Hey, all. I have a few different products (two black-series dimmers and an RGBW bulb) that are all experiencing the same behavior: If I go into the Hubitat device page and click the “Start Level Change” command, the level changes to 0 or 100 basically instantly. Even if I set the dimming speed to something higher, it doesn’t matter. And in fact, on the black-series dimmers, if I set the ramp rate higher than 1 or 2, pressing “on” is a slower way of turning on the light than pressing “start level change”.
This matters because I’m trying to use Hubitat’s Mirror app and a remote by RGBGenie to control dimming of these lights from somewhere other than the Inovelli switch. I believe the command the remote is sending is the same as the “Start Level Change” command that I’m using from the device page. So the remote isn’t dimming anything.
Just commenting to bump this for myself to test when I get home. I’ve never actually used the Start Level Change, so I’m curious!
Hopefully someone more familiar with Hubitat can jump in – but I’ll give it a shot in the meantime.
Give me a couple hours
Edit: Ok, so I don’t have a Black Series to test, but I think I’m seeing the same thing you are on the Red and Blue Series.
Here were my settings:
Dim Speed = ~10 sec
Ramp Rate = ~Sync to Dim Speed
If I turn on and off the light remotely, the dim and ramp speed works as intended. However, if I turn off the bulb and then press, “Start Level” (Up), it comes on instantly.
Yep, that’s exactly what I’m seeing. Just tested it again on a red dimmer (though one with older firmware, 1.35/1.34), and it’s the same behavior. I’m not sure what is supposed to happen with “start level change”, but what I would have expected is that it would start dimming up or down, at the dim speed, and continue doing so until either it reached 100/0, or until “Stop level change” is called. This is…not that. And it doesn’t feel intentional because of how it ignores dim speed and ramp rate. Feels like a bug.
My understanding of the start/stop level change is that the bulb must support transition time (which it does), but the driver must also have a start/stop level transition setting. The start/stop level change doesn’t use the regular transition time setting.
It look to be a driver problem. I got this bug with LZW42 with hubitat driver and with inovelli driver but if I use the Generic Dimmer driver the command work as expected.
I use this command when I want dim up or down the bulb when I held a button and execute a Stop Level Change on release of this button.
I address the problem here
Just curious, does the light report the correct value for the “level” attribute under “Current States” on the device page? If not, does a “Refresh” help, and if so, does the “Start Level Change” command work correctly after that? (You shouldn’t have to do this, just trying to narrow down a possible problem if this is it…)
Yes, the level is correctly reported throughout. I did this test with a black-series dimmer:
I tried setting the level to 45 (it reflected in the attribute correctly). I refreshed (nothing happened). I started a level change up (the level attribute changed to 99 immediately, and the light’s brightness did as well). I repeated that procedure except started a level change down (the level attribute changed to 1 immediately, and the light appeared to turn off, though I did not hear the relay click, and the “switch” attribute remained “on”).
From my understanding of the start level change is that the bulb must support transition time, and the driver must also have a start/stop level transition setting. Without the setting in the driver, it completely ignores the regular transition time and will just instantly jump to the set level.
level change down to 1 is still “on”. That is normal. Depending on your actual bulb, it may be too low a voltage to light up, but as far as the switch is concerned its still ‘on’
You were testing with a Blue series switch. The Blue series StartLevelChange function is [mostly] working properly (with a slight caveat noted below). The OP’s issue is specific to the Red series
This particular scenario with the Blue series is related to a new bug introduced in the Blue series v10 firmware. Its noted in github issue #89 It is unrelated to the issue with Red series
No news yet, but I promise it is on @EricM_Inovelli’s list of things to look at. We are currently wrapping up the 2-1 firmware and after that we should have some time to take a look. Unfortunately one of the setbacks of only having one guy who can write firmware – very low bandwidth. However, it being what looks like a driver issue, we will certainly want to get it fixed not just for the bulbs, but for switches as well.
With the old driver my lzw42 instantly go off or 100% bright. Now with the new driver nothing happen when I press “start level change up or down” I set the dimming speed to 3 sec.
