I just proved you are right. You do get notified when your hub is inactive and then active again if you are away from home and you can manually turn them off with your smartphone app after power comes back on. And an all off routine at, say 1 am, would be a fail safe if you don’t see the message. I think that’s good enough for me. Right now I have only one smart bulb.
I have four BR30s in the ceiling and two A19s for the nightstand lights in the master bedroom alone.
Next power cut while I’m asleep will guarantee I pull them all out that instant… I used to argue with myself that if the number of bulbs required = the cost of the Z-wave switch than that’s the point you should use the smart switch instead of the smart bulbs, now I don’t care and will happily pay ~$40 for a switch that controls one bulb that could just be a $15 smart bulb, seriously, it’s that annoying, especially when combined with the firmware issue on the GE Links where they keep dropping out of the mesh.
NOTICE TO VIEWERS OF THIS TOPIC. THE SMARTTHINGS APP NOW RECOGNIZES AND CONFIGURES LOAD-SENSING DEVICES. THERE IS NO NEED FOR A SECONDARY CONTROLLER FOR THIS PURPOSE, THOUGH A GE CONTROLLER MAKES EXCLUSION OF A DEVICE QUICK AND EASY IF STs DOESN’T DO THE JOB.
is it not just enabled by default now?
Yes, that’s what I meant. The app recognizes it’s including a load-sensing device and sets it to load-sense. While this is default, it’s not simple as the ST app has to know it’s connecting to a load-sensing device and has to set the load-sensing feature. The GE dimmable switch does not have load-sensing set out of the box. The default, for no good reason that I can figure out, is non-load-sensing.
yep,
act, ge, schlage, etc are all the same and come out of the box without it one. You have to enable.
I wish there was a generic ability to set settings and associations on any device. There’s so much that you can do with z-wave on the devices themselves that aren’t available with ST without someone figuring out how to hack it in there.
Some you can enable hail commands (that give instant status), sometimes you can aduust various times like length of dim up or down, time between temperature checks, how long to report “movement” after a motion sensor doesn’t “see” anything anymore, etc.
Other things you can do associations- you can set leak detectors or motion sensors to automatically turn on lights themselves without needed the hub (and possibly a trip on the internet). Some switches even have double and triple tap built in- that was my first foray into HA like 5-6 years ago- my kids would leave the basement playroom light on and I set up a switch at the top of the stairs to shut it off with doubletap to save me a walk down and up the stairs.
one day…
There area lot of settings on these devices. The dimmable plug has about 30 parameters that can be set. I guess it would be a chore to enable them all. But load-sensing is the most important as these plugs are almost useless without it.
oh yeah- it would be impossible to code for all the parameters of every device.
But what some other brands have done is each device just has a generic place to manually enter settings and associations. You just give a place for a user to look up which bits to set with a couple boxes for data enter “parameter number” and “bits” and a button to click for send- if you want to get fancy a button for read those parameters is a help too.
They’ve got plenty of work, so i’m sure it’s far off. In the mean time we have to fiddle with each individual device and manual plug in some code to send the bits. Luckily others have provided the code snippets. 
That would make sense to just program a variable for the parameter and the value.
I don’t seem to find a link to the code snippets or what needs to be done. I am debating getting some of these, as I really want/need the load sensing. The Levitons do not support it, which is annoying. Can you please point me to what needs to be done to enable load sensing now? @MichaelK , @DavidH, or others, any info? Thanks.
Scratch that. I found it. Looking to get one; may just try the Linear dimmer, since it appears to be enabled by default. Thanks.
apparently there’s no fiddling required for this anymore, smarthings updated their end to handle it all.
That said the linears, schlage, ge/jasco, act, (and some others) all look exactly identical and are likely just rebadged reference designs. I know from experience that the ge, schlage, act all are the same exact size, shape, and have the same bits that you flip for load sensing (for dimming, etc, etc) in all of them.
so if a linear works, then a ge does, and so does an act and a schlage, and perhaps others,
Awesome. Thanks, @MichaelK. I ordered 2 of the Linears (GoControl PD300Z-2 to try out). They were about $7 cheaper than the GEs on Amazon. I was debating the GEs because I could get them locally. Thanks for the help. We will see how they work.
Good luck. I haven’t done any coding for STs. The GE dimmer will load sense out of the box when installed with STs, which is a real improvement over the previous situation where you either coded for it yourself or used a GE controller to enable load-sensing.
The Linears (GoControl PD300Z-2) seemed to work fine out of the box. They do look to be the same as the GEs; they even mention option 29. With one lamp plugged into them, the load sensing works perfectly. I do have the case where I have 2 lamps plugged into an extension cord plugged into one dimmer. All works fine when controlling through the app. However, load sensing does not seem to work if they are both plugged in. Has anyone had any experience with that? Both lamps are always on/off together, so I am just trying to save on an additional module.
if i understand how the load sensing works, my guess is they must send a minute amount of electricity through the lamp even when the walwart is “off” (imaging a continuity tester). It then senses if the electricity returns to the walwart and if so it understands that the lamp connected has it’s switch on. If you turn the lamp off then no electricity returns to the walwart and it understands the lamp switch is off. If you then toggle to on it senses the electrical flow and it wakes up and turns on the correct amount of electricity to light the bulb (s).
with 2 lamps connected in parellal like would occur if both connect to one, as long as one stays on then the walwart never senses the lamps switch as off. So it will never work.
…again if my logic is correct
Ah. I gotcha. I will play around a little more, but that makes sense. Minor inconvenience now, but at least these have a button on them as well. Thanks for the assistance.
I used the code for the dimmer switch and got the dim rate to ramp fast.
I tried using the code to create a Device Type that sets the parameter 29 to “1” to turn on load sensing. I then used it momentarily for my ST Plug Outlet and Iris Plug Outlet. It did not turn on load sensing.
Am I misunderstanding whether these outlets have load sensing available? Is it a different parameter?
Anyone got any lists of parameters by device manufacturer?
Not sure exactly what you are doing. STs will now automatically sense the GE load-sensing plug and configure it for load-sensing. You don’t have to program the parameter with custom code. The GE plug comes with a manual that lists all parameters and their variables and these can be set with a GE controller, if you have one. I haven’t been doing any programming so you would have to ask one of the users who does do this for help if you want custom code.
every device has it’s own paramaters so you can’t just change 29 on any device and have it work.
it’s kind of like saying:
On a dodge charger have the 3rd button from the left tune the FM radio to 99.9.
If you tell a forde focuse to have the “3rd button from the left” turn to 99.9, that button might actually just be a button for turning on the rear defroster so telling it to turn to 99.9 means nothing.
you need to get the list of paramaters for each device from the manual and then go from there.
that sat I only know z-wave and i think ST uses zigbee and i have no idea if that has a similar way of doing things. Iris too i THINK uses zigbee or some other non z-wave for their branded devices but just not sure sorry.
Z-wave seems to be more flexible/have more options but it costs more as it’s somewhat proprietary/ sole source.