I’m in Parkdale but would you mind passing on those details just in case your sparky is happy to travel?
I am looking for a smart dimmer for my living room ceiling light. The ceiling light is currently controlled by a two-way-switch setup and a Shelly 1PM connected on one side. When replacing this with a dimmer, ideally control should be available on both sides of the room.
Has anyone installed the Brilliant Smart WiFi Master and Slave Dimmer Mech and could share their experience? And would this be a suitable replacement of an existing two-way-switch with a dimmer and without rewiring the whole living room? Or, does anyone have any other product suggestions that allow dimmer control and avoid rewiring?
Hi, hopefully this is helpful for someone - I recently brought Brilliant Smart Flood light and set it up through Tuya Local on home assistant. Below is a table for the mapping I used, there are 7 inputs and 1 output/sensor from the light (pir detection). The first 3 DP functions in the table are used in the same type: “Light”, the remaining functions are separate.
#NOTE: DP 104 “Mode” is the function that will allow you to turn the lights “ON” or back to “AUTO” or set them to flash if you want to use that function.
Cheers
Flatstrap
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You might be able to get away without rewiring by changing both switches to a button press and using the existing 2-way wiring to bring it back to a Shelly dimmer2.
Have a look at some of the discussion last year about using a Shelly in a similar configuration link
You don’t need to have a the two-way momentary switches in the previous post, you can use the Shelly in single switch mode. Then it operates like most single button press dimmers.
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I am just about to embark on the renovation of my bathroom, which will be my first opportunity for hardwired home automation. After reviewing as much of this thread as possible, I think I have reached a point of information overload and hoping for some help with my indecision. I’m current running mostly Zigbee devices with Z2M and HA but not adverse to wifi.
What I am trying to achieve is:
- The exhaust fan will come on automatically when the humidity in the bathroom varies from the rest of the home by >10%. The fan should also come on for 30 minutes when a user flicks the switch.
- When the lights are switched on, the intensity and colour of the lights should be based on the time of day, brighter and cooler during the day and the inverse at night.
I would like to make as much of this automation work without wifi/connection to MQTT/HA and have fall back to ‘basic’ behaviour when disconnected.
So where I am most unsure:
- Would a Shelly 2.5 the best device to achieve this? or smart mechanisms flashed with Tasmota/OpenBeken?
- Would ESPHome or Tasmota be a better fit for my use case? Which logic do you think I could achieve locally on the device vs. in HA?
- Which mechanisms would you recommend? I’m looking for something I can roll out in other rooms as well. Push button preferred, but bell press would be ok too. Would be great to have an LED to indicate state for the fan. One option from further up the thread was the Clipsal 40MBPRL due to the ability to add pictograms and have the LED indicate state (so it’s clear when the fan is on) but I heard the press action is not very nice
Sorry for all the questions, very grateful for any advice
I won’t try and answer all your questions, but this might help:
Control of your fan, yes a Shelly 1 or 2.5 will do this, and will still work with the wall switch if the connection with your HA goes down. HA has built in Shelly integration. If you wanted to go zigbee, then this would probably work, or even some of the Wiser modules (but I wouldn’t recommend them due to buggy firmware and needing the Wiser hub to update firmware).
For your light, if you want automated colour temperature, you’re going to have to go with something like a Wiz or Lifx CCT downlight or globe (both wifi). There are probably zigbee equivalents. But then you need to work out how to stop people switching the light off at the wall as it will lose power. Can’t really see the point of adjustable color temperature in your bathroom (sorry), you’re probably better off with a simple on/off light controlled by another shelly (or the other output of a 2.5), and for low level warm night light, fit a small length of warm white LED strip somewhere, its amazing how little light output you need in the middle of the night.
For smart switches, I’m a fan of the HPM Legrand Excel Life With Netatmo range. They’re quality hardware using Zigbee, made by a reputable brand.
I bought one as a test, and it has been working flawlessly with my HA setup using my Sonoff Zigbee dongle. I’m going to use more of them as I renovate further.
You don’t necessarily need to use “smart” products and HA to achieve this. Have you seen these? https://tighthouse.com.au/products/ceiling-mounted-humidity-sensor
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Some notes on humidity sensors and the bathroom…
Most of the “smart” fans that are stand alone are not much good as they just come on when in a range of x% to x% humidity. Better than nothing, but far short of what a good automation can do.
I have a few different conditions that turns mine on…
Like you said when it’s x% more than another location in the house
But also if it rises by x amount in a short period of time
More important though is what conditions you use to turn it off.
I have a timer on it so whenever a condition triggers it, it will be on for 8 minutes. This timer restarts everytime a trigger happens, so basically it will run for 8 minutes after it thinks it should be off. That way if it’s in a condition where the automation thinks there is no humidity trigger and you say hey google turn on bathroom fan it will go for 8 minutes. (good to get rid of smells too haha)
The other very important condition is if the humidity is still FALLING , that’s a trigger to stay on.
So many automations get this wrong - they will turn off when the humidity gets BELOW a certain level.
No. No matter what the humidity is, if it’s still falling, leave the fan on because if it’s still falling the fan is still doing something. When it stops falling, then turn it off. (+ the 8 minutes timer on top of that)
Hope this helps 
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Thanks for the suggestion - I like the look of this range and that I could consistently roll them out across all switches and GPO’s around the house. I’m a big fan of Zigbee but shied away from it for this use case due to not being able to have some automations on the switch itself but perhaps, like many things, I am overthinking it. Maybe the best way to go is Zigbee and then making sure my MQTT/HA is high availability.
Edit: would you happen to know if the Netatmo range supports Zigbee binding?
I hadn’t seen this product - I was originally thinking of using Aqara battery devices but something in built like this would be next level
Wow! this is so much richer than what I had in mind, thank you very much for this. I hadnt even considered the case of humidity still falling
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Excellent, thank you
Ohhh geee, I think you might be right - a nice under mirror warm white LED strip sounds like a much better solution and also a cost saving as I could then go ‘dumb’ downlights
I have quite a few 30PBBPL installed right now but have found their reliability to be not great over the long term in high use scenarios (e.g. bathroom light). They are a bit spongey, require full movement to reliably trigger, and the spring seems to weaken over time. I have revived a few older units which I’ve had replaced by opening them up and stretching the spring out a bit but they still don’t feel like new. Obviously not a long-term solution but they are okay.
I purchased a couple of 40MBPRL recently to try out as alternatives for the 30PBBPL and unfortunately while the mechanism feels like it’d be much more reliable (they press similarly to a classic Clipsal rocker switch both in required force and snappiness), the LED is very dim and in my opinion is not suitable for use as a status indicator. They’d be fine in an always-on scenario for locating in the dark though.
I’ve done a lot of searching for potential alternative illumination options but haven’t found anything that both looks like it might work and is compliant. The LED hole could be enlarged somewhat to accomodate larger LEDs and the green plastic is translucent so anything sufficiently bright could be strapped to the side of the mechanism and be visible through the plastic (although it would be tinted green).
Based on the shape of the heat-shrinking on the 40MLEDW, it seems like there’s a reverse protection diode and two resistors (in series for the voltage rating). I’ve considered lowering the resistance to increase the brightness but that’d presumably invalidate compliance.
The 30PBBPL are still my current choice where I want a status indicator but am tempted to go with the 40MBPRL in scenarios where that doesn’t matter as much. I’m curious to hear about others’ experiences with the 40MBPRL, in particular with regards to the LED brightness, and if anyone else has a favourite push button with status indicator for use with Shelly devices.
The light and the switch are the same aren’t they?
Not sure, sorry. I’ve not tried using binding in Zigbee yet.
BTW, one annoying thing about the HPM Netatmo range is that they don’t have dual GPOs, just singles.
Definitely looking for something certified - didn’t even think of that, so thanks for the heads up! It kinda seems like the only option for smart plugs are all cloud based devices, right? And of the cloud ones, a lot seem tuya based, which isn’t inspiring either…
Shame there’s not more range in local smart plugs - I’m kind of surprised it’s not that popular here
Nah, I’m using TP-Link Kasa KP115 all locally
That’s good to know! Is that through an official integration or something through HACS?
EDIT: Long day, apparently I forgot how to google: looks like an official integration but it doesn’t support every type of tp-link plug available. Either way, that’s a very good start, thanks!
There are a few types of certified plugs.
I used some Brilliant ones that you could put Tasmota on for a while but then they died. I though I was lucky as others had them die after a year and I was at 18 months…but then they died.
Others here have used the Kogan ones but they die too. If you scroll back people have posted photos of the insides of the Kogan ones and there have been sad stories when they were connected to fridges.
So you almost need to treat them like like a consumable which is horrible and wasteful as we’re using them to minimise power usage for the benefit of the environment.
Hopefully my Kasa ones last. The newer Tapo ones dont have an official integration but use a HACS one.
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Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of stuff about the Brilliant and Kogan ones dying, which isn’t great. Also I have one Tuya device so far (a door sensor) and it’s so slow to update and randomly stops working, which is why I wanted to stay away from cloud stuff if I could.
Also I think I’ve heard that the Kogan ones (and maybe the Brilliant ones?) are no longer flashable - not sure how true that is as I haven’t tried to flash anything yet, so it’s just what I’ve read in passing?
Either way, I definitely won’t be putting this anywhere hugely critical like a fridge - I just want it for small things like turning on automations when I plug my phone in for the night etc
Thanks Daniel - good call out on the single GPO’s, kind of strange they decided not to offer double GPO