Radioshack seems to be at it again with their el-cheapo z-wave stuff. I am looking at buying the subject switch [url=http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3882042&clickid=cart]RadioShack.com Official Site - America's Technology Store but amazon reviews seem to be scary. Should I even think of getting this (along with a cheap trane for $60 ;D)
[quote=“akashk, post:1, topic:167304”]Radioshack seems to be at it again with their el-cheapo z-wave stuff. I am looking at buying the subject switch [url=http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3882042&clickid=cart]RadioShack.com Official Site - America's Technology Store but amazon reviews seem to be scary. Should I even think of getting this (along with a cheap trane for $60 ;D)[/quote] I haven’t had any issues with it. Worst case your out $20…
They work well…I have some of them in my house and they are version 3.0A that they are selling.
So for clarity–these are incandescent loads only, or are they good for CFL as well?
–Richard
So for clarity–these are incandescent loads only, or are they good for CFL as well?
–Richard[/quote]
Hmm…according to the manual, incandescent-only. Does anyone besides Leviton make Z-wave dimmers for CFLs?
–Richard
The amazon reviews and other bad reviews are probably due to the wiring of these. Many older homes have no nuetral wires, and if you don’t, these wont work. It also depends on the wiring of the lights, etc…
All of the GE stuff I’ve ever tested was top notch, good stuff and 2.0a and 3.0a support beaming for locks
Just my .02 but I’ve had the GE stuff fail at a amazing rate. I bought a house full of the stuff and am now replacing them a room at a time. In other news…I have a bunch of these for sale 
If you have any of the on/off type ones rather than a dimmer then I’d be up for buying some!?
I can honestly say, that I have had a bunch of these switches in my house for over 2 years and have never had one single failure.
I have had bad experience with the 3-Way GE switches. Will not allow 100% brightness, which seems to be a common issue among many users. I would not buy the 3-way. The dimmer switches work fine.
No, I’m afraid I don’t have any of the on/off switches, just a LOT of dimmers.
My original reaction to all this zwave stuff has been it’s either good or junk but I’m learning that it really depends on the application. I do have issue with GE’s use of odd ball wiring (who uses candy cane striped wires?) but after having 6 of them go in about a month, I was personally done with them. I do have to say that once I got passed those and got rid of all the 3 way switches, they work well.
My advise to anyone who asks is simply, it’s your house and what level of quality do you want? If you are good with something that’s inexpensive but will likely have a high fail rate than go that route. I personally find that frustrating but can’t afford to just buy a few dozen high quality switches so I buy 3 or 4 at a time.
Ignore the Amazon reviews, most of them describe a problem as a result of incorrectly wiring them up. I have 5 of the 3 way dimmers and have never had a problem with them and for $20 you can’t really go wrong 
Mine are wired CORRECTLY. Have a Neutral wire and they DON’T work properly…
One is only 8 feet apart from the master and the other is farther (bottom/top of stairs).
Both only go to 50% brightness and recently, the one that is only 8 feet apart is now starting to randomly flash to full brightness. I am replacing the flashing one with the Wayne-Dalton HA14WD and a regular remote switch. The other one I increased the wattage of the bulbs to partially compensate for the brightness deficiency.
I just bought a “butt load” of these switches from Radio Shack, and will begin putting them in as soon as I get some free time.
Probably 90% of my house already has Z-wave light switches installed, but I think I’ll be close to 98% when all is said and done. Hopefully, my experience won’t match vera_nc’s!
Same experience as vera_nc here! I tried multiple ways to rectify this issue, including doubling the carrier wire. The way my original switch was wired I had to bring power from one box to the other through a spare wire so I had the carrier signal and power in the 2 wires from Box A to Box B. The only way I could make these switches work properly was to run a wire directly from one box to the other outside the wall as a test, and then I could get them to work correctly. Any attempt to use the wiring in the wall failed.
Either one of 2 things are causing this:
- Switches too far apart - This is ridiculous as my switches are the same as millions of 3-way applications at the top and bottom of a stairway.
- Interference with signal from power in other wires adjacent to carrier line - This is what I believe is the case - See thread below:
[url=http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=4193.0]http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php?topic=4193.0[/url]
I have two of these wired up in my house and they work “most” of the time. For some reason one of them likes to stop working when I use the traveler or dummy switch. To fix this I have to either pull the air gap switch or use MCV (strange) and all is fine. This happens maybe once every month or so and oddly enough only seems to happen to my roommates so I haven’t really dug into the problem.
I’ll put it this way…at the $20 price tag I bought 5 more. I have mostly GE outlets and will now have mostly GE switches in my house. They are not the Cadillac of switches but hey, I only drive a Chevrolet.
I suspect Chimpware isn’t the only person who has experienced this.
If you do not get 100% brightness, I recommend the following
- Verify the master switch (the one with the blue led) is closest to the load/light. If not, the switch must be relocated to the box closest the load.
- Determine where the source power is located
3a) If the source power is closest to the master switch
then follow the direction for the slave switch. Specifically, connect the white wire with red tracer to hot (black)
3b) If the source power is closest to the slave switch
then ignore the direction and connect the white wire with red tracer to the neutral (white)
You will have a correctly functioning 3 way dimmer setup. Please check the back of the slave switch to see the note that says white / red tracer (hot or common).
These are great switches that work as designed. I suspect what we have is a case where the product was designed and engineered outside the US; and the manual was translated with only partial success. Subsequently, you get a lot of frustration and unhappy customers who have perfectly good switches.
If your GE 3-way gets only 50-80% of full brightness or you have the load in a different box than the master switch, try the white / red tracer “trick”.
Ok, I apologize up front as I have searched these forums and am sure I am being redundant, but after hours of reading I am still at a loss.
Ge 3 ways. Will they work in a 4 way situation? I have a single light that was on a normal non 3 way switch and a set of 3 other hall way lights that were. 1) I want to combine the non 3 way light with the other lights so that when turning on the 3 way all the lights in the hallway light. Can I just tie the lead to both light sets (the single, plus the other lights together)? 2) Can I have 1 master plus 3 slave/aux switches with the GE dimmers? 3) do I use the neutral or the hot to connect to my aux switches? I have 14-3 wiring to each location and the hot is where the master switch is. in 2 of the aux boxes there are 2 14-3 that connect down stream…
Are the single light and the group of lights on the same branch circuit? If they’re not, you want to make sure you’re not overloading your circuit.
Depends on the exact situation if you can wire your single light in with the rest and still have wires left to put an aux there.
One master plus three aux switches implies 5-way. But you can do 4-way (and possibly 5-way with the GE’s, but the manual doesn’t seem to say anything about it). At least theoretically. I would try it out on a bench first. Getting it wired right with your existing wiring may be a challenge. And even if that’s all correct, it may still not work due to the length/interference issues people have reported.
You can use either neutral or hot for the aux switches. People have reported sometimes getting better results with neutral. Neutral is also compatible with GE’s other switches.
Perhaps it’s easier to keep stuff separated and use Vera to make a virtual 4-way? Again, I would try that out though, see if you’re happy with it etc., before messing with the existing wiring.
Thanks @oTi
Not sure I understand branch circuit. In my hallway there is a 4 gang box which had 1 light on a single switch and three other lights on a 5?way setup. I just tied the black from the single light to the black of the multi light circuit and connected that to my blue wire off the ge master. Connected red to yellow and white to neutral and black to the common power in the 4 gang box. Then it appears that from there the 14-3 wire go to the 1st aux then another leg of 14-3 goes to another ( so you end up with 2 red 2 black and 2 white in each aux box except the last one in the chain. I connected the 2 reds and 2 blacks together and connected the blacks to the white red stripe and the yellow to the 2 reds in each box. (except that last box which has one red and one black) That doesn’t work…