Is there a way to put my wall switch in an “Always 100% on” Mode? I purchased two multicolor led’s for the front porch and wish to control their light intensity and color independent of the wall switch. I don’t know if accidentally dimming the wall switch (GE Z-Wave Smart Dimmer (In-Wall), 12724) will cause damage to the bulbs.
You’re on the right track. Dimmers modify the AC waveform output to the bulb. The power supplies in “smart” bulbs may not be designed to operate correctly with a chopped waveform, and could even fail catastrophically with the sustained abuse. We would like to think that at 100%, the dimmer isn’t doing anything and it’s just a pass-through, but I personally think it’s unsafe to assume that, and with two kids and a wife in my household who routinely do things I ask them not to do (like unplug switch and appliance modules), if dimming is possible, it will happen.
If you’re going to go with those bulbs long-term, I’d replace the dimmer with a switch. But that’s just me. As a stop-gap, if you’re just experimenting, I’d use a scene to make sure that if the dimmer is turned on at any level, it’s immediately set to 100% (trigger when dimmer’s SwitchPower1/ModeStatus goes on, action set Dimming1/TargetLoadLevel to 100).
Thank You RIGPAPA, I never considered creating a scene. I did call Jasco and was told by Tech support that if left at 100% it would function as a traditional on/off switch.
At least some dimmers have possibility to disable dimming function via configuration parameters. (i.e. setting number of steps needed to move from 0 to 100% to “1”)