you capture the group it would just capture the settings of that group device. I don't think the level on the group actually updates if the members are changed manually or outside of the group. So yeah I imagine it would work better using the actual devices for that.
So here’s a head scratcher. I’ve successfully (didn’t blow up) three Zen77’s in the kitchen. One of them will not reliably turn on (mostly never as far as I can tell) turn on when setting the dim level to 99. If the dim level is 99, turning it on and off has no visible effect even though the device status reflects the current state. If I set the level to 98, it appears to function normally. Max brightness is set to 99. This happens with the built-in driver or the Zen Advanced Dimmer driver I’ve installed. The other two work normally when dim level is set to 99. I’m a bit frustrated with this.
Using the device page…
Doing this…
dim level set to 99 -> turn on/off = light stays off
While doing this…
Dim level set to 98 -> turn on/off = light turns on/off
What firmware is your device (at bottom of device page). Are all 3 the same firmware?
I would switch to my driver, get your settings how you want it. Then run Configure.
For any new-ish ZEN77 my brightness correction feature should be hidden because Zooz baked it into the firmware, so that should not be in play.
Level 99 should be automatically converting to 100 on my driver, I do this so on dashboards or external apps it shows as being fully on. So really, it should not be possible to even see level 99 in the attributes, it would always be shown as 100.
Anyway... after running the configure with my driver turn on debug logging. Replicate the issue and post a screenshot of the logs. Also would like to see a screenshot of the current states afterwards.
May not be a bad idea to post a screenshot of your settings also.
All 3 devices running firmware 4.30. Zooz Dimmer 2.02 Status shows the level to be 100 when I set the level to 99. All good so far. I’ll run configure, turn on debugging and post shots in a sec
Then I turned the light off from the device page. Light turned off and status reflected such. Then turned the light to On, light did not turn on and here is a shot of the status page after
During this, the light did not turn on although the log says it did. That is the issue. If I set the dim level to 98, two bulbs turn on. Setting it to 97, all three bulbs in the fixture turn on. Hmmmm. This is really strange. Could it be an electrical issue?
The state is showing on at the end where you said the light did not turn on. So the ZEN77 is reporting back to the hub that it is on. Debug logs should show the same thing.
Are you sure it is not something with the fixture? Do you have one of those "hot sticks" or a meter you could check for voltage at the fixture?
Have you tried doing the same thing but with the paddle on the device? Same results?
Like I said, setting dimming level to 97 everything works. That, to me, eliminates the fixture and bulbs. I guess I need to troubleshoot the wiring at the dimmer. I’m confident in the wiring to from the fixture. This has to be some “sneak path” issue or other phenomenon with the wiring to the dimmer itself. Could a bad neutral connection cause such strange things? The box has like 10 neutrals coming into it.
I agree with you on your analysis. Everything from the HE perspective looks right. Just can’t figure what would cause such a strange thing to happen.
on the zwave poller.
