I am looking at buying a couple of fan controllers but I had a question first. I currently have two switches in one of the bedrooms, one that controls the fan/light and one that controls the two can lights. I have no need to individually control them so I was wondering: I understand that all commands to the fan are sent via RF to the canopy module, but does this device have an internal relay that I could use to control/dim the can lights via wiring whenever the fan light is adjusted via RF?
The module is the only portion that has a relay and can physically turn off. The way you wire the switch, the module line is always hot - even if you pull the air gap. The switch component itself has no relay. So it will have no capability to physically control your can lights.
If the problem is that you only have a single gang switch with two switches, you could potentially use smart bulbs. One of my installation locations will be like this. I have a single gang, but dual switch similar to this. My current plan is to wire replace the dual switch with the LZW36, and just wire the extra lights so they are always powered (like the module is). I am putting some Ilumin bulbs in there. I haven’t decided, but I will then either use z-wave association or scenes to control those bulbs (leaning towards scenes).
Of course if you room for another switch, you can always just add another smart switch, and use association with it (if supported) or scenes.
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It depends on the wiring to your lights. I think I saw where one other person had the light line from their fan module connect to a line for their ceiling lights as well. So when the fan light was turned on (if their fan had lights itself, it my not have) the ceiling lights came on also. Whether they dim is entirely up to the other fixtures/bulbs you use.
Of course if you do not have a line leading out from the fan fixture to those other lights, your only option (besides running new wire) would be to use smart lights and sync them up like @zavex mentions.
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Yeah that is what I figured, but I was hoping otherwise, did not want to have to buy another thing unnecessarily, whether that be smart bulbs or another switch. What exactly is the association you are mentioning? Say I associate the can light switch to the fan light switch, is there a two-way sync between those switches so a change in one changes the other or is it something else?
From my understanding association is generally one way. You can use scenes or automation to keep them in sync, or control both lights from either switch.
If you happen to use hubitat, there was something just posted in the tips and tricks forum that might be of help.
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Yeah I use Hubitat, and since all of my rooms are motion sensor based anyway, I would probably just make both switches be a manual on/off for the motion lighting which essentially is just a special scene.
The Fan light switch will sync devices in association group 3, so you can control the fan light (either with the buttons or via zwave), and the fan light will forward the commands to the can light switch.
If you want the can light switch to also control the fan lights (to emulate a true 3-way setup), there are a few things to consider:
- The can light switch needs to support multi-channel (multi-endpoint) association. Not all zwave devices support this (I dont think the Inovelli switch/dimmer support this, so you may need to use scenes to trigger automations instead)
- The can light switch should send commands to associated devices when a physical button press, but should NOT be set up to forward commands when controlled via zwave (or you will end up with an infinite loop)
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