I recently purchased three Eve Light Switches to smart-ify three sets of lights in my house. I installed one on a dining room chandelier (with 9 LED lights) and it works just fine. I tried installing two others in two other places (once wired to a room with 12 inset canister lights, and one to a room with 4 inset canister lights). When I installed these, my Eve app was able to discover the smart switch, but the lights would just flash on and off (with a 6 seconds pause between flashes).
All three switches were parts of double switch plate, and so I was only switching out one of the two dumb switches with an Eve smart switch.
Each of the switches was in a wall box that had 4 white neutral wires, none of which were in use by the dumb switches and which were all just twisted together when I opened the box. For each, I just selected one at random to use – though when debugging one of the installations that did not work, I tried 2 or 3 of them to see if that was the problem and none of them worked.
One on of the two locations that do not work, I tried installing both of the 2 Eve switches that I could not get to work, and both failed the same way.
In one of the locations that did not work (the 12 canister lights), most are incandescent bulbs, so the total might be drawing 12×65 watts or close to 750 watts. But in the other two locations (the 9-bulb chandelier that works, and the 4 canister lights that did not work), they are all low-wattage LED bulbs.
So at this point, I can't pinpoint anything that is different between the installation that works and the two that don't work. Anyone know what might cause a smart lightswitch to just flicker like this?
Best Answer
You add to the neutral pile instead of splitting it up
From your description, it sounds like you're picking a specific neutral wire out of the neutral bundle to attach the neutral from the smart switch to. This is wrong, as it disconnects that neutral from the rest of the neutrals, leaving the smart switch possibly unable to power itself properly, as well as some loads unpowered as they have no return path to the utility for electric current to flow.
What you need to do instead when installing a smart switch is keep all the existing neutrals together while adding the smart switch's neutral to that bundle. That way, the current that powers the smart switch joins with the rest of the current on that circuit on the way back to the utility.