3/4-Way Question

Switches General Discussion
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1

Hey all, quick(ish) question on getting the most out of multi-way switches (some 3-way, some 4).

Background

I have a handful of these scenarios in my house. I have ALL switches involved as LZW30 or LZW30-SN (black or red on/off). I followed this guide to set them up via Group 2: Knowledge Base Redirect – Inovelli, using " Option #1: Via Z-Wave Association Tool (Recommended)".

This involved:

  1. Disabling the relay via 8x config button taps.
  2. Setting up an association via group 2 from the “non-hot” switch(es) to the “hot” switch so that when you change a non-hot switch, it controls the main switch and thus the lights.

Issue

This works great-ish. I have one fairly major issue however:

When I control the 3-way from the “non-hot”/“source” of the association, and it turns on/off the “hot”/“destination” device in the association, that destination device doesn’t log anything in Hubitat - so Hubitat cannot use it for any rules, etc. Is this expected behavior? Any logs, etc I can pull to debug this a bit (besides the main hubitat log which shows nothing interesting :slight_smile: )

Reproduction of the Issue

Here’s a reproduction of the issue of me turning the lights on and off. The lights themselves work fine - when controlling via the “non-hot”/source association device, the lights turn on and off perfectly. But if you see the logs, they don’t report any status back to Hubitat.

  • “source” device in the association: 3W - Front Hallway Lights (West)
  • “Destination” device in the association: Front Hallway Lights
dev:195 2021-06-18 09:06:01.752 info Front Hallway Lights: Power report received with value of 0.0 W
dev:238 2021-06-18 09:05:57.540 debug 3W - Front Hallway Lights (West): SwitchBinaryReport(value:0)
dev:238 2021-06-18 09:05:55.152 debug 3W - Front Hallway Lights (West): SwitchBinaryReport(value:255)

When I control the “hot” device from the device itself, it works great - logs via hubitat, etc. It’s just when controlling via association that it doesn’t seem to log anything.

P.S.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about parameter 4 (Association Behavior When should the switch send commands to associated devices? 01 - local 02 - 3way 03 - 3way & local 04 - z-wave hub 05 - z-wave hub & local 06 - z-wave hub & 3-way 07 - z-wave hub & local & 3way 08 - timer 09 - timer & local 10 - timer & 3-way 11 - timer & 3-way & local 12 - timer & z-wave hub 13 - timer & z-wave hub & local 14 - timer & z-wave hub & 3-way 15 - all Range: 0..15 Default: 15) with regard to 3/4 way switching. Is this something I should be taking into account in my scenario, or is that for something else? All my switches are set to 15.

Thanks!

2

The non load switch(es) should have param 4 set to 11

3

Thanks for the tip. Any info on why this would need to be set this way?

This doesn’t appear to have any effect in my testing. In both situations (param 4=11 & relay disabled / param 4=15 & relay disabled), no logs show in the Hubitat logging.

4

Why don’t you want to enable the relay and watch for the switch actually switching? The relay can still switch even if it’s not controlling anything. The relay switching would give an event.

Someday, it sounds like black switches and dimmers will have a software update to allow basic scenes like 1 tap up or hold up or 1 tap down or hold down. That would give you an event when the toggle is pressed. Unless this happens, I don’t believe the pressing of the toggle is an event for the black series that would be transmitted. Only it actually turning on or off would be.

5

Ideally, I’d like there to only be one actual logged switch for a bank of 3/4 way switches. So I can write a rule that says “when the Front Hallway Lights turns ON, do XYZ” instead of saying “when any one of these three switches turns on, do XYZ”. It just makes things a bit cleaner and more concise, imo.

My understanding was that the switches should report state changes no matter what changes said state - whether hub-initiated, locally-initiated (physical button press) or association-initiated. I think that’s the crux of my issue, and hoping to get clarifying details on whether this is expected behavior.

I can certainly work around the issue in a number of ways, but before I do, looking to get confirmation of behaviors that I’m seeing.

6

I was confused, you’re saying the device that switches the load doesn’t show a change. I was thinking you meant one of the control only devices wasn’t sending it’s state, and that makes sense if the relay is disabled.

So, you don’t even know that the lights were turned on or off?

7

Yep, that’s exactly right. The actual switch doing the work isn’t reporting to Hubitat. I’m actually super fine with the non-load switches not talking to Hubitat, but I’d expect the load-bearing switches to still report in.

Hope that helps clarify!

8

I don’t know what to suggest. I think it should report the change. It does if you control it directly, right?

9

Thats weird. My dimmer reports on/off state when is switched by aux or dumb switch (I have both).

But dimmer not switch. Don’t have any to test.

10

Sure does, which is what is confusing to me. My assumption was any time the relay fired, it should report. But I can’t get it to report when it’s fired by an association.

12

I’ve actually heard this about dimmers - I was chatting with @adamkempenich and his dimmers behave how I’d expect. So maybe it’s an on/off switch thing? Differences in firmware? Not sure.

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13

Its’ probably time to bring in someone from Inovelli. Maybe EricM?

@kreene1987 is talking about 3-way with wired dumb or aux switches via the traveler. You’re doing it with 2 or more Inovelli switches associated together. That’s 2 completely different control methods.

14

@EricM_Inovelli when you get a chance, could you provide some sage wisdom about what we might be missing here? Thanks!

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15

There is a bug in the on/off firmware (not the dimmer) that is causing this to happen. We will fix this bug in a future update, but we could possibly try a workaround until it gets fixed.

The easiest method would be to set up rule machine to do a “refresh” on the device every 30 seconds. Not ideal, but it would be easy to setup. Also, maybe you could do a “refresh” on the device if the power fluctuates above a certain threshold. There are probably several ways to do it if the community can think of some more.

16

Thanks @EricM_Inovelli for the info! I’ve actually sort of just worked around this in my own daily behavior - simply not needing to rely upon these missing reports to the hub. I can’t make rules based off of the 3W switches, but I’ve actually found that to be fine for the short-term, knowing that it’s a bug and not a “me” issue.

Once a new firmware comes out to address the issue, I can revisit. Appreciate your input.

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