Hi all, I’m new to smartthings, just got my kit today and am eager to set it up. I picked up a DZS15-1LZ from home depot on my way home to use for my porch light, but am having issues with it. I pulled the old switch off, which had a black common wire and two unlabled wires, one black and one red. I pushed in the common from the old switch to the Hot on the DZS15, the red wire to the red screw on the bottom, and the other black to the third post on the top opposite the common. Turning the breaker back on, I get the LED on the switch to light up, but clicking the switch doesn’t change the light, which in fact just flickers in any state now. The smartthings app was able to find the new switch and connect and I can “control” it from within the app. Can someone help me here? It’s puzzling to me that I seem to have power to the switch since the LED turns on and off properly and the switch is visible to ST, but the light doesn’t seem to be affected, it just flickers.
It sounds like your old switch was a 3-way switch if it had more than 2 wires plus ground going to it - do you have more than 1 light switch that controlled your porch light? If you did have more than one switch connected to the light then you would need to replace the other switch(s) with the Leviton zwave remote switch (VP0SR-1Z or VP0SR-10Z).
Usually a Red wire is called the Traveler wire and is indicative of a 3-way switch installation. The two black wires are your HOT and LOAD wires - one goes to the light, one goes back to your electric source. The wire from the light (LOAD) needs to go to the RED terminal on the switch. The wire from the source (HOT) needs to go to the Black terminal on the switch. You then need to find the Neutral wire in your box which is usually White and is sometimes tied together with other White wires in the back of the electrical box - this is the wire that needs to connect to the screw marked White on the switch.