Red Series Dimmer Switch (Z-Wave)

I purchased the Red Series Z-Wave after searching high and low for a smart dimmer switch that could be installed without a neutral wire. We have hundred-year-old knob and tube wiring in some fixtures and this was the only way to go. Although some of the old docs/images on Amazon say that this switch doesn't support neutral-less wiring, the newest version absolutely does. (Note that you will still need to by a "bypass" if you have LED lights, but these are cheap and easy to install. Bypass is a tiny little doo-dad you wire in parallel at the light fixture, to pull just enough voltage to stop dimmer-flicker and power the smart switch.) Make sure you buy the Red Series (not the Black Series) if you need neutral-less wiring. I was a bit nervous buying these at first, because I am new to Inovelli and the Amazon store was out of stock. I thought for sure their website was telling me tall tales about product in stock - especially under COVID. To my surprise and delight, my switches shipped within a day or two of ordering them and arrived shortly thereafter. Their support have been helpful in explaining when out of stock products will be available, and I appreciate that too. The hardware appears to be well constructed and durable. I had no issues playing rough with it as I had to shove a lot of wiring/nuts back into a crowded box. Even the screws that provided are clearly made of a superior alloy compared to some that I have seen which will strip when you look at them sideways. There's not a single worry in my mind about it catching fire or anything like that. First rate, all around. It will fit "exactly" in the space of a small, outdated, "Dumbo"/"Mickey Mouse" box that you will often find in houses with plaster and lathe walls like mine - just be careful when you wrap it in tape not to use too much! Note that if there's a ground clip on the wall of such a box, the Inovelli switch will not fit with it there; you will have to find another way to connect your ground wire. As a possible suggestion, if the product team makes a version 3 you could possible find a way to make it just 1-2 mm more narrow from side to side so that it can accommodate any ground clips, that'd be amazing and I bet a lot of pro-electrician will sing your praises. I haven't tried it in a 3/4-way configuration, but it has the same hookups you would expect from a switch light the GE Embrighten, and is designed to work with their low-voltage add-on switch. Make sure you are careful about adding it to existing "dumb" 3 way configuration, because I'm not 100% sure but I think this may be a good way to fry your fancy new smart switch. Once installed, the switch can detect immediately whether it is in the no-neutral configuration. This was a surprise, because there are steps in the quick install guide that you can effectively skip (or just go through the motions like I did to be sure). It took me a little time to wrap my head around the configuration menu, which is handled entirely through color-blink codes. While feeling a bit like Morse code, I did eventually start to understand it. My recommendation would be to go to the website and print a copy of the color-blink-code cheat sheet on Inovelli's web site, because if you are trying to read it on your smart phone you will be in for a rough ride. Maybe they could revise the page to use a more responsive design, because the table doesn't shrink well. Anyway, if you have a paper copy you will be fine. I was impressed by how many different features are configurable on the device. Probably the first thing I did out of the box was to change the time for the dimmer, because the default is so fast that it is basically an on-off switch. 2 to 4 seconds is a better option if you actually want to use this switch as a dimmer, where the default is 0. Perhaps they will change the default in a future version. The next thing I did was the change the brightness and the color of the LED indicator. In my case this was installed in a bedroom, so a bright blue light was a poor fit. The brightness was pretty easy to adjust. The color took me some experimentation, because the docs seem to indicate that you can set it to any 0-255 Hue code, but the truth is that you just cycle through about a dozen predetermined codes along the spectrum. As a result, I couldn't quite get the color I wanted (orange) but I got red and that was close enough for me. Connecting to z-wave was one of the biggest challenges that I faced. We have a large house and my smart hub was a few rooms away. The self-test built into the unit indicated that it was out of range for z-wave. So, I ended up having to unplug my hub and move it to an adjacent room. Once I did this, I was able to pair the device and it wasn't difficult. The instructions for Wink were a bit strange since there's no native support for Inovelli products on their app - add the device as a "generic smart bulb" and when the time comes to pair it you hold the button down until it lights up green (and then yellow, I think). Anyway, the process worked and the device paired without further problems. Once you have the switch paired, you can safely put your smart hub back in your favorite location, and the switch will get commands from the nearest neighbor on the z-wave mesh network. Since I had two devices to pair, I just left it on the dining room table for a couple days while I did my upgrades. No biggie! All around, I was pretty impressed with the Inovelli Red Series. It is well built and packed with features you won't find elsewhere. In the past, we have usually purchased GE dimmers, but I'm having a bit of buyer's remorse now because the Inovelli was priced competitively vs. the GE Smart Dimmer. The two products are very closely matched in terms of capabilities. There are a few things that give Inovelli's product the edge: GE does not have a no-neutral option; the GE display LED is not configurable by color and GE's dimmer timing can't be changed; likely there are more hidden perks I am not aware of or didn't need. The GE design is a bit more compact, which is good in a crowded box, and their v2 doesn't have the heat-sink flanges, which can sometimes get in the way and have to be removed in a double-gang installation. Considering those differences, I would suggest you take a serious look at the Red Series for all your smart dimmers on your smart home upgrade project. I'm definitely going with Inovelli for my next upgrade, which will be for all the ceiling fans in the house. It will be well worth the wait for product to be in stock.

These dimmers are the most widely-compatible and feature-packed dimmers on the market at the time of writing (late 2020). Installation was a breeze and the switches have just enough customization that you're able to do whatever you want, without having too much that you're overwhelmed by configuration. The default settings on the switches are great and will work fine until you've got more set up.

Excellent dimmer, the control ability with Hubitat is awesome. Being able to turn off the 700ms delay has increase the household approval 100 fold ! THANKS Eric and crew!

These switches are packed with the most smart features and the most customization I’ve seen. Very happy with them! Great design!

These switches look great especially with screwless faceplates. In my research these switches provide the most functionality and is one of the better looking switches at this price point. The only reason for a subtracted star is because there's a latency in some of my switches of 1 or more seconds. that sounds insignificant but if I'm grabbing something out of a room I can walk in, grab the item, and be on my way out before the light turns on. I also experienced friction while setting these up with home assistant but they updated documentation to include some steps that were missing. props to them

Just got my first dimmer to access. Was using another popular two letter brand that worked just fine but lacked scene controls and energy monitoring. I installed these and paired them with Hubitat without reading the fine print in the instructions. They connected and I was able to turn them on and off in the "Device" page but soon discovered that I couldn't set up tiles to se them. After cussing a little bit, I read the instructions and saw that I needed to get the driver off of Github. Once I did that, they worked amazingly well. I dropped one star off because I have no idea why they would pair and use a build in driver that actually had Inovelli in the name. If it had loaded a generic driver, I might have figured it out quickly. Seriously, this is a five star dimmer if I had not stumbled (admittedly my fault for not reading) on the driver issue. Now that I have it all installed, I will be playing with the endless configurations possible. I have never seen a driver with as many options as these switches. It will take me a while to dream up all the new things I can do with a wall dimmer. Well done Innovelli! Glad you survived the vendor change disaster. Your products are by far the best I have seen in the home automation world so far.

Love these switched. Slowly replacing all my light switches with these. Just be careful with them. A short circuit at the light will fry them, not blow your breaker.

Let me start by saying I have installed/use multiple Zwave switches and dimmers and by far these are best you can buy. From how fast they report there state to your controller/hub to there look and ease of use. The cherry on top is the extra added features such as led color ,notifications, and multitap for scenes. I have used them on a Vera Edge and Smartthings but now have them paired to Home assistant and they work great on all. The only issue on the Vera Edge was I did not get the LED notification or scenes working.

I had a customer purchase a few of these for his smart home system, and to be honest, I never heard of Inovelli until then. When he got them and I began installing them at his home, I was VERY impressed with the quality of the switch, the RGB notifier bar, but what sold me to buy for my own home: The custom scenes that are easily configurable with x button presses. So far, I installed 2, and I am ordering another for my dining room chandelier, and am ordering a RGBW bulb for my outside front porch light, with the idea of utilizing the colors for certain conditions inside the house (silent alarm, fire, CO, general porch light, critical house system failure, etc). The simplicity, yet the advanced features of this have sold me abd have made me a customer for life. (I have had a smart home for years, and used multiple devices. This one is a game changer, I REALLY am impressed, and its hard to impress me when it comes to z-wave switches)