I’m new to z-wave and am looking to install a few wall switches and dimmers, but I have a minor but nagging question about the rocker panels on the switches. Obviously, with a non-z-wave switch, when the top of the rocker panel is pushed in, the lights are on, and when the bottom of the panel is pushed in, the lights are off. But once you throw z-wave into the mix, don’t things get confusing? If I manually turned the lights on (e.g. the top of the rocker panel is pushed in), and then a z-wave event causes the lights to turn off (e.g. no motion detected, etc.), won’t the rocker panel still be in the “on” position? If so, then the next time I want to turn the lights on, how do I do that? Do I have to first turn the rocker panel to “off” (even though the lights are already off) and then back to the “on” position?
What manufacturer of switch are you using?
The light switches I have (Intermatic) the rocker does not stay in. It’s a momentary switch.
There is a little led that turns on when the light is in the on state (and blinks when the switch is being commanded or polled).
To turn them off, you always press the bottom of the rocker.
To turn them on, you always press the top.
To dim or brighten, you press and hold the appropriate end.
Hopefully that was helpful.
I have both Leviton and GE switches.
On the Leviton switch, you press the bottom of the switch to turn on and turn off. Pressing the top does not do anything.
On the GE switch, the rocker is a momentary switch (like described above for Intermatic), and you push the top to turn on, and bottom to turn off.
The Leviton switch has a green LED, the GE a blue LED.
The Leviton switch feels like a better switch, but I think the GE switch is more user friendly (and I prefer the blue led over the green).
Thank you all for your replies. That answers my question perfectly. I was looking at getting the Leviton Vizia RF + switches, but after hearing how they work compared to the GE and Intermatic switches, I may go with one of those instead. For some reason, it seems more logical to press different ends of the rocker panel for “on” and “off” rather than the same end for both.
Thanks!
It’s a matter of taste and is not that weird, really, to use Leviton Vizia RF switches.
On the other hand, they are of a better quality than Intermatic, ACT or GE… The only switches, which are supposedly better (i.e. more expensive 
) are from the Cooper Aspire series, but they are way too expensive for my budget.
Also, the switches with the rocker panel, like you described, are more common in Europe, while in the US, standard switches use stick-like rocking toggle. There is a Z-Wave switch like that from Intermatic - HA20C. I’m not sure how it changes it’s position when controlled remotely…
there’s a table here that compares most of the common switches:
http://store.homeseer.com/store/HomeSeer-Z-Wave-Dimming-Wall-Switch-Matrix-W16C64.aspx
besides the usual suspects above are the ACT homepro’s. That brand is typically much cheaper than all the bigger name brands. As another plus they have some ability to tweak that others dont (personally i like the ability to adjust the ramp rate that isn’t availible on others.). there’s times when i want the switch to go ON and I dont want to wait a second or so for it to ramp up. Also some of them have the ability to ‘associate’- so you can have a switch directly talk to another switch or wall wart or whatever and turn it on- without the vera being involved at all- sometimes that’s a nice feature.
(something else to be aware of- looks like currently the schlage wall wart might be a rebranded home pro wall wart- I think that at times others have rebranded the same hardware also- seems outwardly differnt brands look the same at times)
Anyway the downside to the ACT’s is they certainly seem flakier than the big guns. On the chart You’ll notice that the warrenty for them is only 2 years where the others are 5 or more years. I have 3 of the relay type wall switches (for flourescent fixtures) and one just has never been right. The other two are always fine. But the 3rd does weird stuff like it periodically hangs up and sticks on and I have to cut power to reset it.
The only feature I miss from ACT is to control other devices through 2nd and 3rd groups with double and triple press.
I like to fiddle with the ramp rates. But in general that double tap and triple tap is the big one i like. In fact it’s the reason i started playing with home automation years back.
My kids are young so they were/are always leaving the lights on in the basement playroom. The switch of course is at the bottom of the stairs. So i got sick of walking down and up the stairs all the time to just shut a light. So I stuck a pair of acts on the 2 switches at the bottom of the stairs. THen one on the switch at the top of the stairs. The one on the top of the stairs I associated the double tap to the 2 downstairs. So now all i need to do is double tap that from the top of the stairs and I’m golden.
At the time i also purchased homeseer and tried to set that up on an old pc- but it was just too darn complicated to do anything so I just bagged it in. So for a year or 2 there wasn’t even a PC connected but just that one switch still was associated to turn off the basement lights. Recently I found that there’s a bunch more z-wave devices to pick from and the vera box looked simple- set it and forget it for a dummy like me. I just swapped out my router and stuck that in it’s place and now i started adding other stuff in as I get to it.