This post was flagged and moved to a new topic. I’m not quite sure why, but I apologize for any transgression. I’m unhiding it in the hopes that the content is acceptable in the new topic. Thanks.
I’ve stumbled into this problem. I bought several of the old Iris (GE) dimmers at Lowe’s ($10 price match). These don’t have a labeled neutral connection - just line, load, traveler & ground; there is a fifth connection completely unmarked.
I’ve installed two: one drives 8 LED’s (~80w) without issue: Z-Wave connects to ST, on/off/dim all good. The second has issues. It’s controlling a single LED. At a dimmed level, it’s good; but at full brightness, the switch turns itself off after a period of 15-45 seconds.
I’ve tried two such switches with similar results, except one paired and one hasn’t yet.
From reading this thread, my guess is that the higher load of 8 lights is working because the trickle is absorbed without being noticed. The single light, I would expect to fail at the dimmed level more than at full load, but it doesn’t.
Any analysis would be appreciated. Is it possible the unlabeled connector is a neutral which would solve the problem?
An update… The switch that has 80w of load is not doing as well as I thought. It seems to be good, but the ST Activity Log has entries, more than one per minute, for it going on and off. No change is visually apparent in the lights themselves.
Yes, that empty hole is neutral because GE has only one genetic case for all the different switches. I highly doubt it you will find a neutral inside because of the different circuit board. I disassembled an aux switch a while back hoping to find line and load before
There is a known issue with non-neutral dimmer and LED so there’s not much you can do about it. Only solution I can think of is to add an incandescent light to it.
There could be several different things going on. I agree minimum load is likely one issue. There’s a lot of discussion on that in the following thread which might be helpful. Many switches that don’t use neutrals need at least a 40 W minimum load or dimming doesn’t work properly.
The log entries concern me, though. There shouldn’t be any log entries if the issue is just flickering because of insufficient load. That’s just a mechanical thing that happens at the fixture, SmartThings wouldn’t even normally know was happening. Are the log entries for set level? Or something else? I ask about the set level because there have been some bugs and that lately including random commands being sent.
It’s also possible there’s runway polling somewhere but we’ll know more from the log entries.
So could even be that there’s more than one problem going on
As far as having messages moved, don’t be concerned about that. It happens all the time. Just keeps the threads clean. It’s really common that a question gets asked and the people who know the answer know that it will be off topic for that particular thread. The person asking the question doesn’t know because they don’t know the answer. I had several Harmony posts moved out of one thread yesterday because I thought The problem was related to the firmware update and it turned out to be something entirely different. No big deal, the moderator started a new thread for my comments and in fact the person who knew the answer read the post, asked a couple questions, and fixed the problem today.
Thanks, @JDROBERTS. The model is ZW3003 (made by Jasco). The Activity Log entries are “SWITCH was turned on” and “SWITCH was turned off”, alternating, with about 5 pairs per minute.
That model is one of the older ones that does not use a neutral. As Ray said, the unlabeled entry is just because they use the same case as the one that does use a neutral. But it doesn’t have the Internal connections for it.
This model is only intended for use with incandescents. From the manufacturer:
Not for use with Fluorescent or low voltage lights, motor loads
LEDs are low voltage lights in this context.
If the on/off represents voltage jump at the switch, that’s not good. It may just be incompatible with the bulbs in fixture that you are using.
The first thing you can try is just replacing the LEDs with incandescents. If you still get the on/off, it may be a defective switch. It happens.
If the switch is fine with the incandescents, then you have a choice to make. Try a different Bulb, or try a different switch.
@Navat604 or one of the other electrical experts would know more, but I would be concerned about the switch burning itself out given what you’re seeing.
Just keeps the threads clean. It’s really common that a question gets asked and the people who know the answer know that it will be off topic for that particular thread. The person asking the question doesn’t know because they don’t know the answer. I had several Harmony posts moved out of one thread yesterday because I thought The problem was related to the firmware update and it turned out to be something entirely different. No big deal, the moderator started a new thread for my comments and in fact the person who knew the answer read the post, asked a couple questions, and fixed the problem today.