Bought my first Inovelli and have to same pretty impressive set of features for the price - actually for any price. So was excited to use it on my low voltage cable lights (MR16) that is powered by a 75W magnetic transformer. I’ve got a few setups like this with other zwave dimmers in my house.
Problem is that i go as low as about 45% before the lamps shut off. So 45% is the lower end of my dimming using this device. Not entirely clear to me if i’m really at low percentage and the reading of the device dimming level is wrong - or if its at 45% and the dimmer can’t drive lower dimming levels for this type of transformer. These lights dimmed using a standard wall dimmer (Lutron) so its on the transformer or lamps.
So no bulb is going to dim down to a real 1%. Yours dim down to 45%, perhaps higher than some others but not really out of line.
You need to set the dimming range of the dimmer so that it will only dim over the range suitable for your bulb. This will also insure that you’re not spending time “dimming” over a range where the bulb(s) won’t illuminate.
To adjust your range, go into the dimmer’s settings and set the minimum to 1 and the max to 99. Operate the dimmer and note the minimum value where the bulbs start to illuminate. Set the minimum to that value or thereabouts.
This will set the minimum dim to a pseudo 1%, which effectively lets you dim only over the range for which your bulbs will operate. If you have correctly set the minimum to a point or two above where the bulb(s) turn on, you now be able to set the dimmer to 1% and have a bulb(s) barely lit.
I updated my settings so my range was 40-99 and also ran some other tests. Seems this dimmer’s performance is significantly worse than other devices for actual dimming. Other dimmers get down to a low dim while this red dimmer seems to step to zero quickly from a less than low dim.
Given dimmers i’m comparing to are twice the price and don’t have as much zwave functionality this makes sense to me. Probably the focus of the engineering was on the device functionality and not the dimming which is reasonable.
These are nice devices and i’m sure i can find some regular (non-low voltage) uses for it. I’m just relaying my experience / feedback so Inoveli is aware. As with anything it could be my transformer, the lamps, or maybe i got a defective device.
I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. Dimmers are generally built upon either Triacs or Mosfets. Inovelli chose to go with Mosfets to gain the functionality. Unfortunately, some LED bulbs perform better with Triacs than they do with Mosfets.