Pairing Red Dimmer (LZW31-SN) with A19 RGBW ilumin Bulbs (LZW42) - Am I Crazy? - HOW TO

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Ok so I was trying to pair my smart bulbs with my dimmer as stated in pervious post, Office Setup Help - 1 red dimmer, 2 ilumin RGB bulbs ceiling, 1 ilumin RGB bulb lamp - #13 by dvellek - Sorting Category - Inovelli Community, and once I figured out the z-wave association I instantly started to have more problems (bulbs flickering while turning on, switch notification bar was constant on and didn’t change when dimming either, devices stopped sending status updates to the habitat c-7) so I ended up completely pairing them via rule machine scene control and abandoned the z-wave association process.

Downside: the turn on time is not instantaneous (associations would solve this, but again either I was doing something wrong or the functionality was not what I was hoping for)
Upside: I finally achieved the functionality I wanted for an initial set-up!

Setup: 1 dimmer switch physically connected to two bulbs and then a third remote bulb in a lamp in the same room

Preferences: Switch does have “Disable Local Control” set to “Yes”, “Smart Bulb Mode” set to “Yes”, LED Color Child Device set as well

Devices:
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Groups:
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I am using the group for Google Home and Dashboard purposes/cleanliness only

Rules:
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Office Dimmer Rule ensures the bulbs are in the correct on/off state I want, 1 press up/down toggles the main bulbs, 2 press up/down toggles the main lights and the lamp bulb
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With Local control off the switch LED will never change, these rules toggle the switch LED brightness like the standard functionality does for dumb bulbs
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Though local control cannot switch the dimmer’s level, which in turn will not do the raise/lower of the height of the switch LED, the hub can still change the dimmer level, which will then change the switch LED height. Just make sure you never set the dimmer level to 0/off
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Ok, now that you made it this far, am I crazy for planning on doing this for all switches in my house that have ilumin bulbs tied to them? Did you get z-wave associations to work and have the functionality you expected? Any suggestions to my rules?

Thanks for reading this and contributing to my conversation.

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Update after watching a youtube video on conditional logic for rule machine, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ai383zz5YhI, I was able to combine my LED on and LED off rule into one rule.

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I could have just used “else” instead of “else if” but wanted more clarity on what was happening so that is why I wrote out the full expression.

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Looks like a pretty cool setup.

I have had success with associations, but the security level for all devices needs to match. Since the highest level of security for the bulbs is S0 and the highest for the dimmer is S2, that can cause problems. One answer is to force the dimmer to pair at S0 or to force both of them to pair with no security.

Once that is done the instructions are pretty straight forward:

One thing that you might want to do if you are using scenes is to use the held and released scene to control the bulbs. This utilizes a z-wave capability to “startLevelChange” Up or Down. This will start dimming the bulbs in either direction while you hold the button and stop when it is released (much like a traditional dimmer).

This is an example of our dimmer with hue bulbs but the concept is the same:
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Do you have a post somewhere that specifically shows/tells your exact setup for your switch to bulb associations that work. I put my rules on pause and tried again and still not getting near the functionality I would expect.

Office Dimmer
1 - Installed and added to Habitat while ensuring security is at S0
2 - “Disable Local Control” set to “Yes”, “Smart Bulb Mode” set to “Yes”
3 - Personal Preferences (ramp rate = 0, state after power restored = 100)

Office Bulb 1
1 - Installed and added to Habitat while ensuring security is at S0

Office Bulb 2
1- Installed and added to Habitat while ensuring security is at S0

Associations
1 - Source Office Dimmer, Destination Office Bulb 1 & Office Bulb 2, Group 2
2 - Source Office Dimmer, Destination Office Bulb 1 & Office Bulb 2, Group 3
3 - Source Office Dimmer, Destination Office Bulb 1 & Office Bulb 2, Group 4

Limitations
1 - the dimmer LED is constant on 100% and not dynamic at all to reflect the bulbs’ status
2 - the bulbs are not in sync when turning on or off (is there a way to make this happen, I am looking for the light effect similar to using a dumb switch)

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Can you try just group 3 & group 4?