I sent this to The Smartest House Support, but thought I'd check this group as well. I purchased the following dimmer switches a few months ago and finally getting around to having the electrician install them:
Zooz 800 Series Z-Wave Long Range S2 Dimmer Switch ZEN77 800LR
Zooz 800 Series Z-Wave Long Range Dimmer ZEN72 800LR
I am having an issue with our LED light bulbs flickering at 70% or lower. The lower the percentage, the more the frequent the flickering becomes. However, incandescent light bulbs work fine. We tried adding a dummy load resistor such as this: Aeotec Bypass but, it caused the lights to do a bright burst intermittently. For reference, these were the lightbulbs we purchased. There was no info whether these are MOSFET or TRIAC:
Does anyone have any suggestions for LED light bulbs that do not have this issue with the Zooz Dimmer Switches I purchased? I believe they are all TRIAC. We need the following bases, shapes, and temperatures (ideally, at 90+ CRI):
E12 base, B10/B11 shape, 2700K
E26 base, T10 shape, 3000-3500K
E26 base, A19, 2700K
E26 base, A19, 3000-3500K
Also, does anyone know why the adding the dummy load resistor causes intermittent bright bursts?
Flickering lights? It could indicate a driver incompatibility between the bulb and dimmer.
For the ZEN77 VER 3.0, we have updated to TRIAC as the executive element, which is a leading-edge driver. If your bulb uses MOSFET (trailing-edge) this can cause flickering. You'll want to ensure your lights use the same dimming element as the dimmer to ensure compatibility.
(Earlier versions of the ZEN77, VER 1.0 & 2.0, used MOSFET, a trailing edge driver).
Do you have a suggestion on the load resistor? Just got this one: https://a.co/d/h6PHeJM
If I did this, my husband would think I'd end up burning the house or something. He got electrocuted as a kid so he's afraid of electricity and is fearful of it especially when I do it lol.
But, anyway... Our current solution is just to say screw it to LED light bulbs and use incandescent, which I know is waste of energy & $$$ but someone really likes their low dimming at night lol
Have you tried a standard Jasco dimmer like the Ultra Pro linked below? I had to switch a few lights from these TO the Zooz because I needed TRIAC and these are MOSFET
I have not but at this point, I think I've spent ~$1000 on the Zooz switches and replacing all the switches + the electrician costs is probably not an option. Changing the lightbulbs would be the more practical solution.
Ah, yeah, totally. Didn’t realize you had so many. I’m putting in some more Zooz dimmers, so I’ll report back on my findings for bulbs. Note that my TRIAC power supply came from superbrightleds.com. It was a separate power supply for string lights, but perhaps they have TRIAC compatible bulbs that will work for you.
I actually reached out to the manufacturers of those 3 LED bulbs I bought and they’ve responded surprisingly pretty quickly and they are meant to work with TRIAC dimmers so now I really don’t know what’s going on lol.
The dimming element on the Zooz dimmer & bulbs are the same so those should be compatible. If it was a minimum load issue, I would have thought the Bypass load resistor would work, but apparently according to the electrician that caused other issues and make the light intermittently glow brighter lol which I have NEVER heard of happening so I wonder if he didn’t hook it up right…
Now, I’m leaning towards crappy old wiring in the house (it was built in 1989) but idk. Really grasping at straws lol.
Do you have multiple bulbs on one of the dimmers? If so, you could throw in 1 incandescent and see if that solves the issue… then that would seem to indicate it’s a low-load issue.
I do and switching them all to 25W incandescent lightbulbs does make them work, which is why I thought it was the load thing. I didn’t try just changing a few though.
This is well known issues with LED Bulbs and Dimmers. The fix is either to use a Bypass (there are few different available, relatively cheap solution with near 100% success guaranteed ) or play with Dimmer-Bulb combination (this could be an expensive and time consuming effort with no guarantee for the success).
Unlike LED Bubs incandescent bulbs are not sensitive to the quality of the provided power and always will work with any kind of dimmers. This is no magic here, it is very simple physics.,
I would try a couple high quality LED bulbs from a hardware store. Something like Phillips or Cree. I have even used quite a few cheaper Sylvania bulbs with good luck. Even the Fiet bulbs that Zooz says might flicker work pretty good. I get occasional flickers on the Fiet bulbs but nothing constant.
I had one fixture with Edison style bulbs (the shape of the bulb) and I bought some LEDs for it from Menards, but those ended up being poor quality and started flickering. I put the Incandescent ones back in the chandelier for now until I can find some better bulbs with that same look. Since they are fully exposed inside glass you need the correct looking bulbs or it ruins the effect.
Superbrightleds.com does have standard dimmable bulbs that are listed as TRIAC compatible. Given my success with their TRIAC dimmables and Zooz, you might give these a try. Do first check to make sure that your ZEN77/ZEN72 are the newer TRIAC type.
Philips is always my first choice (reliable quality), but that "warm glow" feature they now have on many of their LEDS isn't something I love.
Feit used to be total junk, but I got one of their white-filament designer series bulbs for our kitchen sink pendant, and it's awesome -- it looks great (on and off!), and dims like a champ (no flickering at any level). They seemed to have upped their game lately.
That single bulb fixture is on a Caseta ELV dimmer (so that may be a differentiator), and although performance was fine w/out it, I put a bypass in that fixture for peace-of-mind and better future-proofing.
So, the flickering is definitely not constant so I don't know if occasional flickers is just normal behavior that I'm being picky about. The frequency of the flicker gets worse at like 10%, but my husband likes to lower it pretty low to simulate his obsession with candles LOL. I will try with the higher end Phillips bulbs to see if it makes a difference. But, whew $6 per bulb lol.
Oh! In case anyone is wondering, these are some of the brands that The Smartest House support said worked well for a lot of their customers:
Among the brands we know work well for our customers are Philips, Ecosmart, Sunco, Amazon, and GE
Although there is no official list that they have because components change all the time. I do know the Sunco & Amazon only have 80+ CRI, so it looks like Philips may be my best bet. Where do you all usually catch sales for your LED light bulbs? I'm assuming there may be quite a few websites that have Memorial Day sales.
It looks like the Bypass was connected across the Dimmer which is absolutely wrong.
The Bypass must be connected across the light. So far this always was a very reliable fix for a flickered LED lights.
