Trouble shooting - inovelli red series dimmers

I have a 2 red series dimmers in the guest bathroom

1 - that controls 2 dumb BR30s that I set the controls to just do on / off not dim
2 - hooked up to the fan in the bathroom and set it to just turn on / off

I had to turn the power off to the house over the weekend, now both switches are acting weird and not sure how to trouble shoot this.
The lights are strobing kind of like when a dimmer is not on all the way

Before I turned the power off, everything was great. Lights turned on and off no issues and same with the fan

now when the lights turn on, they flicker and when the fan turns on its running low like enough power is not getting to it

Not sure where to go from here

Here is the drivers I am running

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/InovelliUSA/Hubitat/master/Drivers/inovelli-dimmer-red-series-lzw31-sn.src/inovelli-dimmer-red-series-lzw31-sn.groovy

  • Inovelli Dimmer Red Series LZW31-SN
  • Author: Eric Maycock (erocm123)
  • Date: 2020-05-05

Both switches have the following settings set

Diming speed ( from switch) - 0
Light switch - Ramp Rate - 0
Fan Switch - Ramp Rate - 1

Ramp Rate (From Switch) - 0

everything else has defaults set

I have no answers, but I am along for the ride.

I hope these switches don't need a hug after every power outage, that would be inconvenient!

1 Like

hhaha yes it would be...... I do think that is the case. I have ALOT of these switches in the house and my end goal is to replace every switch in the house with these. I have also turned the power off to a large range of these switches in the house as well and never had issues

This one issue seems isolated and because I am new to all of this I am sure its something simple I am missing

@ericm or @bcopeland . Any ideas on this ?

The LZW31 and LZW31-SN (Black and Red dimmers) are not rated for fans. The LZW30 and LZW30-SN (Black and Red switches) are for up to 300W. See the spec sheets here for more: Knowledge Base Redirect – Inovelli. I'm not saying this is necessarily causing your problems, but it's not something I'd do regardless since the devices are not rated for this application, and you're unlikely to support from Inovelli (and have likely voided the warranty) with this configuration.

Are these bulbs dimmable? While most will do fine if the dimmer applies full power, others may be more sensitive. What you could try doing is making sure the level (via Z-Wave or the dimmer itself, assuming remote or local control, respectively, is not disabled) is at 99 (or 100%, though Z-Wave itself doesn't go that high). If you could try substituting dimmable bulbs at least for testing, that might be helpful--then you can see if they appear to be dim or getting full power. I think they only recommend dimmable bulbs with the LZW31/31-SN regardless, though I can't find that in the documentation at the moment.

Since you mentioned a power outage, one thing I can think of that wouldn't explain all of this but might explain part: I think the original switch or dimmer firmware (can't remember which) had a bug where if you set it to remember the on/off state on restore, it wouldn't remember and would default to off regardless of the setting. I've been running various beta firmwares for a while now, where this issue was fixed, and it wouldn't explain everything you see. I don't recall level being a problem for the dimmers (once on/off was accounted for), but if it is, that could explain the rest of what you're seeing on both devices (though again, I wouldn't do this on a fan).

3 Likes

Along with what @bertabcd1234 I do believe the state the dimmer returns to after a power outage did not return to the proper state in certain scenarios. So you might want to double check that. If you turn the device off and then, through Hubitat, turn the level back to 99% does it still flicker?

As mentioned, we don't recommend using the LZW31/LZW31-SN with a fan, but an LZW30/LZW30-SN should be fine with it.

it is a low powered bathroom fan and I switch the dimmer to on / off functions but I will replace it with a LZW30/LZW30-SN

Right now I am focused on the light. I replaced the bulbs and they seem to dim fine, but when the switch is off the bulbs stayed powered almost like a very dime night light.

The bulbs are BR 30 GE HD relax - dimmable.

Now the bulbs are dimmed with a light glow. The switch is off.

Not sure why there is a small amount of power going to the bulb

Are they setup neutral or non-neutral? Make sure the "AC Power Type" and "Switch Type" settings are correct.

I didn't have those 2 areas set , i do now and the lights still stay dim

Can you try to change "AC Power Type" to Non-Netural, Save Preferences, Set it back to Neutral, and Save Preferences again.

If that doesn't work we could try a firmware update to v1.47. You can do this from within Hubitat. If that doesn't work I'm afraid the bulbs are having issue with the dimmer. Here is the info about the update driver:

And this is the page with the firmware file:

Thanks , I will try this in the morning and get back to you

1 Like

Is there an update of which driver we should be using these days on this red series dimmers ?

Should I use Invovelli Z-wave Smart Switch S2 ?

If you want to use Hubitat's built-in drivers, the correct driver for the Inovelli Red Series Dimmer (model LZW31-SN) is "Inovelli Z-Wave Smart Scene Dimmer S2." (The non-"scene" drivers would be for the Black Series, model numbers without "-SN," and the LZW31 and LZW31-SN are both dimmers and not switches.)

If you want to use Inovelli's "official" driver (not supported by Hubitat), you can find them on Inovelli's website: https://support.inovelli.com/portal/en/kb/articles/hubitat-device-drivers. This is the driver mentioned in the original post of this thread.

Which you use is up to you: Hubitat's driver is built in to the platform (so requires no extra steps to use), is supported by Hubitat (so you're more likely to get help if there is a problem), but doesn't support every feature or expose the features in the same way as Inovelli. For example, you'll need a custom driver like Inovelli's to use more than two taps (Hubitat's button model maxes out a double taps, and Inovelli uses other workarounds to get events for every possible combination of taps, holds, and releases), and Inovelli's has other ways to use the "notification" LED on the Red Series beyond a custom command (which both drivers also provide).

Look for the driver built by Inovelli themselves. It's in the Hubitat Package Manager.