I'm having some frustrations with an Inovelli Red Series Dimmer. I believe I have 3rd Gen Series Red Dimmer as it was purchased in 2022.
What's frustrating is that I had this all set up with no problems with my old hub. I now have a C-8 Pro and trying to get this to work again.
I've tried to set up Scenes through the Button Controllers App but the mapping doesn't seem to be matching up with what I expect. I'm trying to set a physiucal "double tap up" as a scene. When I map it that way in Hubitat as the "2 Pushed" button. It doesn't function as expected. If I tap down twice though, the scene triggers. I've tried to mess around with different buttons but can't figure out what is wrong.
The weird thing is that I only have 3 buttons available to set up in the Button Controllers App, each with the options Push, Held, Double Tapped, and release. I'm expecting to see 14 buttons available with "pushed" and "held" options as that's what the Inovelli button map shows I should have as options.
Maybe I need a firmware update? Maybe I somehow have the wrong driver set up? I have it running as "Inovelli Z Wave Red Series Dimmer".
What driver are you using for the device? I'm guessing it's not their custom driver, which you'd need to install (they have more specific instructions on their site) and switch to if you want things to work as they document.
I doubt it then, but the only way to know for sure is to look at what model number you have. You probably have the gen 2, model LZW31-SN.
It’s possible I have a Gen 2. I don’t remember, so now I gotta open up that switch and look for the model number I guess.
Regardless, there was only one driver available in the list in Hubitat that I remember seeing. So you are probably correct. I probably need to use one of their custom drivers.
I had all kinds of weird things with these at my last house with the old hub. They were working great for a long time and then they started to bog down the hub. I ended up having to update the firmware on all of the Inovelli devices I own and that fixed all of the issues.
As powerful and awesome as these devices are, they seem to have a bunch of issues that you have to stay on top of. I’m the type that sets my hub and devices up and leaves it alone. I’m not trying to tinker all of the time. So, it becomes frustrating. I also forget how everything works sometimes and I have to reeducate myself.
I also have a couple Inovelli bulbs but one stopped working when we moved. I wrapped the bulbs well for the move and made sure to move that stuff by hand myself. But it’s not even lighting up anymore. It’s a shame because those are nice bulbs! The color is great! But they were expensive to die after only a couple of years. All of my other devices survived the move no problem. Including my cheap smart bulbs. So I guess I’ll buy more cheap bulbs.
I did my whole house with Inovelli 2nd gen red dimmers, the LZW31-SN (naming certainly could have been better).
I also think you may well have the wrong driver as the 2 pushed you mentioned should be a double tap up as you expected. As to having 14 buttons it took me a while to wrap my head around the naming convention. (I’m not sure if this is due to Inovelli, Hubitat or how the industry standard was created). But in any event the “button” number (except for 7, which is the little config/favorite button) equals the number of taps. It seems you get this as you expected a 2 push to be a double tap up.
Also “pushed” is what a conventional switch would call “on” (pushing the top part of the big/main button) and “held” is what a conventional switch would call “off” (pushing the bottom part of the big/main button).
For example a 1 push would turn on the light and a 1 held would turn it off. A 2 push is double tapping the “on” (top) button and a 2 held would be double tapping the “off” (bottom) button, again as you said above. So I’m not sure why you are expecting 14 buttons. I know the 3rd gen added a bunch of features, and this may be why you are getting weird results if you have the 2nd gen. By any chance did you keep the pamphlet that came with each one? It has the model number on it, so you may not have to unscrew it to see which one you have.
My red dimmers “only” support up to 6 taps of either the “on” or “off” of the main button.
I had lots of issues with my C-7 and some of the Inovellis for the first year or so. Due to their size and me living in a condo with metal boxes I had an electrician install them as I couldn’t get 2 in a 2 gang box myself. That also meant the mesh wasn’t built in a nice orderly fashion from nearest to the hub outwards. Now a few years later and a C-8 I almost never have any issues with them.
When I still had my C-7 I couldn’t get one of the last firmware updates to install and gave up after only getting one or two of them to accomplish it. But, like I said, it’s been very reliable now. Once in a very great while one in particular goes off but I found air-gapping it (pulling out the little tab on the bottom left) for about a minute, and then waiting about a minute after pushing it back in fixes it.
Sorry to have gone on so long, but I understand the frustration but also wanted to say I think my Inovellis are great in the long one.
Ask others here first before trying it, but if you don’t have the manual, maybe you can just try the 2nd gen drivers and see if that solves the issue.
You are probably right with the 2nd generation drivers.
I think I have another Red dimmer in a box still. And I think it’s the same. I’ll check the model number on that one. I also have a couple of the on/ off switches.
I also had a hell of a time updating the firmware on a couple of the switches. I had to do it multiple times and it took hours! Other ones took a few minutes. Very odd. I’m sure that’s because of the mesh. I had to contact Inovelli to help me with it because I thought I bricked the things. They just weren’t updating.
Hope it is just picking the right driver. I actually quit trying to update the firmware on my 15-20 red dimmers when I got one to take the first of the 2 part firmware update. I was worried having one with 2 different generations of firmware would be a problem, but it hasn’t been. (Knock on wood). Every now and again I’m tempted to try to update to the latest (and I believe last) firmware update Inovelli has for it, but as I don’t think it added any new features and everything is working I force myself to leave well enough alone. (Which anyone tinkering in home automation knows is a lot easier said than done).
Good luck. I know that programming each config/favorite button to the lowest value whatever it is controlling will turn on to has gotten great WAF as we aren’t blinded first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night when we need a little light, say in the kitchen. Having a dedicated button for this is great so no one has to remember any tap sequence. All-in-all I think the Inovellis have the most features of any smart switch out there.
So Update... I definitely have the 2nd Gen Dimmers (LZW31-SN) I changed the driver to the one @bertabcd1234 linked me to.
I now have the 14 buttons with push, held, released options for each 14 buttons, which is surprising being that I expected 7 buttons being that it's a 2nd gen dimmer. So far though everything is functioning as expected when in the Buttons Controller App.
Hopefully this solves all of my issues, but I'm a bit nervous that something is still off since I expected the 7 button option.
Thanks everyone. I'll report back if there are any new issues.
From a quick look at their driver code, a "Save" on the "Preferences" tab or a "Configure" on the "Commands" tab should set the number of buttons to 8, which is what they document (their events are a bit odd, but it is what it is...). If that's what you see on the device detail page, it's possible Button Controller or whatever app you're using already read that data, and there might be something you can do to make it re-read. But it won't hurt anything as long as you have the options you need (and, of course, don't expect anything you configure that doesn't actually exist on the device to work).
Hope the refresh Bert referred to above does it. But just FYI the “Type” (which I believe is Hubitat speak for “driver”) is: Inovelli Dimmer Red Series LZW31-SN
