Zooz Zen27 unresponsive periodically until air gapped

I am now having this problem randomly on my ZEN27 switches... Would not turn the lights on zwave or physically. Had to air gap two of them today. One I noticed in the logs afterwards it was sending the central scene commands to the hub while locked, I could see the button up button down from me trying to turn it on but the light never came on. They are both on Firmware 3.04

I just had my second event in about 3 weeks with a Zen23 v4 toggle switch. It is just like this was reported. The switch was completely unresponsive to both local and hubitat initiated changes. Ironically i was right next to the switch when it failed. It clicked on and then i heard it click immediately off and that was it. I had to airgap it from the breaker to get it working again.

Yes I have found that the typically failure point is just after being turned on after being off for a while.

One of my zen21 did it a week ago as well. It controls two exhaust fans in my ensuite.

A year ago I solved the issue installing a snubber circuit for filtering the transients of inductive load.

A month ago I replaced both exhaust fans with new ones prior to getting insulation added to the attic. I noted that the new ones had capacitors across the motors so I opted to leave the snubber cct out. Dumb mistake.

I reinstalled the snubber circuit and things are back to normal.

I know exhaust fans are a “do it at your own risk” situation for the zen21s so I am not complaining.

It just highlights that the switches can be sensitive to noise/transients on the AC lines.

I have three Zen27s and over fifteen zen26’s. I think I now have load resistors on all of them. I don’t install new ones anymore with out putting it in. It just solves headaches.

Sorry if I sound repetitive.

Edit: oops just corrected zen #s above

What did you use for the snubber circut. That is my use case as well. With an exhast fan. Was it installed in the switch box or near the fan.

@mavrrick58

You can put it across the fan between hot and neutral (I have done it this way)

Or you can put it from hot to switched hot (line to load) at the switch. I will find a link that discusses.

I have used 120 ohms in series with a 0.1uF ac rated cap with at least a 250vac rating. I wasn’t sure about the power rating of the resistor so I measured the Vrms across the resistor in cct and it only has approx 4v across it. A quarter watt resistor should be sufficient but I have used 1W rated (closed space/no airflow/etc)

Found the one I was looking for:

I would really encourage you to swap this out for the fan rated GE/Jasco 43074. It is a commercial grade switch, and noticeably better built than the Zooz. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TKD3RTT/

I did the snubber on both the fans, but the one fan still was hard on the Zen23, it would behave weirdly at times. This Jasco completely fixed the issue.

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I hear you. The Zooz are technically not rated for the application and instead of tinkering to make it work it just makes sense to buy something design for what you want to do.

But I won’t buy anything GE anymore. Burned too many times with poorly designed products. And I don’t think they design anything themselves anymore. They just spec it and get someone else to design and build it and stick their name on it.

The GE "branded" smart switches pointed out by @neonturbo have nothing whatsoever to do with GE the company, except the manufacturer, Jasco Products Company LLC, paid GE for the right to market the products under the GE name. They also paid for licenses for 'Enbrighten", "Honeywell", and other brands Consumer Electronics products.

They aren't designed, built, or anything else by GE. Although I'm not a fan of their fan controllers personally, their products are known to be reliable, and well made. If you just don't like the GE Branding, they often market the same products as Jasco, or Honeywell.

Check out byjasco.com for all the product lines they make.

GE only has GE Digital that's playing at any level in the Smarthome space. They even sold off their GE Lighting division to a company called Savant Systems Inc.

Just thougt it was worth noting, as their products are often complementary to other Smart Home products. For example, Jasco makes nice Zigbee and Zwave outlets which can help expand your mesh without unsightly (IMO) wall wart plugs.

S.

Yes that is what ours did as well this last time, it is two can lights with LED bulbs and it was turned on, immediately went off and then was locked up. I don't have any on fans, all on LED bulbs which behave normally most of the time. It has ONLY been the ZEN27 dimmers which have locked up on my thus far and I have at least one of just about every model but the majority are ZEN27.