Hi. Backstory: I have a HA setup that has long been built around zwave but also has a few zigbee bulbs in it. I’ve never had reliable success with zwave and I’m thinking I will try binning it and moving to a full Zigbee setup (the few devices I have seem to have worked well).
One of the zwave switch modules I have controls a front light. I have some dumb mains power PIR sensors wired up to the switch inputs and the lamp on the load. The cool thing about this switch is that the module can be set to report that the PIR has switched WITHOUT turning the light on - so I can use the PIR as a sensor to inform the HA routine, but then I can also apply other logic over the top (time of day etc) to decide whether I actually want the light on or not.
This is a slightly esoteric requirement and it’s not easy to tell from sales material whether a device can do this. Does anyone know of any Zigbee switches that can do this, please? Many thanks
I have both Z-Wave and Zigbee, and found them to be about the same, with only a difference in device cost / quality. Both benefit from having lots to reinforce the mesh - one or two Zigbee devices are likely to use point-to-point mode and cause issues.
There are “implant” boards for both Z-Wave (Fibaro) and Wi-Fi (Shelly) but for Zigbee, the closest I’d suggest is a door sensor and a relay wired across the magnetic reed switch. Some devices might trigger from the mains relay coil directly (works for my doorbell chime solenoid). Battery power is then the issue.
Custom hardware tends to be based on hacked Sonoff WLAN kit with Tasmota / ESPhome, or full custom with Wemos D1 Mini ESP8266 / ESP32 relay boards. Sadly, the very cheap ESP relay boards can be really bad copies missing key parts like ANY FIRMWARE AT ALL!
A Sonoff Basic with an added optoisolator input would give both mains relay control and sensing, but again WLAN.
A shelly device can run in detached mode so the input is a binary_sensor and the output is a switch (or light). WIFI though, not aware of any zigbee that can do it
Bumping this topic because I have a similar question, and wonder if anyone has found a slicker way to accomplish a Zigbee-based module that will report a mechanical switch closure.
I have a few Staples Easy Button switches, as well as some similar buttons along the same lines (press the button and get a recording). They’re great for some of the more fun Home Assistant projects. As @FloatingBoater suggests, I typically gut an Aqara Door/window sensor and just wire the reed relay contacts in parallel with the Easy Button contacts. No extra relay - when the button is pressed it looks just like the reed contacts have been closed. Read the binary sensor and have your way with it. For me, that’s usually in Node-Red. The Aqara reed relay piece, board & battery are small enough to fit in the base of these large switches
If anyone knows of a Zigbee purpose-built switch closure detection, I would love to hear about it (and stop destroying perfectly good Aqara modules)! Thanks.