Question

Looking for some help with dimmer switches and/or lights. I’m slowly swapping out standard switches to go with ZWave switches and dimmers. The ZWave hub is an GoControl panel. I recently bought GE (jasco) dimmers and so far I’m not happy with how it dims. 20% doesn’t look much different than 80% brightness. Is it my bulbs or the switches?  
http://alarm.com/brinks?fbclid=IwAR...i3iHw

Answer 1

It is the bulbs. The cheap ones sometimes claim to be dimmable but don’t very well

Answer 2

Depends on the bulb efficiency. LED lighting can be really funny to work with. The new in led all in one recessed cans were forced to treat 10% as 0% and the ramping is normally like this. Look/actual 75% / 64% 50% / 42% 25% / 30% You can only do that with higher end lighting such as Lutron RA2 but my point being with programs you can keep it in the sweet spot depending what that is for your switches and lights. Manual dimmers simply increase resistance which is simple.  

Comments

@danyel thanks! I also found that the switches seem to have preset steps increments of 20% with minimum being 20%. But I can tell Alexa to set at 1 % which gets it pretty dim. Maybe need upgraded to get more accuracy.  

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You may have better luck with Lutron Caseta as well which is the budget side. Amazingly reliable and capable but limited in software all the same.  

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@danyel you are absolutely right. @behold -Just make sure you buy the Pro hub so it integrates.  

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@leonoraleonore Pro Hub?  

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@behold .  
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0

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@behold the pro hub is what let’s you use Telenet. I have my Caseta system integrated into my Savant system.  

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@leonoraleonore oh I see. Yeah I’m trying to do as much as I can with the ZWave hub built into our alarm panel. It looks like bulbs will impact the visible range of dimming but I can set from 0-100 % currently. Just seems to be close comparison between 40% and say 80%. The difference is there but not quite as apparent as I was expecting. Also going from 5% and setting to 100% is nearly instant. Are you saying Lytton and the hub give dimmer speed control?  

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@behold depends on the integration. My Savant system lets me control ramp rates. But I don’t know if your system will. Lutron itself does not let you control that as far as I know. Only lets you determine what high and low levels should be

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@leonoraleonore caseta will not but a professional automation platform will. Like I said, we typically set the lower limit of artificial 0 to 10-15% and the upper to 100%. Ramp can be whatever you want, whenever you want. Bathrooms we do up to 45 seconds at night and 5 during the day.  

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@danyel savant lets me do it but you’re correct, I see no settings in Caseta app that allow for ramp rate changes.  

Answer 3

Check out the Zooz zwave switchs