New Device and the "configure" button

I'm a bit confused about the correct steps once a device is added. I've read that once you select the driver you should click the configure button and save, but this is causing issues for me.

Example adding a new Fibaro Dimmer 2 to my system:

1 - I exclude and factory reset the device to start before inclusion
2 - This causes the Fibaro Dimmer 2 to perform a calibration to match the connected load for Dimming type.
3 - I add the device to HE and it is recognised as Fibaro Dimmer. However I want to use the community driver for Fibaro Dimmer 2 so I change this in device type and save.
4 - Once I've clicked refresh I can see from the State Variables section, the settings that have been read from the Fibaro Module. Min brightness = 1, Max brightness = 70.

The issue is that the device has set itself up correctly and when I click configure, those values are immediately overwritten by all of the default values from the driver preferences. At this point the lights start flickering, switching them on with a double click causes a surge (as it's picked level 99) and the lights are unusable until I open up the switch box and use the device button to calibrate it again.

What are the correct steps to take to avoid these sort of issues? I can only think that once I've refreshed the device, I need to take note of all of the State Variables and copy them all into the preference panes so that the driver settings match the device current settings BEFORE daring to click configure.

Why? When there’s a built-in driver?

I don’t have any of these dimmers, but here are a few suggestions.

  1. Reach out to the community driver creator and ask for help. You can do that here. Just include a call out to them, so it will alert them to it. You can do that by typing their community name prefixed with @.

  2. Use the default driver, if it didn’t change the dimmer’s min/max settings. It may not get you all you want, but it will work.

  3. If you can find a list of the parameters from Fibaro for this device you could use this to set it to what you want.

Temporarily change the driver for the device to this. Make your change. Change the driver back to the one you want to use, and DON’t click configure.

  1. Take a look at the code to see if you can edit what it sets the max dimmer to. This may seem like a more daunting task than you want to try. That’s ok. We all have our limits.

I put this generally in order of complexity. I wish I had an “Oh, just do this.” answer. Nevertheless these are ways to getting it to work the way you want.

And by the way, welcome to Hubitat!

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I bet the system chose the best fit driver. @aaiyar

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There’s actually a built-in Fibaro Dimmer driver. Specific for that device ...

Thanks both for the responses.

I did realise after some searching a few weeks ago that the official Hubitat "Fibaro Dimmer" was actually written for "Fibaro Dimmer 2". I'd initially ignored it - due to the missing "2" I assumed it was for the older non Z-Wave Plus device.

I have a list of all of the parameters and also have used Super basic Z-Wave previously. I do wish those who write the drivers would prefix the preference pane descriptions with the parameter number for ease of cross reference (it looks easy enough to amend the code so not sure why it's not done as standard)

I'm using the the community driver as it supports setting scenes with button clicks etc (not something I've bothered with yet but it is of interest and may be implemented later)

It never occurred to me to look in the code and amend the max value there. I think in an ideal world (which clearly doesn't exist in home automation) pressing the refresh button would not only update the current state, but save those values where applicable in the driver preference panes, so that everything is in sync. That way clicking configure wouldn't change anything unless you had specifically modified a preference first.

That would require developers to change the functions they create for this purpose. Instead of Configure we should probably create “Set to defaults” and “Download settings”, etc., or include code to read minds.

Thank you for the inspiration. I’ll have to consider that for my next driver.

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