First Look: ZEN12 Motion Dimmer

My Zooz
1

I wanted to share some of my early testing results on the upcoming ZEN12 Motion Dimmer.

Zooz was kind enough to send over a pre-production unit for evaluation and beta testing, and I’ve started working through initial setup and integration across a few different platforms. I’ve documented some of my initial discoveries in the video below. (Apologies in advance - its a bit long!)

:backhand_index_pointing_right: Full ‘Part One’ video here:

What I’ve Tested So Far

  • Inclusion and setup
  • Basic dimming behavior
  • Motion detection functionality
  • Initial parameter review

I’ve also tested integration across:

  • IQ Panel 4 (Alarm.com)
  • Zooz Z-Box
  • Home Assistant (Z-Wave JS UI)

Early Impressions

So far, this is a really interesting device combining motion and lux sensors, dimming, and scene control into a single in-wall switch opens up a lot of potential use cases. The multi-segment LED bar also has some interesting possibilities. :slight_smile:

As expected with a pre-production device, there are still some areas that may evolve before release, but overall it’s been great to get an early look at how this is coming together.

Next Step - Real-world use

I’ll be installing this and using it for a few weeks and will create a part two video about the experience.

Thanks again to Zooz for providing the unit for early evaluation!
You are the best!

4 Likes
2

U mentioned in the video that it uses lux to determine day/niget because z-wave dont support time/date :thinking:
Actually z-wave got the command classes for it. It is just not used that mutch. But it should have been used alot more! :smiley:
If we could set the parameter from a QA on zooz z-box once a week to update the time and set other parameters for when day/night etc starts would have been alot better! :smiley:
Or just a parameter to set it to 0 = Day, 1 = night, 2 = maybe evening? etc
and a value for brightness for each of that “day/night/evening :slight_smile:

Also love the parameter 13.
Example if you mount it in a bedroom.
Make a scene to enable when you change Profile from night to day
and when you set Profile from Day to Night Disable again + turn off light :smiley:

Hate that this isnt available like a EU edition! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:
Yes I am jelly! And love that they start to make more devices into one unit! :smiley: (motion/presence sensor, Lux sensor, dimmer,scene controller)

2 Likes
3

@Brors94 thank you so much for pointing this out! Not sure how I didn’t know that but I love to learn new things.

I always endeavor to be accurate so keep any corrections coming. :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

Unfortunately there isn’t a great way to edit the video itself once posted to YouTube but I’ll put a correction in the description on YT.

I do appreciate it!!

1 Like
4

It is fun to watch your videos :smiley: But also Jelly that Zooz dont make this type of device for EU

I pitched to them a Ciling mounted Motion/presence sensor, with lux, temperature and 4 inputs would be nice for the EU market.

But somthing like this switch would also be nice since it actually got the output device to (dimming), but misses a tempsensor (no big deal since I still do need a thermostat for the heat control)

1 Like
5

Thank you for saying that! I put a lot of time into them and sometimes wonder who’s going to watch 30 mins of me rambling. lol. I do a lot of editing to try and keep it balanced between‘taking you along with me’ vs ‘just reporting the news’. And as you can tell nothing is scripted. :rofl:

Yes - adding temp and humidity would be great.

And that device you pitched would be rather awesome as well. For me, even better if it can be powered by your choice of battery or 12v - sort of like how the outdoor motion sensor can be powered.

(On a related note - I tried using that Homeseer HSM200 plug in motion / temp / lux sensor (I have a video on that device) for a while and it is total junk. Misses a lot of motion events, and it emits a very faint buzz/hiss noise. Just terrible. It is what I was referring to when I mentioned other products with slow lux reporting. )

1 Like
6

Actually the motion sensor I would like to have it mains powered :smiley:
So I dont need battery, 12v transformer etc, Would be nice with a “Battery backup” in the device for 48hours, so it could be used for security to. But not need for my use cases :smiley:

1 Like
7

The video was great. I’ll be interested to see how they list / market this. As from the name, I wasn’t entirely clear on what it was. I wasn’t very far into your video when I realized I have definitely have a use for this, and it would work much better than the dimmer / separate motion sensor / scenes I’m using now.

2 Likes
8

Nice video, Darren, aka @getoffmylawn– a great review of a great upcoming product from Zooz! :grinning_face:

Device Orientation: It is my understanding the “intended” orientation of the ZEN12 is apparently with the main button at the top. My assumption was (and you apparently thought so, too, in your video) the Main Button was at the bottom. A quick review of similar (non-Z-Wave) motion dimmers from Lutron and Leviton shows it varies by manufacturer. But, not to worry! As you noted, the action of the dimmer rocker switch may be reversed by adjusting a parameter. So, if one thinks the main button “should” be on the bottom, reversing the action of the rocker switch puts “dim” on the left and “brighten” on the right for the most intuitive placement. (Personally, I like it that way and am pleased Zooz made the allowance for this!) The Z-Wave DSK sticker (and lack of stamped markings on the Beta test units) led me in this direction anyway. :grin:

Scene Control is available, but when it is enabled the double-click to turn on to “brightest” level is disabled. My Beta unit is installed here in our home office and I have the double-click action set to toggle the state of the desk lamp, whereas the dimmer itself controls ceiling can lights. Works very well!

Yes, that’s an “Air-gap” Switch on the bottom (as you have it oriented). I tested that functionality and it works as expected. Nice feature!

Day vs. Night Modes: works very well here. @Brors94 asked about how the device knows day vs. night: it doesn’t have any sense of time, which may be the first assumption. Rather, there are Lux settings for day and night thresholds. Any Lux reading higher than the “day” setting clues the device it must be “daytime” and not to turn on the lights on motion, whereas any Lux reading lower than the “night” setting gives it the clue it must be “night” and to turn on the lights if someone enters the room. (A nice side effect of this is there is some hysteresis as a result, so it won’t bounce back and forth unexpectedly. Obviously, a bit of thought went into that design choice.) Works very well here in our home office, which has exterior windows and is quite bright during daylight hours.

All Device Parameters shown in the spreadsheet in your video hadn’t been implemented by the time the first-run Beta units were built (we have the same firmware release, Darren). I was told a future release will fix that and (I think) not everything will show up as sliders, but many as radio button choices as we’re accustomed to seeing. Once that release is made available to us Beta Testers, we can update this topic here in the Zooz Community.

Summary: very impressive product!

2 Likes
9

Hi @Barkis ,

Thank you!
I really can’t wait for the updated firmware to do a follow up video showing these few things fixed :slight_smile:

My current challenge is trying to decide where to install it in my house for the best test and ‘workout’ of its capabilities. :rofl:

Which zwave hub do you have it connected to? I found scene control works on the z-box, but on Hubitat (Hubitat testing wasn’t in my video*), Home Assistant (JS UI) and the IQ 4 panel there was nothing in the log when trying to send a 1x, 2x or hold down event, so it did not work. It seemed to only work on z-box. Just wanted to see if we were seeing the same.

*Contemplating a follow up video just for the Hubitat crowd. Hubitat added a driver for the ZEN12 back in version 2.4.4.129 so it seems to have good functionality and sensor support (but more testing is needed).

I really do like this device as well!

1 Like
10

Mine’s hooked up to the Z-Box Hub. Note, however, I already had a Block Scene to toggle the office desk lamp from another device, so I added the ZEN12 Motion Dimmer as an “Or” statement in that scene. I did note, however, there wasn’t an obvious way to “toggle” a lamp from the screen you showed (Advanced?) on the Z-Box for this device–so a Block Scene might be the easiest way to toggle a device state anyway?

11

Speaking about clock/data commandclasses:

Z-wave just got a v3 version xD

image
image1655×346 34.5 KB

Edit: a lite fast there :smiley: That v3 class and schedule class have been there for a while :smiley: just a tool that supports them.

And maybe we will see z-wave devices like the enocean push buttons without batteries it seems like:

image
image1625×450 69 KB

2 Likes
12

Apologies - you lost me a bit. Which (advanced) screen did you mean?
Do you mean triggering the lamp’s toggle from a motion event or from a scene command (like 2x Press of button 2, etc)? I think in either case a block (or Lua) scene would be needed.

Another approach might be if you can do a direct association from the motion to the remote lamp. :slight_smile:
Here’s an example controlling a ZEN72… the 72 stays on until motion clears.

CleanShot 2026-03-31 at 20.03.01@2x
CleanShot 2026-03-31 at 20.03.01@2x1588×186 16.5 KB

or associate the ZEN12’s bulb level to the ZEN72, then they are always in sync regardless of trigger.

CleanShot 2026-03-31 at 20.11.58@2x
CleanShot 2026-03-31 at 20.11.58@2x1770×188 15.8 KB

While cool, that likely wasn’t your question… :slight_smile:

13

:100: yes! I saw that announcement for WOEEN from the alliance, and then caught a YT video somewhere with an enocean rep. Very interesting future indeed.

1 Like
14

Update on that - it seems to also work on the Hubitat. I think I’m going to retest this on all platforms. Something wonky happened during the interviews I think during original testing. Stay tuned…

2 Likes
15

The ‘Advanced’ tab of the device in Z-Box–sorry, it wasn’t very clear. :roll_eyes:

Right you are, as usual! :grinning_face: I was thinking back to toggling the desk lamp from a button on an ancient Aeotec MiniMote–remember those? At first glance, see below, it looked to me like it was done from the device itself. But I was wrong: it is being done in a Block Scene (which I then edited to include the ZEN12 Motion Dimmer’s detection of a double-click on the main button).

Ooops
Ooops1190×524 84.8 KB

Must have been having a bad night here, sigh! :roll_eyes:

16

Having the ZEN12 connected to the home office ceiling lights for a short time now has, not unexpectedly, resulted in a comment that, “I don’t want the office lights to come on late at night and wake me up when all I want to do is plug in my iPad to charge and go back to bed!” (We have an 8-port charger on the desk in our home office where we can plug in devices & gadgets for charging.)

In an earlier post, I discussed changing the color of an LED on a ZEN32 Scene Controller when our house switched into “night mode” (profile) when we push the button at bedtime. Why not leverage that Lua Scene we already have to tweak some of the ZEN12 Motion Dimmer settings?

As a result of that demented thought, I ended up with the following code added to the ACTIONS section of the previously discussed Lua Scene. It’s job is to do the following:

  • Disable the action of turning on the light upon detection of motion,
  • Change the main LED color to RED during the nighttime,
  • Set the LED to be “always ON,” regardless of the state of the office lights, and
  • undo all of the above when morning comes & we switch back into ‘Home’ mode.

Here’s the additional Lua code for the scene…

-- Set ZEN12 Motion Dimmer Options per Location Mode
local md = 410      -- Motion Dimmer Device ID

-- Set Main LED to Red & Disable Motion for Night Mode
if mode == "Night" then
    fibaro.call(md, "setConfiguration", 13, 1, 1) -- disable motion switch
    fibaro.call(md, "setConfiguration", 1, 1, 3)  -- alsways ON
    fibaro.call(md, "setConfiguration", 2, 1, 3)  -- color RED
else
    fibaro.call(md, "setConfiguration", 13, 1, 0) -- enable motion switch
    fibaro.call(md, "setConfiguration", 1, 1, 0)  -- LED ON when switch OFF
    fibaro.call(md, "setConfiguration", 2, 1, 0)  -- color WHITE (default)
end

In addition, having the LED blink when parameters are changed can be annoying. Zooz thoughtfully provides Parameter 23 to “Disable LED Indicator Flash On Setting Change.” Works well! :nerd_face:

We’ll see how that works out tonight. :grin:

4 Likes
17

This is excellent! How did it work out for you last night?

18

Just fine! After we ran the “Goodnight!” routine (pushing the ‘N’ button on a ZEN32 Scene Controller), the LED on the ZEN12 Motion Dimmer went red and the switch stopped turning on the light with motion. The comment this morning was, “That’s much better!” :sweat_smile:

4 Likes
19

So when is the Eu version arriving? :rofl: