the version is what you referenced, what’s printed on the part itself, ver. 2.0a, ver. 3.0, etc
I’m not sure what the new ones are but they are in manufacturing (so I was told).
The most fustrating part for me is that these “issues” are starting to feel more like excuses to me. The flickering can’t be tied down to a specific factor, so what’s that mean? Flakey performance? And tonight I’m in the kitchen and look over at the lights the kids left on (on the problem dimmer setup) and sure enough they are on at 100%, I played with the slave switch a few times to see if I could trick it back into not working and I couldn’t. I’ll keep watching it, but for me it’s an interesting puzzle. For my wife it’s f’ing annoying!
from what I’ve read elsewhere (can’t find the thread at the moment), the “a” versions support secure repeating of the Zwave commands (used for the Schlage and Quickset locks), and the non-letter versions do not. so 2.0 doesn’t, but 2.0a or 2.0b, or 3.0a, or 3.0b will. It has to be documented somewhere, but I can’t locate it.
Having read through the mass of posts in this thread, and having similar problems myself, I will suggest a very easy test to resolve 90% of these frustrations:
Hook the main and aux to each other in the MAIN box, traveler-to-traveler, hot to hot or neutral depending on which posts you believe, and see if you can get it working as it should, side by side.
If you can’t get it working that way, give up, return it, throw it out, or use just the main as a dimmer = you probably broke the aux while “experimenting”, or maybe you bought a bad one.
But if it DOES work you know your wiring is correct so forget that part of it and move on to putting the two in their respective boxes with wiring in between EXACTLY as it was when it worked.
Then discover if wire lengths greater than 20ft, or travelers next to others cause problems, etc, and fix that if possible.
Too many variables just make life (and the wife) less enjoyable…
Great Suggestion, did that, been there, didn’t get to the bottom of it.
My experience with it is that it will always work side by side unless it is DOA from the package. As for the traveller > 20’ in the same bundle with the line, neutral, ground, etc… checking pure continuity from box to box and checking for no shorts or continuity faults between lines, all check perfect.
The part that gets me is that running a totally independent line (50’ romex across the garage floor) gets the thing to work perfectly. Hook it up to 30’ across the ceiling and it flickers at 50% regardless of what you try. Same loads, same bulbs, everything pointing to A/C noise within the bundle. I even verified this by running everything from the main to the Aux through the 50’ spare Romex - it flickers in any configuration unless the load and the traveller are physically separated.
So would/does it work with the hot/neutral/ground wires going through the ceiling and a single separate wire connecting the travellers strewn across your garage floor? Sounds like it should. Since it’s a garage you can now staple that “signal” wire to the walls or ceiling like you would for a garage door opener - a luxury most would not have when installing these things in a house with existing wiring…
Yes it works that way, but not an option for me to string the wire. Garage is totally finished and the wife would not take kindly to seeing a wire, even the wires to the garage door opener are recessed.
I t also works in reverse if the line, load and neutral are in the strewn cable and only the traveller runs through the ceiling.
It sounds like keeping the “traveller” line isolated from other active lines is the solution, at least until the manufacturer corrects the design flaw.
Another point - many posters here note that they have old 2 wire circuitry in old houses, with a hot and neutral and no ground. I have 1920s knob-and-tube 2-wire that I am wiring into and fail to see why a missing ground wire would preclude installation of these devices. The ground wire, by code, can never be a part of the active circuit and should not (I’m guessing here) be connected on these devices to anything other than metal casing internally.
I have not tried my own suggestions yet (tonight…) but was wondering if anyone has these devices working on old wiring? I also plan to crack open one of the aux switches I discover once-and-for-all what’s going on in there!
I installed a 4-way setup for a set of incandescent low-voltage lights. They were previously on a Lumitron dimmer set. They worked fine for a while until I brought them up to full brightness. There was a “phitttt” sound from the dimmer and out went the lights. Also a residual burnt insulation smell. I guess they really don’t like any kind of inductive load. >:(
[quote=“xns, post:128, topic:167413”]OK, log one more thing the GE dimmers can’t do.
I installed a 4-way setup for a set of incandescent low-voltage lights. They were previously on a Lumitron dimmer set. They worked fine for a while until I brought them up to full brightness. There was a “phitttt” sound from the dimmer and out went the lights. Also a residual burnt insulation smell. I guess they really don’t like any kind of inductive load. >:([/quote]
Yes, there is a saying with electronics, once you “let the smoke out”, its very hard to get it back in
The dimmers are not rated for any type of inductive load.
Well, the ground wire is there to make it safer, not to make it functional. The switch is probably not allowed to be operated without grounding. (The wall plate screws are connected to the heat sinks on the switch.)
That’s true if you’re going to use the auxiliary dimmer switch that comes with it. However, if you want/need to use the 3-way switch just as a $19.95 2-way switch (if your Radio Shack is out of stock on 2-ways for example) then just wire it up with the two hot leads (black and blue) only and don’t bother with the neutral, ground, or traveler wire and just throw away the aux dimmer box if you like.
The 3-way dimmer only needs to use the two hot leads (black, blue) if used as a 2-way dimmer. [/quote]
santakrooz,
if I use as a 3-way, is the same picture? I mean, can I use only the load, power and traveler wires? without neutral ou ground.
Whoever wired my house decided it was better to wire all the ground together and not include them in the light switches. I guess I see the point, because the ground really does nothing in a light switch, but I don’t know if it’s a code thing or not…
FlyBoyBob, I too have run the gamut of different configurations and it’s annoying that it doesn’t just work. The most obvious reason is listed above as to why 20’ is not acceptable. But, as you suggested apparently on the next version, they have found a solution for the length limitation.
I did also ask if they did any real world test installs before releasing the products. I come out of the consumer electronics field and know that no matter how much testing you do in house once a product goes out there are thing that are encountered which were never even thought about. People do some crazy stuff… but the products should work correctly as long as the specs are met.
That reminds me of a story back when those “no-name” TVs started coming out. I found a deal on a cheap LCD that I picked up for the bedroom, once I hooked up my HDTV receiver (back in like 2000 or 2002, early in the HDTV days) I had problems. I called the manufacturer and finally got though to one of the tech leads. When I started talking about the problem I discovered they had tested out the TV with exactly ONE HDTV tuner. There were more than 100 in the market at the time, 3rd or 4th generation even. But, they had one and it worked fine with that one box, so “ship it”. I sent them two of my HDTV tuners so they could test those and bring the total count to 3, but… That’s just lazy and really unacceptable.
I think Jasco/GE have dropped the ball on something which would have been easy to discover with a limited public testing cycle…
I am planning to use this 45613 switch to replace the switches I have attached in this post. Actually, I have two pairs with the same configuration that I am planning to replace with this switch - one controls lights in the basement that are fluorescent and the other which is upstairs, a regular bulb. Two questions:
Seeing the configuration attached below, can this switch be used?
Can this switch control the fluorescent lights - here I do not need the dimmer part - just on/off?
From the pictures, it looks like a typical 3-Way set up (line (power) comes in on one of the switches and travels through one of the travellers (black/red) and out/up to the light at the other switch). Neutrals and grounds typically don’t tie to switches, some dimmers use neutrals and don’t necessarily require ground but it is safer and the dimmer can us it as a heat sink.
Taking a picture of the switch wiring doesn’t answer many questions, it would be better to take apicture of the wiring inside the box with all switches removed and pulled out and up. The “make-up” or box wiring connections are more telling as to which way the house is wired.
FYI, speaking to the quality of this line of controls, it looks like this is the same line of controls used in the recent deployment of 65,000 nodes in 2,600 rooms at the Wynn in Vegas. I am sure they did a lot of real-world testing and were happy with their performance before accepting such a daunting project. They may have used a new version or modified the switch line, because they speak of an accessory switch that creates 3-Way circuits without a traveller wire (obviously using some kind of radio transmission and there must be a distance limitation, but more than 20ft I assume).
