I have a 4way Cooper Aspire dimmer circuit, and want it to control 3 Hue bulbs (three Kitchen pendants configured as one light source, not independently). The switches’ wiring does not affect the load on the always-on Hue bulbs. I’m having problems getting this to work and need advice. Here in the community I saw these dimmers recommended as immediate response wireless remotes, which is exactly what I want.
I’m aware of 2 main approaches:
Theory 1) Associate the Cooper dimmers natively in the Z-Wave mesh, then configure ST to control the master.
I had the dimmers initially setup as controlling the load on some dimmable bulbs, and I’ve seen the association and dimming work “conventionally.” When I then tried to configure ST with “Smart Lighting” automations, the associations bypassed ST, so they didn’t cooperate well with ST.
Best success so far: associations work perfectly for on/off/dim across all switches, but I would have to use the master to control the load (ie: not Hue bulbs), and I would have to NOT use ST.
Theory 2) Only use ST configuration to have the dimmers affect the Hue bulbs. My initial attempts to have only the master affect the Hue bulbs worked fine for on/off, but I couldn’t figure out how to have the dimmer’s dim setting affect the bulbs. Then configuring the auxiliary dimmers to affect the master, and the master to affect the auxiliaries seemed to cause extra toggles each time I toggled a switch manually or via ST app.
Best success so far: configure only the master to control the always-on Hue bulbs via manual and ST, but no aux switches, and not the dimmer’s dim value.
Color: I assume in both of the approaches above, that I’ll have to control color via ST.
Hardware:
- 1x RF-9540 master dimmer,
- 2x RF-9542 auxiliary dimmers,
- 3x Hue bulbs (might as well be 1 for sake of the discussion),
- 1x minimote
- SmartThings Hub, 2nd Generation
(I’m also using GE 12724 Z-Wave Smart Dimmers, but they need to be polled, thus huge delay in on/off)
Skills:
- I’m a software developer
- I’m new to ST
- I’ve used the “Smart Lighting” SmartApp, but not other apps or “custom code”
- I got lots of patience for this crap