Before you purchase anything, make sure you have the neutral (white) wire in your box. You’ll need all three of them, black (line), white (neutral), and green/bare (ground). Plus the feeder wires to the bulb/fan. These devices you’re looking at require the neutral wire. The third is an add-on to the dimmer to allow three-way install for control from two different locations, it does not have any z-wave capabilities (it won’t connect to ST itself, but works with the z-wave dimmer)
Right now, my ceiling fan/light is controlled by a wireless transmit/receiver set up. I have an attic so I will need to pull some wire, but I am the one who pulled wire for all my ceiling lighting wiring throughout my house…
Do the actual switches sound correct for my set up?
Yes, I have lots of 12724s and some 12723s in my home. Only issue I find with them is they are slow to report when the switch changed (on or off is done with a fade, the switch event is sent to SmartThings after the fade ended, not when it started, causing a 1-2 second delay in reporting)
When you say reporting, are you talking about a delay in a command received? Or are you talking about data gathered?
Also, since the one switch is an add-on. does this mean I can buy the same add-on switch to turn off/on other lights around my house? That would be nice as they are 1/3 cheaper in cost.
I believe when he says reporting, he is talking about the switch reporting back to the hub that it is on/off. Because it ramps up and down it waits to tell the hub that it is on and off until it has ramped all the way up or down.
This would really only be important if you are using the state of the switch being on/ off to control something besides the load it is connected to. It will lag a little bit.
As for the add-on switch. It is the mate / partner to the master switch. The master switch has the load wire connection on it. It actually does ALL the load control. The auxiliary (add-on) switch signals to the master switch through the traveler wire from the master to the add-on. So in your box for the add-on switch you will need a traveler wire from the master and a neutral.
So the add-on is only used if your doing 3 or 4 way circuits. You will always need a master (more expensive) switch to control the load.
Ah, got it. So the add-on is wired to the master? I was thinking it was somehow wirelessly paired, so I could put another add-on switch in a bedroom for example.
There are other brands the the add-on / remote actually pair to the hub separately.
I don’t remember the type exactly as I have all GE switches right now. I do remember reading about them.
I tried to find a link to share but having no luck. @JDRoberts is the man with the technical answers. He can find it and point you in the right direction. He always does.
There’s more discussion of various Switch features in the following thread. The light switch discussion starts around post 40.
As far as set up’s using physical traveler wires versus those using virtual wireless communication, it just varies by brand. All of the GE switches and most of the Levitons use physical traveler wires. Cooper, GoControl, Homeseer, and I think evolve don’t use physical traveler wires.
The lutron Caseta line is unusual in that you can either use its own wireless auxiliary (the pico) or you can use physical traveler wires to connect it to a traditional nonnetworked toggle auxiliary. But in that case you only get on/off from the auxiliary, you don’t get dimming. But it is an option that most of the other brands don’t have.
Stopped at the local Home Depot at my lunchtime. Instead of going 3 gang, I think I am going to go 2 gang. 1 fan switch and a on/off for the hallway.
I picked up a single Phillips Hue and give it a test with my Smartthings. I have a Google Home coming in today. I guess I can just tell it to turn on the Ceiling Fan Light and Dim if necessary. If this doesn’t work right, I can always put the Hue somewhere else in the house.
Weird, not sure what happened on that, I just got the link off of Google. But anyway, I updated it with a link from the SmartThings support database, see if that one works. It’s the same file.
Just so i get my electrical terminology correct. Normally it’s the black wires that goes to normal on/off switches. We need a white (neutral) on this zwave switch since it needs power. Correct?