Noisy Inovelli Red Switches? (LZW30-SN)

Digital Lounge General Discussion
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Question for the owners of Inovelli Red On/Off switches.

When I turn my switches off, there’s a “clunk” noise that can be heard at the moment the electricity turns off.

Here’s a YouTube video showing what I’m talking about (watch with sound on):

Is this expected? Does this happen for y’all?

For reference, I’ve got a neutral wire running to each of these, power and Z-wave are working fine, it’s just a noisy switch.

My GE smart switches don’t do this. They’re completely silent.

I’ve submitted a support ticket to Inovelli, but hoping the community can weigh in, too. Any idea what’s up here?

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Sounds OK to me. My switches make a higher pitched noise for the on and a lower pitched noise for the off. Just the relay making a contact noise.

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3

Pretty normal IME for on/off switches. Are your GE switches on/off models or dimmers? My older model GE on/off make an audible click as well.

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Seems normal to me. Just the internal relay cycling between states since it is electronically controlled vice physical.

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Thanks, everyone! Appreciate y’all double checking things for me. Very fast response from the group here. :slight_smile:

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As @harjms stated, this is just the relay in both the dimmer and the switch toggling. Perfectly normal.

Quick question though, Is the dimmer in a single or three-way (or four…)config? If three-way, are you using dumb or add on switches?

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Hello,

If you have these installed in a 3-way setup with a “Dumb” (analog) switch at the other end then a clicking sound seems normal to me (internal relay / digital to analog). I purchased a bunch of the red dimmers 3-way switches in my house and initially setup with dumb switches and got this internal loud clicking/clunking sound and really could not stand it so i went ahead and purchased more GE or Honeywell “Aux” Add-on switches for the other sides and they play very nice with Inovelli and since they are both digital switches/circuitry there is no clicking sound anymore: https://byjasco.com/enbrighten?cat=22

Separately, I have Honeywell programmable non smart In wall digital timers around my house for controlling various outdoor lighting and they too click when turning on or off but this is acceptable to me since they are fully “set and forget” automated switches that hold settings even in power outage: https://www.honeywellhome.com/en/products/light-switch-timers.

Thanks,
Steve from Virginia

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I have 12 Inovelli Red Dimmers and 3 Red On/Off switches installed. All of the on/offs have a loud relay click when turning them on/off and only one of the red dimmers has the relay click. All of the other red dimmers are silent except for the faint click of the actual toggle button. I suspect there is something wrong with the dimmer that has the loud relay click as its quite obnoxious for a switch. Also, not sure why the on/off switches would have the relay click while most of the dimmers do not.

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Also, not sure why the on/off switches would have the relay click while most of the dimmers do not.

Dimmers in a 3 way will click.

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@seth, When using dumb switches yes, the dimmers will “click”, However, if you use add on switches, they will not. Plus you’ll have the capability to dim from the add on switches.

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So glad that this post exists! I installed black and red series on and off switches yesterday and noticed the same thing. I was worried lol.

Sorry to dig up an oldish thread!

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Hi all!
I have 5 red series dimmer switches. Non of them had that relay noise. What I experienced is one of the switches in a 3 way setup was working fine with no relay click sound. But I noticed that light was turning on by itself irregularly. I remembered that I programmed the switch as 3 way switch but forgot to program it as non neutral switch. So I went back and checked with the wiring and then reset the settings by holding the programming button for 20 seconds then programmed it as non neutral 3 way switch. After I did that I started hearing that relay click sound which is annoying. And also the aux switch does not work now. Is there anybody who can help me to go back to the initial status where I didn’t have the click sound and the 3 way worked?

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So did you set parameter 22 to 2 or 1?

The value of 2 is for multi-aux switches, and 1 is for multi-dumb switches. To me, it sounds like it is set to 1 because you shouldn’t hear the click with aux switches. You should only hear the clicking with the dumb switch multi-way switches and a setting of 1

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Exactly what @Ma2J mentioned above :slight_smile:

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Thank you guys!
It seems I had clicking sound since I set parameter 22 to 1 by a mistake. I manually set it to 2and the relay click sound and power cycling issue is gone.

However, the aux switch does not turn on or turn off the lights every time I try. Success rate is around 10%. Any suggestions?

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Here is an update!
I added one more light bulb to the fixture and now the aux switch works fine.

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Why get the GE or Honewell “Aux” switches instead of some Inovelli on/off switches? Will the Inovelli on/off switches work as “Aux” switches? Seems like that would be a cheaper (and better) route if they do.

EDIT*** Looks like I found my own answer. It seems like the recommendation is to use an “Aux” or add on switch an not another smart switch:
" * Neutral Wire Setup: You can choose to have either a dumb (existing) switch or an auxiliary switch. You can also choose to install another Inovelli smart switch on the other side, but there are some limitations here and we do not recommend it at this time."

This may be a dumb question, but If you can use the on/off as an “Aux” in a 3 way with an Inovelli Red dimmer, will the on/off act like a dimmer?

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Possibly. You’d definitely need neutral to the switch. I’m not sure how the associations would work though. If anything you’d have to make sure it’s a scene style switch and you could just use it as a controller over an aux switch.

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@Eric_Inovelli can you confirm if this is still accurate / recommended? I am looking to add in ‘Aux’ switches to replace my dumb switches for a couple of reasons (1 - please my wife and make them match, 2 - get rid of the click noise). I would prefer to just replace my dumb switches with your black On/Off switches. If it is still not recommended, can you expand on the limitations?
" * Neutral Wire Setup: You can choose to have either a dumb (existing) switch or an auxiliary switch. You can also choose to install another Inovelli smart switch on the other side, but there are some limitations here and we do not recommend it at this time."

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Great question! Yes, I believe things have changed a lot since that article was written, however, it was primarily written due to most people using SmartThings where our devices are processed via the cloud and even Associations for some reason are semi-slow.

For hubs such as Hubitat, Home Assistant and HomeSeer, where actions are performed locally and Associations are quick, this should not be a problem.

The other thing to consider is that if you ever move and sell your house, you may have to re-wire them and replace them back with dumb/aux switches.

Hope that helps!

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