My house is fully equipped with Aqara downlights and spotlights, all connected to Aqara H1 smart wall switches, and I’m using Zigbee2MQTT with Home Assistant.
Currently, I control the lights by toggling the physical switch (relay), which cuts or restores power to the lights. But I’m running into a limitation with voice control via Google Assistant.
1. How can I make the switch and light behave as one entity (especially with Google Assistant)?
Both the smart switch and the smart light are exposed to Google Assistant. If the light is off via the relay, I can’t say “Set light to 50%”—because the light is offline. I have to say “Turn on light” first, then adjust brightness.
One solution I’m considering is switching the Aqara H1 to decoupled mode and letting Home Assistant handle all on/off logic via automations, so the light remains powered and available to Assistant at all times.
Is that the best approach? Or is there a better way to treat both devices as a unified entity?
2. Is it a good idea to run the entire house in decoupled mode?
If I decouple all switches and handle everything via Home Assistant:
Will the lights still draw phantom power when turned off via software?
What happens if HA goes down? Will I lose the ability to control lights from the switch?
2 is better.
And the yes and yes.
There will be some consumption but not that much.
Yes you will loose control, but won’t that happen however you do it?
Yes, but all lights draw phantom power to some extent, even if they’re switched off. That’s why no-neutral switches work.
Yes, you will. If you have major downtime and night is approaching, you will have to factory reset the switch by holding down the button. This should get it back to the default non-decoupled mode state, but you’ll have to re-pair it once your HA is back up and running.
Another issue when using decoupled mode is the LED indicator light on the switch. I cannot seem to control the LED indicator individually on a 2 or 3 gang switch.
Hence, if I have 2 gang switch (1 relay, 1 decoupled), the LED on the decoupled one will always be on. Causing confusion…
Any one encountered this issue and has a good solution to it?
Honestly, I think you’re nitpicking at this point. Surely in most cases, you can visually see whether the bulb itself is off or on.
The only time that this would not be the case is if you’re controlling bulbs in another room, but then again, it is extremely rare to have a switch wired up to a room other than the one the bulb is in.
Depends on the light.
If it’s set up to always be on when power is resumed then it should work.
But I would never set my lights to that mode, a short power loss at night and everyone will be looking at you.
