Zooz Zen22 3-Way Woes

I’m new to Smartthings but have 10+ Zooz 3-Way dimmers in my home. Been thru the typical 3-way wiring procedure on each, but running into something new for some garage lights that are switched from the stairs and the door and and need some ideas.

My setup includes:

Door: 3-way switch with Line (Black) , Load (Black), Neutral (White) and Traveller (Red) wires
Stairs: 3-way switch with Black, White and Red wires

I currently have a Zooz Zen22 v4 3-way dimmer connected in the switch I call Door with with each of the 4 wires connected to respective connection on the Zooz Zen22. White wire was tapped into a neutral bundle in the box as there are other switches (for other fixtures in box).

I have the dumb 3-way dimmer in the switch I’ll call Stairs and 3 wires in it. Black, Red, White. I followed the diagram in the instructions by capping black wire and attaching white and red to slave dimmer. No dice. I tried a bunch of configurations and can get Zooz at door location to power by incorporating black wire. I get lights to respond to manual taps , app and Google assistant no problem, but when I switch at the slave (Stairs) I can turn on and off, but when left in off position, there is no power to Zooz switch at door. Smartthings no longer sees it and the only want to get it back to power is to flip slave at Stairs.

Bad chart:

Door - Zooz 22
Line (Black)
Load (Black)
Traveller (Red)
Neutral (White)

Stairs - Dumb 3-way
Capped (Black)
Common (White)
Pole (Red)

Just cant get slave to work as the others in my house after trying everything. I have heard that a regular old 2-way switch can be used but have not tried. Any ideas or things to try?

Contact support at The Smartest House. (Zooz is their house brand.) They are very good at helping with wiring questions.

There’s a note on their site that they are being affected by the big storm right now, so there may be a delay in getting back to you.

BTW, some models in the zooz line can work with an existing dumb on/off switch for a three-way, but I don’t believe the dumb switch can be a dimmer. So that might be part of the issue.

Thanks JD, Not expecting to dim from slave location. Other 3-way in my house have Zooz dimmer and slave 3-way dumb dimmer. The action from the slave is either off, or on to previous dim level.

In this new scanario, I can use slave to turn on and off, but when in off position, there is no control from the Zooz master to turn lights on again from the (door) location mentioned above. This is not good as the slave switch (at stair location) is used manually at times when entering house from garage. Further, if the slave switch is off, Smarthings cannot connect to (door) zooz dimmer. Even worse I use Google Asst and voice commands. Thse can only be used when the dumb switch is in one position.

After trying just about everything to get this working, I may swap location of zooz master and dumb slave switch. Only problem is that at the (stairs) location the switch box only has 3 wires not including ground. Black/Red/White. This means that the dumb dimmer would have 2 black, 1 red and 1 white (which is tied into the neutral bundle). Not sure if not having one of the black wires (load) connected on the zooz switch will work. SO here is what it would look like (sorry no pics)

New master (stairs) Zooz dimmer
Black (line)
White (neutral)
Red (Traveller)
Black load (empty)

New slave (door) dumb 3-way
Black (line) & Black (load) tied together
Red (one pole)
With (common)

Does this make any sense?

Any luck on this? Planning to install couple of zen22 switches with 3-way mode with a dumb switch. Thanks.

Not sure about the zen22, but i did not have this issue with the zen26. Dumb switch is not a dimmer. I can control with Smartthing and the zen26 regardless of the position of the dumb switch.

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