I have just bought a couple of the Arlec Up & Down external lights - Grid Connect.
However, as I look at the wiring diagram, it appears that they cannot be used with the original (physical) switch. That is, if I turn them off at the switch, it cuts all power to the light and therefore takes the wifi down and the lights go off-line.
My wife does not want the app on her phone and if I am right, has no enduring way of controlling the lights.
So - am I right in that the only way they can really be used is via the app or HA integration?
In this case, that would defeat the purpose of having āsmartā lights on the wall. The real smarts would be in the Shelly relay if I went that way. At least with the Shelly you can still use the physical switch.
Not all all, the light is smart when you make it smart with automations
Almost all of the lights in my house are smart bulbs, rather than in wall switches, although I do have a few of those.
The trick is to automate everything to a point where you donāt need a switch. Using a combination of ToD, lumen sensors, PIRs, temp sensors, presence detection, etc you can get almost anything to a point where you donāt have to use the switch.
As an example, I have extenal lights in my driveway that are turned on always, and operate with the sun.sun component. They switch on and off via the position of the sun.
I have other lights that also use the same component, yet only operate with presence detection (if someone is home/away).
My issue is that my wife doesnāt want the app on her phone and doesnāt access HA, so if she wanted the lights off, she would have to physically flick the switch. Ditto for any visitors to the house. That then renders the lights useless for automation.
At least with say, a Shelly relay, the wifi connection would still be online for automations because the physical switch is downstream from the relay, but then I donāt need Grid Connect.
A Shelly does solve that problem, but are best used with dumb lights.
Like I mentioned, having a few buttons around in key locations for your wife to use would solve the problem.
Also, your wife doesnāt need to have the HA app on her phone for you to use presence detection. If you use a presence detection app like life360 or have her phone connected to WiFi, that can work for home/away functions - lights can turn on when she arrives home and itās dark without any interaction from her.
When I was going though the same sort of thing with my wife, I worked with her to decide on times of the day when she would like certain lights on and off. That largely solved the problem as she has the lights work in a way, automatically, that she likes.
OK- the mention of buttons made me think - there are Zigbee buttons that are battery operated and could be used to trigger an automation to turn the lights off and onā¦. But it would work just like the physical switch.
One of those buttons near the light switch could solve the problem. Itās not perfect to have to add something smart to get something smart to work in a dumb way, but hey!
Thatās exactly how I managed the partner acceptance problem.
In the morning, an Ikea ZigBee button turns on a set of lights and turns off adaptive lighting sleep mode for the whole house. At night, the same button turns off all lights other than bedroom and hallway and sets adaptive lighting to sleep mode.
Youāre not limited to buttons. The Aqara Cube does various useful things and has been allowed to grace the coffee table. A quick shake turns on the TV and could easily also set the room lighting to suit.
Just ordered two of the Ikea buttons. You have given me a few ideasā¦ so I might need more.
I get the impression HA can distinguish between a single and double tap - so you could get multiple uses out of the button? Single tap toggles the coffee machineā¦ double tap toggles the ceiling fan?
I use the Xiaomi buttons, they have a single, double and long press. All can be assigned to perform an automation, execute a scene or script. I imagine the Ikea buttons do the same. Your imagination is the only limit to what you can do.
I do that too in the bedroom with a button on each side of the bed.
Single for āthis side of the bedā reading light
Long for ceiling light
Double for all lights (including ensuite and wardrobe lights that are motion activated)
works nicely
in other rooms, a bit of tape covers the real switch and a button is blue-tacked on just above it.
It was meant to be temporary, 3 years ago ā¦
I did the same thing in my house until we stopped reaching for the switch. Took about 6 months. Having the multi-use buttons is super handy, especially for the cost.
As a bonus, you can set their relays not to switch the load with the physical button, but just to send a signal to other devices in an association group, so if you get z-wave bulbs, for example, your wall switch can switch them on and off without off-lining them.
Then when you need to change what is in the socket, you can still cut power to the socket via z-wave, but a guest wonāt disable to bulbs by using the switch.
And they have different modes for different switch types, so they work with momentary switches and rocker switches fine. For rockers, they just watch for a change of state so a single flick of the wall switch will always just toggle whatever is being controlled, regardless of the physical position of the switch or the last state that was set via z-wave.
Iām using ZWaveJS2MQTT with a bunch of ZW132 Dual Nano Switch devices. The configuration options are ā[7-112-0-122] Control Destination (S1)ā and ā[7-112-0-123] Control Destination (S2)ā. āLoad and association groupā is the default and āAssociation groupā is detached.
Looks interesting but I already have Zigbee, Tuya and RF devices and not sure about another protocolā¦ā¦although my Sonoff Zigbee USB dongle is telling HA it is also Z-Wave!
