Caseta dimmers slowly flicker between 15-35% brightness with Philips 457648 GU10s

[psychobunny]

Hi everyone,

I bought a few Caseta Dimmers to replace some Insteon and Z-Wave ones that I have in my home. The Insteon's and Z-Wave all use a neutral as well. When I installed the Casetas to replace them, all my existing LED bulbs would flash on and off over and over. A couple years ago I wanted to replace all our halogens with LEDs so bought several models of dimmable LEDs, some Philips, some IKEA, all stating dimmable. They all were bad, would flicker, or maybe do 100%, 80% and then off or whatever, or they would buzz, so mostly gave up on trying to dim anything. I was told that Caseta is picky about brand, so did research and found on Amazon the Philips LED bulbs the model 457648 where they change colour temperature as they get dimmer which have mostly perfect reviews. I bought them and put them all over the house and just love them, especially in bathrooms at night setting them to 35% or so as they work perfectly. In all locations where I have Insteon or Z-Wave and these bulbs they work just like halogen, no flickering at any brightness level at all and literally work at any brightness level just like halogen.

I set the favourite button to set a few of the dimmers to 20% brightness. For the first day this seemed to work fine, but I started noticing periodically that sometimes they would flicker. Not really bad, just subtle almost like a candlelight or something flickering just enough to be annoying. If I tap up or down on the brightness and change it to say 23% or so, the flickering would stop. If I turn them off and press favourite again, most times they would be fine. So it's just maybe 1 in 5 times they flicker. I ended up removing them from my first floor and going back to Insteon and then put them in my basement where there's no neutrals (my Dad wired my basement even though my house is 8 years old, so I think he's still on 1980s wiring standards or something!) Anyway I noticed I have the same issue, it's just when in the lower range like 15-35% or so. Tapping raise a few times then lower would fix the issue. I was told on another forum it was most likely due to not using a neutral that I'm getting this issue, as well as it might be an issue with these temperature changing bulbs.

I read about low and high level trim but not sure if that does anything. If I set the dimmer to literally 2% it actually dims that low, they look like they are just glowing not really creating any light, but they do still work. So when it says to do the low level trim adjustment and lower the brightness until the flickering stops, I don't really know what to do since I don't get flickering when it's between 2-15% and sometimes I like having it that dim so hate to set the trim higher.

It's something I can live with but just thought I'd reach out to see if there's any options or anything I can add on to my system that might help. I'd love to fully replace all my Insteon with Caseta but I'm forced right now to keep them in lesser used areas like the basement. Would love any feedback, or even confirmation on if this is caused by not using a neutral, as then I'll know to at least buy the Pro versions of the dimmers that include the neutral for more common areas like the kitchen and so on.

Thanks!

[Zach R.]

Hi everyone,

I bought a few Caseta Dimmers to replace some Insteon and Z-Wave ones that I have in my home. The Insteon's and Z-Wave all use a neutral as well. When I installed the Casetas to replace them, all my existing LED bulbs would flash on and off over and over. A couple years ago I wanted to replace all our halogens with LEDs so bought several models of dimmable LEDs, some Philips, some IKEA, all stating dimmable. They all were bad, would flicker, or maybe do 100%, 80% and then off or whatever, or they would buzz, so mostly gave up on trying to dim anything. I was told that Caseta is picky about brand, so did research and found on Amazon the Philips LED bulbs the model 457648 where they change colour temperature as they get dimmer which have mostly perfect reviews. I bought them and put them all over the house and just love them, especially in bathrooms at night setting them to 35% or so as they work perfectly. In all locations where I have Insteon or Z-Wave and these bulbs they work just like halogen, no flickering at any brightness level at all and literally work at any brightness level just like halogen.

I set the favourite button to set a few of the dimmers to 20% brightness. For the first day this seemed to work fine, but I started noticing periodically that sometimes they would flicker. Not really bad, just subtle almost like a candlelight or something flickering just enough to be annoying. If I tap up or down on the brightness and change it to say 23% or so, the flickering would stop. If I turn them off and press favourite again, most times they would be fine. So it's just maybe 1 in 5 times they flicker. I ended up removing them from my first floor and going back to Insteon and then put them in my basement where there's no neutrals (my Dad wired my basement even though my house is 8 years old, so I think he's still on 1980s wiring standards or something!) Anyway I noticed I have the same issue, it's just when in the lower range like 15-35% or so. Tapping raise a few times then lower would fix the issue. I was told on another forum it was most likely due to not using a neutral that I'm getting this issue, as well as it might be an issue with these temperature changing bulbs.

I read about low and high level trim but not sure if that does anything. If I set the dimmer to literally 2% it actually dims that low, they look like they are just glowing not really creating any light, but they do still work. So when it says to do the low level trim adjustment and lower the brightness until the flickering stops, I don't really know what to do since I don't get flickering when it's between 2-15% and sometimes I like having it that dim so hate to set the trim higher.

It's something I can live with but just thought I'd reach out to see if there's any options or anything I can add on to my system that might help. I'd love to fully replace all my Insteon with Caseta but I'm forced right now to keep them in lesser used areas like the basement. Would love any feedback, or even confirmation on if this is caused by not using a neutral, as then I'll know to at least buy the Pro versions of the dimmers that include the neutral for more common areas like the kitchen and so on.

Thanks!

Switching to a dimmer with a neutral connection could possibly resolve your issue, but it's also possible that you could still experience flickering. We would like to help you find a Caseta solution but it might be more efficient to continue troubleshooting via email. Please email us at systemsupport@lutron.com, refer to this forum post, and we will pick up right where we left off. Afterwards, we can definitely come back and share our findings with hopes of helping others!

[psychobunny]

Great thanks so much just sent an email. Here's the email below in case it helps anyone else reading:

As mentioned, all our fixtures use GU10 bulbs and currently are a mix of either Insteon SwitchLinc dimmers or Leviton Z-Wave dimmers. Previously I had various bulbs, some were Philips and many were IKEA dimmable bulbs, high quality I know. J Most never would dim so I pretty much just used them as a switch instead as it seemed very hard to find GU10 LED’s that actually dim properly. These would work at 100%, then dim to maybe 80% and 50% and then turn off, but definitely nothing gradual or low level.

I bought 6 of the Lutron Caseta dimmers and installed them to replace these dimmers. On all of them the lights would flash on and off, about once per second. Adjusting the low level trim didn’t really help either. I was told that bulbs should be on Lutron’s list and that most likely it was due to using bulbs that aren’t supported. I saw on your site that Philips GU10s were tested and supported so I bought a bunch of model 9290011565 which change colour temperature from 2700-2200K when dimmed. I didn’t realize they were different from the ones on you site when I purchased them. When I installed them though they immediately worked, and worked way better than my past bulbs. I could dim in 2% increments and it actually would brighten or dim, and even work when set to 2% brightness with no flickering. I absolutely love how they look when dimmed under 50% as they get warmer in colour and look almost like candlelight or halogen.

A few days later I noticed though when running a scene which set them to 15%, that they would flicker. It wasn’t super obvious, you sometimes had to look at the bulbs, or look at the wall to notice but they definitely were flickering subtly. Sometimes it would be worse than others. If I turned the brightness up or down a notch it usually would fix it. As mentioned on the forum though I found that they only would flicker maybe 1 in 5 times, otherwise they were fine. Because I had them in my Kitchen and Dining Room it was a bit too much, so I removed them and went back to Insteon in the Dining Room and Z-Wave in the Kitchen. The flickering immediately went away and the bulbs worked at all levels. I also put 6 of the bulbs in my bathroom which has an Insteon SwitchLinc and same thing, they dim perfectly and don’t flicker at all.

To describe the flickering better, it’s almost like when a dishwasher or AC turns on and your lights quickly dim then brighten, except it never stops and always does it until I tap up on the raise button a couple times. It’s mostly an issue when dimming between 10-50%. I’m outside my return window now for all of these so I have to make do with them, but just thought I’d check to see if there might be anything I could do to help fix this. It’s not the end of the world as I’ve put them in my basement for now, but would like to get ones for my Kitchen and Dining Room and wasn’t sure if ones with a neutral might help or if there’s any way to add anything on to these to give the same type of feature to save me from having to buy all new ones again.

[wkearney99]

A good first stop for any LED research is the LED Matrix Tool:

http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Service-...merMatrix.aspx

A point to consider with LED elements is how their power supply works internally. Trouble is you can't find any of that information on the packaging or online. One kind of trouble is in-rush current and how it reacts to what kind of dimming control is being used.

http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocum...mingBasics.pdf

If you use the wrong kind of dimming control you end up with problems. Either ones you see right away or ones that cause either the dimmer, the lights, or both to fail over time.

It's a headache, to be sure. And it's likely to continue being a problem.