I see you sell Leviton Vizia RF+ devices in your store. When they introduced this new line several months ago, all the previous generation Vizia RF devices disappeared from pretty much all the other stores. Unfortunately, I started retrofitting my apartment with the old RF line…
The biggest (if not the only) difference between RF and RF+ lines is in the built-in dimmer, where dimming bar goes across the pad horizontally in RF+, where old RF line had dimming bar on the right of the pad vertically. Many people didn’t like the new design and wondered about the move.
Anyway, do you know the reason for an abrupt disappearance of Vizia RF line?
Anyway, do you know the reason for an abrupt disappearance of Vizia RF line?
We don’t have any inside info. However, one of my big gripes with the Leviton dimmers is that ‘up’ is not on and ‘down’ is not off. It’s a toggle switch in a single direction. Admittedly the idea behind home automation is a single scene to set all the lights. But, it still bugs me that in our showroom we have a bank of 3 lights and we want to turn them off we can’t just hit all 3 ‘down’ like a normal switch. You have to toggle each one individually until you figure out which light is which. I haven’t used the RF + ones. Did they address this? Or is it still ‘toggle on/off’?
Main difference between Vizia RF and Vizia RF+ is the 2-way capability. I agree on the design change. I noticed that customers try to use them as normal switch and push the top of the switch “in” what actually resets the unit.
the 2-way status update happens when changing the dim level on any RF+ wall-switch. The switch will send the new level to the controller (RS232 or Vizia RF+ remote)
When using more than one RF+ switch and you turn the light the RF+ unit is going to update the other switches and the LED on the slave switch will turn on as well and is changing status from “turn on” one tap to “turn off” one tap.
AFAIK, that was available on old Vizia-RF as well. But unfortunately, it only works between Leviton Z-Wave devices… So, if you have another non-Vizia Z-Wave device, the update won’t work.
Leviton said that the first gen design with the light bar on the side caused a lot of complaints since only the bottom of the switch did anything. So the “fix” was to put the light bar where the top of the switch would be. I don’t think it would be an improvement either. This is because Leviton seemed to think an alternate action switch was the preferred “UI” for a light switch.
I just installed three of these switches as the beginning of my Z-wave install. I agree that the switch behavior is counterintuitive.
Note that there is a green locator LED at the bottom of the switch that only illuminates when the load is off.
These switches are attractive, but the toggle behavior is annoying, and I’m going to look carefully at alternatives.
I noticed that there is no “status update” when using Vizia RF+ and the Vera controller.
I hope that this is on the roadmap! I think that this is mandatory for an item like this remote controlled over the web.
I also try to find out how the polling works on the vera. There is an polling field under advanced setup but no data about the field value.
Cooper has a line of premium ZWave switches that are more conventional. http://64.239.63.88/catalog/ look for Aspire. They are even more expensive and may not have all the same programmability but are a quality alternative.
I will probably buy more of the Vizia RF switches despite what is, in my view, a real design flaw (toggle vs. more standard on/off behavior). While I noted in my post that the LED below the switch indicates on/off status, I’ve now noticed in regular use that when the switches are at typical height the LEDs are not visible when standing. You can see them from across the room, but that isn’t very helpful when trying to switch off a bank of lights.
I agree that with remote management and scene control that this will be less of an issue, but it’s still annoying.
However, there are a lot more out on the web that Mi Casa Verde isn’t selling.
I think what it comes down to, at least for me, is to look at what I need, and then actually talk to someone at Mi Casa Verde before I buy it so I know it will work.
I plan on replacing a number of light switches here soon for shutting off all room lights, but I’ll be spending some time really doing the research to get ones that will work as most, if not all of my light switches do NOT have a neutral.
