GE Smart In-Wall Zwave switch not working...little blue light blinking

This just happened to me, I call the support number let them know what was going on and they are sending me a new one.

Anyone have any luck reviving one of these switches? I just had one do this yesterday. I had shut down the power on one breaker while I installed a ceiling fan in an adjacent room, and my kids said they heard a pop when I turned power back on. We didnā€™t know what had made the noise, but later discovered that one of these Jasco switches was blinking the blue LED, and the light it was controlling would no longer turn on. Iā€™m guessing the pop is not a good sign.

We talked about it recently in this thread GE Switch & Outlet Failures

Apparently some capacitor goes bad (c7 I think?) and the issue usually is found after power is restored after an outage. Iā€™ve just had two fail recently after power outages. The newer switches donā€™t seem to have this problem.

Jasco has extended warranties to 5 years. They sent me a replacement for free after contacting their toll free number. Itā€™s worth trying to contact them.

Some report taking the switch apart and replacing the faulty capacitor which involves soldering it out, but that seems more trouble then its worth.

Short of replacing the switch or capacitor though, there is no other way to fix it.

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So, has anyone figured out how to pair GE switches. I just installed 3, and only one will pair. They all work fine as switches, but they are expensive switches and I want them to work with SmartThings. 2 of my switches I bought a long time ago and one paired, but the other wonā€™t. I just bought one off of Amazon and it seems to work fine, but wonā€™t pair. It is about 9 or 10 feet from the hub. The other one is in the other room, so I moved the hub a few feet away from it, but I couldnā€™t get it to pair after trying 5 or 10 times.

What is the trick? It says to put the hub in pairing mode and press the switch once. And then it just times out. I have the V2 hub, STH-ETH-200 and am using the new app on Android.

What is up with pairing on SmartThings? I canā€™t seem to get a lot of devices to pair. I have a motion sensor from Monoprice that wonā€™t work, and a power strip from Greenwave that used to work, but doesnā€™t any more. My Aeon Labs wall plug used to work fine, but now I canā€™t get it reset or paired anymore. Aeon Labs isnā€™t even on the list of companies now. And also the 2 GE wall switches wonā€™t work.

Once the hub is inclusion mode, which starts by adding the zwave device from the + button in the app, you just have to click the switch up or down one time to add it.

It may need a factory reset if something went wrong. Put one finger at the top and another at the bottom of the switch. You would click up 3 times with one finger then down 3 times immediately with the other finger. The led should flash. Some tips here Z-Wave FAQ

Adding screenshots:

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Iā€™m having the same problem with two switches after a power outage. I contact Jasco and they are sending two v3 switches to replace my v1s. They also asked for a picture of the label on each switch for verification.

Thanks, Everyone!

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Did they extend the warranties on these?

Yes the warranty was extended to 5 years. They replaced one for me recently. We talked about it on the linked thread and others have had success with the new longer warranty.

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So awesome that they extended the warranty to 5 years. I was ready to go to another manufacturer. I believe Iā€™ve had 6 of my original 14291ā€™s fail. Iā€™m really hoping the replacement 46201ā€™s donā€™t have the same issue! So far so good!

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So, this is the second and third Jasco switch failure for me. What other manufacturers are alternatives. Iā€™m not inclined to buy these in the future if there are other options. Thanks.

Both zooz and innovelli are very popular zwave switches in the community. Both are budget priced but with many of the newest Z wave features. both companies are small but have been around for a few years and have support staff active in this forum if you have any questions. (Zooz is the house brand for the retailer The Smartest House.) both have historically had very responsive support departments. they have somewhat different features, so different people have different preferences, but both have good engineering. And both have committed to keeping up with the latest smartthings architecture changes, so there will be custom edge Drivers for both to expose advanced features. :sunglasses:

Listed alphabetically:

https://www.thesmartesthouse.com/collections/zooz

You can find lots of discussion of these in the forum if you have any additional questions. or contact their support directly.

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Thanks, I just ordered a Zooz unit.

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Another Jasco just started flashing the blue led and has become unresponsive. Thatā€™s 3 in 2 days. Is there something with SmartThings thatā€™s killing these? Planned obsolescence by Jasco? What is going on here?!

GE/Jasco offers a 5 year warranty on them. If you purchased them within that time period reach out to them for a warranty replacement. Most all of my 17XX on/off switches have failed and they were replaced by Jasco under warranty with brand new switches.

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It is usually a power surge that kills them. The surge could be from the utility or it could be from you operating your own circuit breaker.

I killed one by turning of the power to install a new smart switch.

Jasco is good about replacing them if they are less than 5 years old

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That makes sense. I turned off the power to replace one that failed and
found another had failed on the same circuit.

Mine were purchased in 2015 so Iā€™m screwed. Iā€™m replacing all of the failed
Jasco junk with Zooz. Is it unreasonable to expect $30 switches to last
more than 7 years?

Dan

Regrettably, yes.

The usual industry rule of thumb is that an electronic device can be reasonably expected to last twice as long as the warranty period, although itā€™s not guaranteed to work beyond the warranty period, and it may be made out of date as a separate issue.

The original warranty on those devices was I think, one year. Possibly two for some models.

The warranty on the newest models is now five years, so it wouldnā€™t be unreasonable to expect those to last for about 10, although not guaranteed.

Is it best practice to pull the air gap on any on a circuit you are going to turn off? Or is pulling the air gap just as likely to be a problem? I realizing I think I have had a couple die the same way.

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The purpose of the air gap is to isolate that one individual switch from the circuit. You shouldnā€™t need to use it if youā€™re going to turn off the entire circuit at switchbox, although some electricians do just as part of their regular routine before working on a switch to protect against someone else turning the circuit back on unexpectedly.

I was more thinking protecting it from a power surge. Meaning is there more likely to be a surge by turning on the circuit and having the air gap turned on verse turning on the circuit with the air gap off and then enabling the air gap.

Struggling to figure out the right terminology to use for air gap, but when I say on I mean the switch is live versus off means it is pulled out so the switch is dead.