3 way switch won't work

[alexk]

I am new to Insteon and I keep running into problems every step of the way. At this point I am close to giving up but I'm hoping someone here can help me before I do because I really want to make this work. So my setup, I have a 3 way switch controlling 3 LED recessed lights. I purchased 2 Insteon 2477D dimmer switches so that I can replace both switches in the 3 way circuit. I wired the switches exactly as the wiring diagram in the docs say to do and it all seems to make perfect sense. However, it flat out doesn't work. I tried every possible combination I could think of and nothing worked. I tried the switch in another location that has the exact same LED light fixture but is not in a 3 way configuration and it worked perfectly. So the switch seems to be good and it does not appear to have any problem working with that particular LED fixture.

Anyway, when I say it doesn't work what I mean specifically is that the dimmer switch doesn't even seem to have power. The LED indicator does not come on. I press and hold the Set button and nothing blinks or beeps. It's as if it's not getting power at all. I used a voltage detector to find the load wire so I know I have the load wire correct. I checked the connections and they seem good and I've wired and re-wired it 10 different times now.

I'm wondering will the switch simply not work with LED in a 3-way circuit? Is there a step I'm missing? Like some special programming after they are connected (though pressing the Set button doesn't seem to do anything so how could I program?)

What are some things I might try to figure this out? I would THINK that I could only hook up the one switch and leave the 2nd switch completely disconnected and I would at least get the one switch to power on? Right???

If it is helpful the wiring setup is 2 black wires, a white wire, a red wire and a ground wire. I verified that one of the black wires is the load wire.

Thanks

[stusviews]

In any 3-way configuration at least one white wire is not a neutral wire. In most 3-way the red and black are not load and line, respectively. You mentioned the wiring in on of the two switch boxes, but a 3-way configuration has two switch boxes.

Also, it's not possible to have two black wires and only one white and one red wire if you have a ground wire, too. Describe all the wires in each switch box. You can disregard any ground wires. Which color wire was connected to the black screw at each switch box before you changed the switches? Which color wires were connected to brass screws?

[alexk]

Thanks Stu. It's true there is more than one white wire and one ground. In one box, (I will call it the "main box" because that's the box that has load coming in) there are actually 3 3-way switches. Basically it's the center point of a large hallway that goes off in three different directions. I know this could complicate things but I would hope each 3-way circuit would work in isolation. So I am only speaking on the wires for the switch I am working on in this main box. There is a red, 2 blacks, a bundle of whites (I think it was 4 of them all tied together). The white wires are not connected to any of the existing standard switches so I would think they are all in fact neutral. Is this wrong? One of the 2 black wires is load (I verified with a voltage tester). I would think the other black wire is the line and the red wire is the traveler. I don't know if this is true or not so I tried both configurations, using the non-load black wire as line and once using the red wire as line. Which meant the other wire was not connected to anything.

In the secondary box (the other switch in the 3-way), it is much simpler as there is only the one single switch. In that box there are 2 black wires, 2 white wires and a red wire. Again with the standard switch the white wires were not connected to the switch, they were simply tied together. None of the wires in this box provided load. If you look at the documentation for the 3-wire configuration for the 2477D switch, my two boxes look exactly like the wiring diagram. So I was very hopeful it would be easy and just work.

As of this minute I do not know which wire was on the black and which was on the brass because I had to give up and put the old configuration back together and it's too dark here to cut the power and dig it back out to look.

Again if you take a look at the docs my configuration looks to be identical to that. Except of course it doesn't work. It sounds like you have this stuff all over your house Stu. Do you happen to have any 3-way configurations setup that are using LED lights?

[stusviews]

If you have three switches controlling the same load(s), then either every one of these switches needs to be a SwitchLinc or you need to disable any switch that is not. Also, one of the switches has to be a 4-way switch. (A 3-way switch has three connection, a 4-way switch has four.)

If, in fact, you do have three switches in the circuit, then describe the wires in each of the three boxes.

If you have four white wires, then you must have four black wires. How did you determine that one black wire was the load using a voltage tester? The load has no voltage. BTW, if the tester is an indicator light, then it's not adequate, a meter, even the least expensive is needed.

And, yes, nearly all the interior lighting here is LED bulbs.

[alexk]

Alright Stu, I figured it out, thank you for your help. The key piece I was missing was getting a constant power to the secondary switch. It seems very obvious now but it's almost as if I was looking at the wiring diagram upside down