hello, i use a red series dimmer with hue lights. i put the switch in smart bulb mode and disabled local control. everything is working fine. what i miss is the LED animations that the switch has in normal local mode, like the “ramp up” and “ramp down” animations when you turn the light on/off, and the gradual increase/decrease animation during button holds for dimming.
in hubitat, i created a rule based on button turning switch on, it will also turn on “notification 1” which is set to blue, 100%, indefinite, solid. then when i turn the switch off, i have another rule that turns on “notification 2” which is set to blue, 10%, indefinite, solid. this changes the intensity of the LED bar based on if the switch is on/off, but is there a more elegant way of doing this?
i would really like to be able to access the stock on/off and dimming animations via hubitat, is this possible, or is there another workaround someone can show me?
In this scenario I think you don’t want to disable local control. Smart Bulb mode will keep power to the bulb. With local control enabled, the LED bar should behave like it normally would
when i had enabled local control, two things happened:
if i dimmed all the way down, or clicked the switch off, the hue bulbs would lose power. i would not be able to control them with voice via alexa unless the switch was turned back on. can someone verify that smart bulb mode will keep power going to hue bulbs? is there another configuration i did wrong because i could not keep power to the hue bulbs.
i got really bad flickering during dimming. anything below ~50% would cause flickering. i did read something about settings to limit what % the switch would dim to, but i could never get around issue 1. i’ve got my mom living with me and she is 70+. she refuses to deal with smart anything and cannot accept that some buttons will not behave in the traditional dumb way, so i have to find solutions where the “smart” way and “dumb” way can co-exist and work.
Sounds like you are running older firmware. Update your firmware to get the new-and-improved SBM which lets you select either “on/off” mode or “always on” mode
Yes there is a “Minimum Level” setting that you should configure. It currently can’t go higher than 45 (requested to be higher in future firmware update) but that should get you close to what you need.
There are other parameters you can set to make the switch/dimmer act more ‘traditional’. Thing like “disable delay” and settings for ramp rates to make the lights turn on/off faster. However, these settings are for directly controlled loads and don’t really apply to Smart Bulbs which are controlled via Z-wave radio commands
I don’t think you can keep the dimmer animations in your scenario. The LED level is tied to the switch output and we do not have a way to command it from the hub. You do want disable local control on, and will send commands to the Hue bulb initiated from the scene commands the switch sends to your hub. I’ve specifically set up all Hue bulbs in my house to be controllable as normal dimmed bulbs so that the smarts are hidden from those that don’t want to be involved in them, which I think is your intention here.
I really think smart bulb mode is unnecessary if you don’t want to go through firmware updates. Disable local control and remote control, then set your parameters 6 & 11 to 99. This will ensure the switch always passes maximum power even after a power failure. The bulbs will live a very short life if you try to dim them from the wall.
You can with the latest firmware using the new-and-improved Smart Bulb Mode
Not with the current firmware. The LED bar tracks the internal SetLevel dimming value even though the output terminal is fixed at 100% on.
Not if he wants the LED bar dimming to work with local switch presses and the new SBM mode enabled.
I suppose that is true if you don’t want to update the firmware. But why not? The new firmware will do what he wants.
Not without updating to the new firmware. With the old SBM firmware there is no dimming of the load, which is important for Smart Bulbs. But the load can still be turned off which kills power to the smart bulb and it can’t be controlled from the hub until the switch is turned back on. The new firmware with the new SBM mode will keep power ‘On’ ALL THE TIME. This allows the bulb to still receive commands from the hub even when the switch is off.
Thanks @mamber. I tried to see how smart bulb mode ended up via google and never found the final answer. It is more useful than I thought it ended up being.
thank you everyone for the insight. i will try to first update the firmware and then go back to local control and see how it goes. will report back later.
If you haven’t done it before, be aware that Inovelli Dimmers have TWO files you need to flash.
There is a .otz file you flash to target0
There is a .bin file you flash to target1
it works! it’s so hard to keep up with all the changes to inovelli products - drivers, firmware…i must have missed where the smart bulb feature will apply continuous power, but yes, it does work. i have re-enabled local control, so the inovelli dimmer works with all the default LED bar animations, alexa works, hubitat works, everything is perfect now.
there’s one little issue that i have since encountered. currently i am using the switch to control a set of hue bulbs. everything is working normal, clicking on/off on the dimmer switch works. the issue is that when clicking OFF on the dimmer, the hue app does not get notified that the bulbs have been turned off, so it looks like they are still on in the hue app. this doesn’t impede any functionality, you can still correctly use the dimmer switch, or just turn if off in hue app and turn it back on/off and it will work fine, but i would like the sync to work correctly so that on/off is reported correctly back to hubitat. any advice?
actually i also just noticed that the ON / OFF soft buttons inside hubitat do not work at all. when i press ON or OFF in hubitat, the hue bulbs will not turn on/off. the STATUS in hubitat is reported correctly, just the soft buttons do not work…and the switch is not syncing OFF status back to hue app.
It sounds to me as if you are cutting power to the bulbs. If you re-enabled local control, then the switch is physically cutting power to the bulbs, which you don’t want. So the bulbs aren’t powered, which is why the status isn’t updated in the Hue app because the bulbs that aren’t powered can’t report. It’s also why you can’t control the bulbs from within Hubitat.
When using Zigbee smart bulbs, you need to have Disable Local Control enabled AND Smart Bulb Mode turned on, and then control the bulbs via a scene. Depending on your firmware version, this may be one or two parameters.
i am so confused. for some reason my smart bulb mode was set to: no selection, so i started playing around with that.
for reference, i did upgrade my firmware:
firmware0: 1.57
firmware1: 1.44
so that:
the new firmware with the new SBM mode will keep power ‘On’ ALL THE TIME.
If I ENABLE Smart Bulb Mode, Disable Local Control NO:
Alexa Works
Hue App Works
Hubitat Digital Controls DOES NOT WORK
Physical Dimmer Switch: DOES NOT WORK
If I DISABLE Smart Bulb Mode, Disable Local Control NO:
Alexa DOES NOT WORK once power is cut
Hue App DOES NOT WORK once power is cut
Hubitat Digital Controls: Works
Physical Dimmer Switch: Works
is this how it is supposed to work with the new firmware? i don’t think my firmware upgrade, and Smart Bulb Mode are working correctly.
Yep, it can be a difficult concept to get your head around. I think what takes a bit to sink in is that with Zigbee bulbs, AFAIK the only option you have is to control them via scenes. That means setting up individual scenes for illumination levels, colors, etc. Then you use the multi-tap function of the dimmer to run those scenes. So a triple tap up might set to 50%, 4 tap up to 75%, double tap down to off, etc.
So when you said the physical dimmer switch doesn’t work with local control disabled, that’s correct, but that’s what it was designed to do.
So your parameter 52 should be set to 2, which is a combined DLC and SBM. That way the bulbs will always be fully powered and you won’t be able to cut power via the switch. With that set, configure the multi-taps on the dimmer to run the scenes you configured.
Until there is a Zigbee switch, I think this is your only option with Hue bulbs. If someone else has a better option hopefully they will post.
You might be expecting to dim up and down via the paddle. That would work with Zwave bulbs and associations, but not with Zigbee bulbs.
quick point in case it was missed, i said “Disable Local Control NO”, which i interpret as DO NOT disable local control, or LOCAL CONTROL ENABLED.
side note to inovelli: double negative in configuration options is just bad bad bad in ux/ui design
so there is not way to ENABLE smart bulb mode so that power is not cut to the hue lights, AND keep local control so that the physical and digital (via hubitat) switches work? i thought that was the whole point of the upgraded firmware/SMB mode per user: mamber post above
would this scenario work with illumin bulbs since they are z wave? i’m not sure my daughter could live without the hue app
i could have swore i had this all working 8 days ago…
Yes, to do that set parameter 52 to “1”. That basically makes the dimmer an on/off switch. It always puts out full power but allows physical control. It wasn’t really designed with smart bulbs in mind . . more for those that want to use a dimmer with regular bulbs but make it act like a switch. That really isn’t the setting you want for smart bulbs though as you never want to cut power to the bulbs.
Yes, with Illumin bulbs, which are Zwave, you would set associations to control the bulbs directly. You would still have parameter 52 set to “2” but the associations would insure that you can dim the bulb up and down using the paddle just as if you were controlling a non-smart bulb powered via the load terminal. There are a number of people here that have Illumins connected in this way that can add to this!
