LZW42 - color and temperature transition time

Lighting General Discussion
, , , ,
1

I have recently acquired 5 LZW42 bulbs in my basement, and am playing around with their settings.
connected to HomeAssistant via zwaveJS2mqtt. No issues pairing or generally controlling the bulbs, but I have noticed a strange behavior with the color (either RGB or W temp)

When transitioning between colors, the bulbs immediately switch color, even if I’ve set a transition time. The transition time does apply to a brightness change, but not color (or white temperature change).

examples; If I change the RGB value with a transition time of 5 seconds, it just immediately switches the color. ditto if i go from 2700k to 5000k, it’s an immediate switch of color. Transition of red to blue, with 50% bright to 100% bright with 5 second transition will immediately switch red to blue, and ramp the brightness over 5 seconds.

So my question, is this normal / expected behavior? Or am i doing something wrong…
With hue bulbs, I can transition between colors smoothly, but i would much rather use these vs hue, just so i can still do zwave associations with the switches.

i also notice when trying to write values to 108-38-0-duration or 108-51-0-duration direct from zwave control panel, it generates errors.
15:50:14.767 INFO ZWAVE: Writing { unit: ‘seconds’, value: 2 } to 108-51-0-duration
15:50:14.769 ERROR ZWAVE: Unable to write { unit: ‘seconds’, value: 2 } on 108-51-0-duration

INFO ZWAVE: Calling api writeValue with args: [
{ nodeId: 108, commandClass: 38, endpoint: 0, property: ‘duration’ },
{ unit: ‘seconds’, value: 2 },
{},
[length]: 3
]
INFO ZWAVE: Writing { unit: ‘seconds’, value: 2 } to 108-38-0-duration
INFO ZWAVE: Controller status: Driver: Multilevel Switch: “duration” is not a supported property (ZW0322)
ERROR ZWAVE: Unable to write { unit: ‘seconds’, value: 2 } on 108-38-0-duration

2

When changing colors, the “Command Class Color Switch” command is sent to the bulb. There are multiple versions of this command. Version 1 does not support the duration parameter when changing colors. Version 2+ does.

I am not sure if zwavejs supports version 2+ yet (edit:it does), but from what I can see the LZW42 only supports version 1, which means you cannot control the color-change transition duration. Perhaps it is a feature that can be added in a later firmware update.

2 Likes
3

ahhh! that actually makes sense. TIL.
I have some devices on zwave that have Color Switch v3. weird thing is the control panel still shows me the option for 51 (duration) even in the v1, so zwaveJS probably just is making assumptions, which would explain why i cant set that value…
Cheers for the info. I’ll just accept it’s not a thing with these bulbs for now, and a +1 for future firmware update to support color transition.

4

@Eric_Inovelli can add this to the manufacturer firmware update list!

Good call, I never really realized it since my lights are usually on during the evening fading to 2700K, but when I first turn them on and they were on during the day @ 6000K, they do “snap” over to like 3000K at first. This is with the Adaptive Lighting integration on Home Assistant.

My other color temp lights of course fade cleanly over ~3 seconds by default. They also follow durations I establish for the transition.

1 Like
5

Looking at purchasing some of these bulbs.
Has the color transition support been added to the new firmware?

Hopping so for festive reasons :smiley:
Thanks!