Yes he does have a cool switch.
What I meant was that he also has some ESPhome based bulb’s that can be programmed to do what you want on power-up (power applied)
Yes I was looking at them too 
So many options, it’s mind blowing!
I already have the bulbs by the way: the entire house is fitted with Philips Hue bulbs last year, before I got into Home Assistant. As they are quite expensive I’m not planning on replacing them and I’m looking at which switches I could pair them with.
In the case where all the hue bulbs staying in place…
hue website offers multiple options, and all 4 of those listed below would understandably (?) help protect hue’s bulb business, since they certainly don’t like the idea of “1 smart switch to cover 6 dumb bulbs in the room”, which renders their smart bulbs useless in batches:
Dimmer Switch | Philips Hue (philips-hue.com)
Button Switch | Philips Hue (philips-hue.com)
Wall Switch | Philips Hue (philips-hue.com)
They join force with Lutron for this Aurora Switch | Philips Hue (philips-hue.com)
Note: All of those are battery powered - so pretty sure it’s an intentional decision of hue’s.
Applicability depends on your install situation and your need. And I am sure there are other smart switches (or “extra smart” switches, as Robert mentioned) out there that would offer the same.
I’ve got some of this dimmer switches actually and they are pretty good - even better when integrated with HA as they can also trigger double click and long press, events which are not handled in the official Philips Hue app.
All of these requires the zigbee network to be up and running though. I’m looking for a solution where I could still use my lights in case the zigbee network or HA goes down - without having to reconfigure them and without having to rewire anything.
Well, you have a bunch of hue bulbs, so zigbee network should/would be strong, and I would leverage that if I were you.
Also, it is possible to do zigbee binding so that when your HA or wifi is down, the bound pairs would/should still work.
Binding | Zigbee2MQTT (hmm, looks like there are limitations with hue - older hue firmware were OK though.)
Aurora Smart Bulb Dimmer Switch | Lutron
Anyways my 2 cents.
A shame Hue bulbs don’t support that feature, but good to know nevertheless, I didn’t know this was possible.
The Luton switch offers an interesting solution, albeit for the US market. I’m sure if I was to wait for a year or two, there would be more options, and at a more affordable price… but not sure I want to wait. (there’s always going to be something new and better!)
Against this, you lose one of home assistant’s greatest features: the ability to be the one place to control and log your system. Just wait until your kids wake you at 2.30am to ask “Daddy why did all the lights come on in our room” and you can only answer “Nothing in HA logs, some flaky zigbee thing happened”.
The Aqara H1 wall switches have a decoupled mode, whereby the power can be permanently supplied to the bulb and the switch can be set to trigger whatever you want. They seem the ideal solution to solve the “someone switched off the light switch” problem that comes with smart bulbs of all descriptions. I’ve just purchased one for testing with Hue bulbs, although I haven’t installed it yet. I think the edge case you are talking about where the Zigbee network is unavailable is likely to be so rare that it’s not worth worrying about.
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I’m using philips hue rgb bulbs with shelly 1 switch.
As soon you configure as Detached Switch and make 4 automations with HA, all works perfect.
Update after having installed this. I can confirm that the Aqara H1 wall switch, when set to decoupled mode, works great with smart bulbs. You do need to use Zigbee2MQTT rather than ZHA though, because, at time of writing, I was unable to find a way to set decoupled mode in ZHA.
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But it only works with the version with neutral, right? I have both, but with the no neutral version, if I turn off a smart bulb the Aqara button can no longer be pressed. I guess not enough load for both if the bulb goes to “stand-by mode”?
I don’t know for sure as don’t have the “No Neutral” version. This is with the “With Neutral” version of the switch.
If there’s not enough load, you can wire in a bypass capacitor at the light fitting e.g. this one from Shelly. This should allow enough current through to the switch, although you will need to check the minimum requirements do not exceed whichever bypass capacitor you buy. Hope that helps.
For me decoupled mode works in both versions of Aqara switches (with and without neutral).
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I know this an old thread but I’m coming to the same conclusion, Ie néed smart bulbs and smart switches (aqara D1), so need to use decoupling. I did this back in the day with webcore on smartthings. But my current HA setup has 40 ZHA devices, looks like I need to bite bullet and move everything to Zigbee2MQTT, as you cannot run both on same instance, is that right?
I’m suprised there are so few switch options (I’m in UK but do have neutrals in most cases). Thats what I’m concluding from own research and https://youtu.be/9u_kQ9gW9Cg?si=gNFEY6-f-XmB4u-a this great video form home automation guy.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a few threads lately which state that setting decoupled mode for Aqara switches in ZHA is supported now, so you don’t really need to migrate.
Have a search through this thread. You might have to issue a cluster command if it’s not exposed in the UI, but it should be doable.
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Yup. Using the manage clusters interface in ZHA is the only way to toggle decoupled mode on the Aqara switches currently.
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great thanks both - will take a look. glad I sent this before converting!
Don’t be too glad. I run both ZHA & Z2MQTT (mainly because I switched over a couple of years ago and am too lazy to fully migrate).
My personal experience is that Z2MQTT has faster support & generally more features for new devices and quicker turnaround time for bug resolution. It’s gotten to the point where it wouldn’t cross my mind to add a new device via ZHA.
If you can spare the cash and the time, I recommend buying another coordinator to run Z2MQTT and migrate at your own* pace.
*Don’t migrate at my pace or you’ll never be done 
So on this, any pointers or blogs that set this out? Or is it a case of hacking around?
Presumably decoupling is a binary command, ie once issued as a cluster the device maintains that function indefinitely?