I have a Leviton Z Wave switch (DZ6HD) at the bottom of a stairway. It’s on a 3-way circuit with a matching DD00R-DL switch at the top of the stairs. I have some lighting automation run to automatically turn on or off other lights when this switch is turned on or off. However, the automations only run when the downstairs (DZ6HD) is physically toggled, and not when the upstairs switch (DD00R-DL) is toggled.
So far, I’ve been able to access graph API for smartthings and see that the events for my switch are only being created when physically toggled by the main switch. no events appear for the device when toggled by the upstairs switch.
Is this normal / expected ?
Is there any way to see if the DD00R-DL is generating any kind of event that may be listed elsewhere?
Where can i find ALL events? If I go to the hub events, i dont see the device events. Same with location events. Is there just an “everything” list of events so I might discover if anything is being logged for the upstairs switch?
Is there a way I can somehow make the DD00R-DL trigger an event as if it were the DZ6HD?
is there a better solution? newer switches that support this?
I have (and love) some of these Leviton dimmers as well but I don’t have any automations triggered by them so I haven’t run into this.
The DDOOR-DL has no Z-wave radio, it’s a special-purpose dumb switch that works only with various Leviton smart switches. It there was an event, it would have to come from the smart switch (DZ6HD in your case).
I’m kind of surprised that there’s no event when lights are switched on regardless of which switch you toggle.
Maybe post screenshots of one of your automations…
Hey Hal, I agree I was expecting the physical toggling of DD00R-DL to have the main DZ6HD to send an event.
Sooo to complicate things, the automation actually runs in my Google Home. I have SmartThings linked in Googles “Works with Google” feature. It reads the events from SmartThings and toggles the automation appropriately. I think the issue is that there are no events being toggled by the dumb switch; even though its connected to the DZ6HD. If I can figure out how to get an event, I think i can solve the problem.
The automation is pretty simple logic:
When you turn on the basement hallway lights, also turn on some other lights in the basement.
When you turn off the basement hallway lights, also turn off the rest of the basement lights.
It is meant to be run when i turn on the lights from upstairs (where i enter the basement) and also turned off from upstairs (as i exit the basement). Unfortunately, the DZ6HD is in the basement at the bottom of the stairs. So the automation only turns off all the lights if i hit the switch downstairs and then walk up a dark stair case (clearly suboptimal). My last resort is to swap the DZ6HD and DD00R-DL since I mostly use the switch at the top of the stairs; but I’m not thrilled about any re-wiring necessary in the wall.
Yeah, as you noted this would involve rewiring as, from memory, the DD00R has to go in the box with line and the DZ6HD in the one with load.
Here’s what I’m seeing for events. For each of the three on/off events in the log I turned the lights on with one of the switches and off with the other.
The DZ6HD RD wire does appear to switch power on/off to the lights as the switch is toggled. So I believe that is the load wire (using NC tester). BK and YL/RD appear to be constantly powered no matter what. This is a bit odd to me, as I believe in traditional 3-way circuits that the traveler wire would switch at times. But I know these are far from basic 3-ways; so I’m assuming its working via some kind of data signal instead.
The other interesting thing is that both DZ6HD and DD00R get line power so its less “one gets line and the other gets load” and more “they both get line, but the DZ6HD sends the LOAD through RD”. ami?
Yes, they both have to have power. Obviously the DZ6HD needs it. The DD00R needs power for the LEDs.
As you said, these aren’t wired anything like a traditional, dumb 3-way. Nor are they wired like some of the simpler aux switches used by, for example, GE/Jasco.
It seems wrong to me that the traveler wire connected to the YL/RD terminals on both devices has constant power. I’ve assumed that is used to signal from the DD00R to the DZ6HD. Line is “sent” to the DZ6HD on the black wire/BK terminal. The DZ6HD controls the load using the RD terminal which is unusual.
I guess all I can say is that the two sets of these that I have do not exhibit the problem you’re seeing. Might be worth a call to Leviton or a search for any support forums they have. Or next step could be to try replacing the DD00R.
I’ll try to find some time to open up my installation of these and see what is happening on the YL/RD terminals. But it’s a busy week followed by holiday travel so I can’t promise anything.
It’s also possible Michael @ritchierich can help here. He’s a wizard with wiring issues.
Do you know what firmware version you are using in your DZ6HD? Apparently they are upgradable (thought not with ST hubs…). According to graph, I have ver:1.13. There is an OTA that I’m going to try to apply using a Zoos stick to get to 1.22.
Ah! Yes, that could be your problem. I had to upgrade the firmware on all my Leviton devices about 2 years ago. My symptoms were that they kept dropping offline for no reason.
Mine are all running version 1.20.
You can’t use SmartThings to upgrade, you’ll need a z-wave USB stick and a PC. You might be able to join the z-wave stick to your mesh as a secondary controller and upgrade that way.
Otherwise you have to remove the device(s) from the SmartThings mesh and add them to the stick’s mesh, do the update, then move the devices back to the SmartThings mesh. That’s more work because, obviously, and messes with automations.
