I need help with switches / dimmers / my brain

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1

I have sengled RGB smart bulbs in the entire house.
I love them. I use primarily voice control through Alexa to turn things off and on.

My wife doesn't like Alexa. Also when the internet goes down, that's not an option.

I bought two smart switch/dimmers to try out and see how I like them, and now i think I made a mistake.

I tried
UltraPro Z-Wave Smart Rocker Light Dimmer and
inovelli 2-1 Smart Switch (On/Off or Dimmer) - Blue Series.

Well, It's very clear that when the switch is pressed, it's turning power on and off. Also when it tries to dim, it's lowering the voltage to the smart bulb.

It's acting like a dumb switch taking commands from a smart hub, if that makes sense.

I guess what I really need is a z wave or zigbee button controller instead of a smart switch. Unless there is a way to program it in Hubitat to act as such. Because when I try and dim the light it freaks out, because the dimming commands should be sent via the hub. I cannot figure out how to do that.

Am I missing something? Should I just bite the bullet and go looking for a decent button controller instead? I HATE having to replace batteries in things, is there a button controller which can take the place of a switch?

Thanks in advance.

2

Look up the manually for this switch as it has a smart bulb mode that disables the internal relay and allows you to control smart bulbs from the switch without cutting the power.

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As JB10 says, the Inovelliis' Reds and Blues have smart bulb mode (works great - I use it with one of my Blues, and take it one step further by direct-binding the Blue to its Zigbee light group load).

As another option, Zooz'z switches and dimmers also have smart bulb mode.

The UltraPro does not have smart bulb mode.

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4

There's also a scene controller that might work for your wife.

5

I have both Alexa and Google. Wife prefers Google only because I have a male voice set up for her account. She didn’t like talking to a female assistant but a male is ok. :man_shrugging:

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Awesome. I got it installed, and got it into smart bulb mode. Now if I can figure out how to get it to dim the light when i'm holding the down paddle, that would be great, but man the setup for that is FUNKY.

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