How do I control FGRGBW-442 RGBW Controller 2

Hello to the community,
I’d like to use the FGRGBW-442 to control a RGBW LED strip in “HSB and White” mode.
Therefore I followed chapter 4.2 “Connection with RGBW/RGB LED strip” of the user manual. But because I don’t want ro use any switch I set all inputs (IN1 to IN4) to ground.
I set parameter 150 to 1 (“HSB and White”) and left all other parameters unchanged.
Then I created an item linked to the FGRGBW-442’s channel “Color Control” to set hue, saturation and brightness.
But it doesn’t work because no matter which of the HSB values I change I just can switch on and off the color “red” - and nothing else…
Does someone in the community has experience with that device and knows how to solve my problem?
Regards from Germany

“Klaus”

You have to attach a DimmerItem to the MainDimmer and set it to 100%.
It is used to dim all outputs at once.

There is no need to do that. Just leave them not connected.

“Color Control” is not one of the channel names I see in my setup. There are two channels for color control, one is named “color_color” and seems to be read-only, the other one is named “color_color1” which I can use to conrol the colors with.
Eihter “switch_dimmer” or “switch_dimmer1” need to be set as well (they follow each other, you only need one of these channels).

Just out of curiosity - is it possible to use the color command for the rgb channels and a dimmer for output4?

Yes, that is what I do. I have a white LED strip connected to channel 4 and this is controlled by a dimmer item for brightness and a hardware switch connected to IN4 for on/off functionailty.

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Just to be clear, you have linked the Color Control to a ColorItem and the Dimmer 5 (should be 5) to a Dimmer Item.
The ColorItem controls output 1, 2, 3 and the DimmerItem controls output 4?

Yes, that is correct. Here are my item definitions (well, the relevant part of it):

// switch_dimmer follows switch_dimmer1 and vica versa, you only need one of both. And the value is identical to "brightness" in the colorpicker element
Dimmer Wohnen_RGBW_Helligkeit         "Wohnen RGBW Helligkeit"                  <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer"}
Dimmer Wohnen_RGBW_Helligkeit1        "Wohnen RGBW Helligkeit1"                 <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer1"}

// color_color is read-only and follows color_color1
Color  Wohnen_RGBW_Farbe              "Wohnen RGBW Farbe"                       <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:color_color"}
// via color_color1 you can control in HSB mode
Color  Wohnen_RGBW_Farbe1             "Wohnen RGBW Farbe1"                      <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:color_color1"}

// via the following dimmer items the channels for red, green, bue and white can be controlled individually. The channels for RGB can result in white, too, in this case
// you can vary the color temperature, the white channel is unused then. The white channel can only be controlled in its brightness, the color temperature is defined by the
// light strip attached to it.
// switch_dimmer2 to 4 follow the adjustments of color_color1, representing the HSB values in RGB values
Dimmer Wohnen_RGBW_Dimmer_Red         "Wohnen RGBW Dimmer Rot"                  <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer2"}
Dimmer Wohnen_RGBW_Dimmer_Green       "Wohnen RGBW Dimmer Grün"                 <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer3"}
Dimmer Wohnen_RGBW_Dimmer_Blue        "Wohnen RGBW Dimmer Blau"                 <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer4"}
Dimmer Wohnen_RGBW_Dimmer_White       "Wohnen RGBW Dimmer Weiss"                <info>     (gWohnZi)  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer5"}

The channel switch_dimmer1 controls all 4 channels for brightness.

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I just experienced some strange behavior. My items are defined similar to this.

Dimmer Master  { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer"}
Color  RGB     { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:color_color1"}
Dimmer White   { channel="zwave:device:abcdefgh:node49:switch_dimmer5"}

I turn the Master dimmer to 100%. Then I can post color commands to RGB and everything works well.
However once I post an OFF command to RGB, it also changes the Master to 0% and thus subsequently I am not able to turn the strip on by posting color commands to RGB again.
If I only set the brightness component of the HSB to 0, I am able to turn it on again through commands to RGB.

@chris
Is this the intended behavior that posting a command to one item also changes another one or is this a quirk of the device?

I would have said it should not change the master - I don’t think the binding would do this - if you post an OFF command, then the binding should send an OFF command to the device. If the binary switch function isn’t supported by the device, then the binding would probably set the master to 0 (I think!), but in this case, sending the ON command should (I think) set the master channel to 100%.

I am guessing here though as I know very little about the device - if someone wants to post a debug log showing these functions, I can take a look.

Here I am senden “ON”, then change the color and then send “OFF”.
I am not touching Dimmer_Master.

15:32:48.623 [ome.event.ItemCommandEvent] - Item 'Dimmer_RGB' received command ON
15:32:51.476 [ome.event.ItemCommandEvent] - Item 'Dimmer_RGB' received command 349.176483,100.000000,100.000000
15:32:53.875 [vent.ItemStateChangedEvent] - Dimmer_RGB changed from 0,0,0 to 0,0,100
15:32:54.714 [ome.event.ItemCommandEvent] - Item 'Dimmer_RGB' received command OFF
15:32:55.481 [vent.ItemStateChangedEvent] - Dimmer_Master changed from 100 to 95
15:32:56.175 [vent.ItemStateChangedEvent] - Dimmer_RGB changed from 0,0,100 to 0,0,64
15:32:57.065 [vent.ItemStateChangedEvent] - Dimmer_Master changed from 95 to 24      <-- will go down to 0 but poll intervall is too short
15:32:57.770 [vent.ItemStateChangedEvent] - Dimmer_RGB changed from 0,0,64 to 0,0,0

logfile.txt (103.0 KB)

So this looks ok to me, but the binding is adjusting the master channel…

What happens, when you send OFF, it sets the master to 0, and when you send ON, it sets the master to 99%. When you set the colour, it sets it to blue. This all looks generally ok (I think) from the log perspective - but I guess it’s not what you’re expecting…

Re-reading your original message I think I understand the issue - probably the binding should set the master channel to the brightness when it receives a COLOR command. Let me have a think about this…

@Spaceman_Spiff if I update the binding, can you test? I’ve not got the time right now to pull out a color bulb to test this so if you can do that I’ll provide the update shortly.

I would have expected the binding to set the brightness part of the HSB message and not change the master dimmer at all.
There is an additional white channel and it will turn off with the master, too when it should not change at all.

e.g. this is what I would expect

Item 'Dimmer_RGB' received command 349,100,100
Item 'Dimmer_RGB' received command OFF
Item 'Dimmer_RGB' changed from 349,100,100 to 349,100,0         # <- note how only the brightness changed

Sure - I’ll be happy to help!

It needs to change the master channel if it gets an HSB command - otherwise it won’t be very bright :wink:

However it really depends on what command you send. At the moment it doesn’t set the master if you send an HSB, and this needs to change so that it does set the master channel. Brightness must be set through the master channel.

That’s not the understanding I have. The device has 4 outputs with an dimmer for each output:
Channel r, g, b w. Each channel can be controlled separately.
There is a color channel that groups the channels rgb together. Changing something on the color channel should thus only do changes on output rgb because channel w is controlled separately.
On top of that there is a Master Dimmer that dims all outputs equally.

Changes to the color channel should not change the master dimmer, because then output w will also change brightness. Imho the color channel is just a shortcut so I don’t have to send 3 commands for r, g, w to the device.

That’s (partly) correct.

My point though is that when you send an HSB command from OH, the B is Brightness, and this needs to change the brightness through the master channel (ie the multilevel switch command class).

No, because the brightness information in the HSB command is only relevant for channel rgb, not for channel w.

Channel W? That has nothing to do with this. :confused:

We are talking about colour - RGB - CW and WW are set to 0 in this mode.

Then this might be a misunderstanding from my side. I was under the impression that it is possible to use the color command to set channel RGB on the device and use the dimmer command to set channel w on the device in parallel.

I have another dimmer laying around so I’ll check maybe tomorrow how it behaves.

I should add that what you are describing is the way it currently works. The dimmer channel sets the master, and the HSB doesn’t change master. This is why when you send an OFF command it sets the master level to 0 (as required by ZWave) and when you then send an HSB command, it doesn’t do anything - because the master level is 0 already. If we use the B from the HSB, then you get Brightness back.