I purchased 3 Zen77's (700 S2) and believe I may have misunderstood the Zooz website as I interpreted that I only needed neutral for 3 & 4 pole configurations. I am replacing switches which are connected to a single residential light fixture only.
First question is, well the Zen77's work without a neutral?
Second question if the above answer is no, what dimmer switch is recommended without a bridge for an LED bulb single pole fixture?
Thank you in advance!
The Zooz Zen77 requires a neutral. iNovelli Red and Black series dimmers will work without a neutral.
My personal choice would be a Lutron Caseta dimmer, but that requires their bridge.
Thank you aaiyar. Will they also work without a ground?
The ground conductor is used for operator/user safety during a malfunction, as opposed to being required for the normal operation of the device.
Therefore, I would not recommend installing any device without it being grounded.
Ok. I can find something to ground it to. Thank you again!
The inovelli red dimmers can also be installed in a no-neutral config.
You do need to set the mode in the driver settings.
Why do you prefer Lutron? Seems like the more expensive way to go.
Lutron always works. Always.
This, exactly this! Lutron Clear Connect RF devices ‘just work’, always.
Lutron just works. I've been using them for years and worth every penny
I would add that in addition to the wireless side of things, Lutron caseta switches/dimmers work quite well without a neutral when it comes to controlling lighting loads too (not a given with low wattage LED bulbs).
I have two of the Inovelli Blacks and I just installed a Red today, all with no Neutral. If it is a single light fixture with an LED bulb you will also need what Inovelli calls a Bypass, it is basically a resistive load. I have only had to use the bypass on one of the blacks as it was in a closet with a single LED bulb. The other both had multiple bulbs and no bypass was required.
I had purchased some cheap dimming LEDs to use with the one a Installed today, thinking it would not be that critical since it was a fixture with 4 bulbs. However, the cheap LEDs I bought flickered very badly. Luckily I had another dimmer switch, a GE JASCO, that had a Neutral and these new bulbs worked well with that switch. The LEDs in that fixture were a better quality and they worked well with the Inovelli.
Ok, so no problems with Lutron and a 2 bulb led light fixture? Can the Lutron get below the 10% minimum that many dimmers have issues with?
Also, it looks like I would need the 2-Pack In-Wall Smart Dimmer Switch Kit but this Congress with the 2 pico remotes. I don't see a need for them, so would I be better off buying a different kit or all parts separately?
I have older Philips slim-style dimmable 8W LEDs, and my Caseta dimmers seem to take them down to 2-5% without any issues. There are typically 2 or 3 of these LEDs per fixture. I've used them this way since 2014.
However, depending on the quality (and wattage) of the LED bulbs, you may have to install something called a "minimum load capacitor" or MLC at the fixture. This is easy to install, inexpensive, and the part number is LUT-MLC. Here's the Amazon link:
Probably not possible to extrapolate to your exact setup. As @aaiyar mentioned it depends on the total wattage of your lighting load, but it also depends on how well the specific bulbs play nicely with dimmer technology that was designed for incandescent loads.
Lutron does maintain a list of bulbs and other lighting loads that they consider to be compatible with their various product lines, including Caseta. Should be available on their website.
As long as you are able to get your hands on a Caseta Pro bridge, I wouldn’t sweat the other details. You’ll find a use for Picos if they come with the bridge in a kit.
The Pro bridge is needed to work with Hubitat. The non-pro bridge doesn’t have a Telnet interface. The Lutron model # you’d be looking for is L-BDG-PRO2.
Thanks guys. I will look further into the Ivonelli red's and Lutron system to see which is the best match for me. The fixtures I need these for all have 3 and 4 led bulbs, so hopefully will be able to get away without the MLC's.
The minimum and maximum dimmable values can be set on both the Inovelli Red and Lutron Casseta dimmers. So if you need to not go lower than 10% in your setup, you can configure that.
Note that for Lutron, it cannot to my knowledge be done via the app. It requires a sequence of button presses.
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