So I cut the ACRG completely out. Hooked brown/black wire to the smoke switch. Didn't hook the black wires or brown up
OH, so you're running the smoke unit directly on 18 volts? No wonder the 27 ohm resistor seems a bit much, you're putting 12 watts into a 2 watt resistor! If you changed to the 18 ohm one, that would be 18 watts, and talk about SMOKE! Try putting a diode in series with the 27 ohm resistor, that's how TMCC works in command mode, the smoke triac outputs half-wave power.
What diodes would I need to do that John.
You can use the lowly 1N4003 for this job, the average power through the diode will be less than 1/2 amp, well within it's ratings.
