Lights turning on by themselves with Inovelli Red dimmer

Hello Hubitat users!

I'm new to Hubitat and home automation in general. My goal is to have my bathroom light wall switch turn the lights on to 30% brightness from about 8pm to 8am, and at full brightness outside that time block.

After some reading, I concluded that a smart dimmer was the preferable and less expensive route compared to smart bulbs, so I now have an Inovelli LZW31-SN which I'm using with 'dumb' Feit and Cree LED bulbs. No neutral, no Aeotec resistor, and all 4 bulbs consume about 47 watts at full brightness.

The brightness automation I'm kinda getting down, but my biggest problem right now is that some of the bulbs turn on by themselves. There are 3 60W Feit bulbs in a fixture over the mirror, and one Cree 100W bulb in the exhaust vent. They all dim fine, no buzzing or flickering, but the right and left bulbs in the fixture turn on about 5 minutes after the switch shuts everything off (center bulb stays off). They're faint though, something like 10% brightness I'm guessing.

I've excluded, removed, and factory reset the switch several times now with no different result, and it's always the same two bulbs. Even with the dimmer in totally factory default state, not paired to the HE, no luck.

Anyone have any ideas of what's going on here?

Turn the lights on, then pull out the AirGap switch on the bottom edge of the switch.

What I'm thinking is that without a neutral, the capacitance is holding some of the lights on.

If it does it with the Airgap too, then yep, you'll need to bleed off that voltage.. a resistor is in your future (or wiring in a neutral.)

1 Like

If this is a no neutral situation.. You may need a bypass..

https://inovelli.com/wp-content/uploads/LZW31-SN/Wiring-Guide-Dimmers.pdf

2 Likes

I've had this conversation with @anon89238910 and more times than not, you'll need a resistor. When I inquired about them he said don't wonder about it. Buy one.

[EDIT]
If no neutral then you'll more likely need one.

1 Like

They recommend and sell this one:

3 Likes

@csteele The lights stay off when the switch is air gapped.

@bcopeland Ah I was thinking I didn't need the bypass since I had more than a 25W load. I'll order one of those and hopefully it's the cure.

1 Like

TBH .. Non-neutral is hard.. It's not quite so cut and dry.. If you go non-neutral.. I would always add this..

2 Likes

Ahhh.. so it's capacitors in the switch, vs the capacitors in the individual bulbs. Nice to know factoid. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Just ordered an Aeotec bypass. I'll report back after it's installed.

Thank you.

3 Likes

You should be good after that.. Just follow the wiring instructions provided by Inovelli

2 Likes

Make sure the LED bulbs are leading edge also. We don't support TRIAC.... yet

The Aeotec bypass took a while to arrive but finally received and installed it. This fixes the issue. I'm going to replace the three non-Cree bulbs with Cree bulbs because the center bulb in the 3 light fixture does faintly flicker at any dimming level.

I think this is more a reflection of the junky light fixture than the bulbs currently, but we'll see. Regardless, the Inovelli is operating as expected now. Thank you everyone who responded.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.