I currently have 4 Fibaro dimmers set up in my house. However, I get very odd behaviour from all of them. If I use the switch attached to the S1 port which should just turn the lights connected to the dimmer on and off (ie without the need of any z-wave wireless communication), it is very intermittent. The switch actually only correctly turns on/turns off the lights about half of the time. Sometimes they work first time, sometimes it takes 3 or 4 switches to get a repsonse.
Confusingly, operating the dimmers wirelesly (with z-wave commands) works every time. More confusingly, several of my dimmers I have set up associations with other dimmers so that flicking a switch will should turn on the lights connected to that dimmer as well as another dimmer. Annoyingly, it often turns the other dimmers lights on but not its own. Very frustrating! Therefore, as a minimum, I conclude the dimmers themselves are connected up properly to the lighting wiring.
In case it is relevant, here is a quick explanation of my wiring: Living in the UK (and therefore without a neutral wire behind the switch), I have a live wire and a switched-live wire connected to the ‘L’ and ‘O’ ports respectively on the dimmer and have a jumper lead connecting the ‘N’ and ‘O’ ports.
I then have two switches connected up to the ‘S1’ and ‘S2’ ports both of which are fed power from the ‘S0’ port.
I have tried several dimmers with both monostable and bistable swtiches (altering the relevant variable on the dimmer in each case). But the problem persists with both type of swtich.
I decided to investigate a bit further. So I used a screwdriver with a voltage detector bulb inside it and noticed there was voltage at the ‘S1’ and S2’ ports even when I had the switch selected to off. I thought this was very odd, but didnt necessarily know if it was wrong.
Has anyone else had the same issues as me? Anyone any ideas why my dimmers are so temperamental?
What load are you trying to switch? If it’s low power (eg LED) then that may be an issue if you don’t have a load bypass. I’m in UK with several Fibaro dimmers working just fine, for halogen and LEDs.
Good thinking…but even the smallest load is 4 x 50W halogen bulbs.
I have used a voltage detecting screwdriver just to see where current is flowing. I am picking up a voltage on the S1 and S2 terminal which I didnt expect. Do you get the same thing?
While just messing around, I changed parameter 10 to 0 (so the dimmer doesnt move smoothly between light levels). This has suddenly increased the reliability of the dimmers materially. Ill test them for a few days and report back…
So I used a screwdriver with a voltage detector bulb inside it and noticed there was voltage at the 'S1' and S2' ports even when I had the switch selected to off. I thought this was very odd, but didnt necessarily know if it was wrong.
I was fitting a new Fibaro dimmer today on an LED fixture (with a bypass) and took the opportunity to measure some voltages. I’m running on 240V AC and measure about 80V DC between Sx (positive) and S1/S2. Indeed, there HAS to be some voltage there for the switch closure to be detected, but the source impedance is very high (>100K Ohms) so the current through the switches is small ~0.5mA. Just measuring with a voltmeter made the lights switch.
I installed one yesterday and had the same issue, but I fixed it by adding a parameter to Vera. Do you happen to be using a momentary switch? If so, it could be the same issue I had and I will post the solution later once I get home…
I had the same problem but stumbled across the real cause - the switch inputs don’t work properly if parameter 10 is non zero AND association group 3 is empty.
Once I added my controller to group 3, it all started working.
Are you using step down transformer for your halogen bulbs? I have the same problem when I am using linear step down transformer (dimmable). After changing it to leading edge electronics transformer (Phllips), it works fine.
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