Inovelli z-wave association tool troubleshooting

I just added an Inovelli dimmer and RGB bulb, and installed their associations tool. I've attempted to associate the two about 6 times now (groups 2 and 4), and have yet to get them to play nice .. or at all.

Is there a trick to activating the association? I can't find any more information about it...

Did you disable the switch relay? You have to be using the Inovelli driver to have that option, I believe.

Thanks for the reply .. I'm not sure if that was the case or not, but you sent me down the right path.

The recent Hubitat update that included specific Inovelli drivers, although specific, are apparently watered down versions of the handlers available from Inovelli. The included handlers don't provide the option to disable the local relay/contol, among many other things. I replaced the driver with Inovelli's, flipped the "disable local control" preference and recreated the association .. it worked immediately. I then went back in and reversed the local control option back to its original position and the association continues to work ... so I'm not sure it needed to be off to create the association, or if it was just the driver change that fixed it.

???, this option is included in the Inovelli Z-Wave Smart Scene Switch S2 driver for the LZW30 S2 Red Switch, Specifically what device driver is missing this option?

I was using the Inovelli Smart Scene Dimmer handler for a LZW31-SN Dimmer, perhaps that was the wrong choice. But I don't recall seeing an option to disable the local relay, or local control that was mentioned above.

On this topic though, I have the association working and it works well .. however, If I turn the switch on via the habitat dashboard, the associated device doesn't respond. Is this an expected limitation of z-wave associations?, or is there another step I need to take for that work?

And now you just hit on the main reason Hubitat doesn't support associations. Inconsistent operation between hub initiated and physical operation. On some (but not all) devices. The problem is it is device dependent.

Inconsistent behavior = customer confusion and support tickets.

Specific to the inovelli devices, though, I don't know the actual answer.

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I was using mirror previously, but the lack of real-time dimming was annoying with a standard GE z-wave dimmer. I bought the Inovelli specifically because the LED bar would provide a visual indicator of the dimming level .. the association with real-time response was just a super cool bonus.

I'm struggling with a few other challenges (related to the RGB bulb), so I may need revert to mirror, or rule machine handling anyway,

Along with any inconsistencies, is that you also loose control of the individual pieces. With an association, you to some degree end up with one device, and where one goes the other must follow,

Interesting … I'm not seeing a

scenario

If I control the bulb directly via the dashboard, or Alexa .. the switch does nothing. If I control the switch via the same, the bulb does nothing. The only following the occurs is if I physically use the switch, the bulb goes with it as expected. Other than that, they seem to be pretty independent.

I even tried a bi-directional set of associations to try and keep the physical switch in sync with the bulb, but that didn't seem to work either.

See Jasons response. I can't comment on what you have done or how Inovlelli implements associations, just that in general, associations reduce the control of your devices. Associations are a holdover from the pre-hub days where there weren't things like Rule Machine or hubs. There may be odd situations where an association is the only solution, but in most cases a good rule will take care of what you need and keep things flexible.
Since inovelli's tool is specific to Inovelli devices and as I understand, only works with their devices and drivers, you might need to check with their community, if you can't find another way to accomplish what you need.

My experience is that associations will not work when you control the switch itself from Hubitat.

I have three bulbs associated to a switch. I turned off the relay so the switch's only function is to send commands and scene commands. This makes the bulbs light up nice and fast when I hit the switch.

If I want to control the bulbs programmatically, I control a Group that contains all the bulbs (but not the switch). This does everything correctly except the switch LED doesn't light up when the bulbs are on because I haven't written a rule for it.

I've tried using mirror in this scenario, but doing a bi-directional mirror felt like a bad idea, and I imagined a feedback loop … so I abandoned it.

My scenario for this is pretty limited … I have one switch that is running loadless, and one bulb .. thats the whole solution. The problem is that if I use Alexa, or the dashboard to turn the light on … neither the mirror, or an association updates the switch state. The big inconvenience here, is that when you leave the room, the switch is already off; so you need to turn it on first in order to then turn it off (and the light off with it).

Yep, I would never touch the switch state-- disable the relay and leave it permanently off-- and then expose the bulb directly to Alexa and control that. The switch is just a way to send signals and should be hidden from Alexa.

Not interested in exposing the switch, but I am interested in using it like a switch … so I need to synchronize it somehow. Otherwise, On with Alexa and Off with the switch when you walk out of the room doesn't work.

I use Google Home rather than Alexa, but can't you expose the bulb itself instead of the switch? If not, can you expose a Group that contains the single bulb? Groups act like dimmer switches.

A directly associated switch should always work because it's sending the raw commands to the bulb. If the problem is that Alexa doesn't think the bulb is on when you turn it on from the switch, the solution is to show the bulb state to Alexa rather than the switch state, either directly or via a Group.

The directly associated dimmer stays in an Off/0% state when the bulb is activated via another means .. then when you press Off on the dimmer, it doesn't broadcast any changes because it thinks nothing needs too … its already off.

If you disable the relay the switch always sends on/off commands.

The LZW31-SN dimmer doesn't have the ability to disable the relay (not that jumps out at me anyway), but it does have the option to disable local control. However, "Off" always seems to be "Off" .. and that may just be the firmware design; so there is no "Off" sent, if the switch is already off.

That said, I considered writing something to accomplish this, and then I stumbled on one that seemed perfect and works exactly as I'm after (less the real-time dimming), but for some reason it is really hard to search out … so for anyone else that gets to the end of this thread, I've abandoned z-wave associations and my solution at this point is using the Switch bindings app by @jwetzel1492