Best Smart Dimmer for Smart Lights?

[kwazi7]

Alright, so I have a wife-proofing problem. After my zigbee2mqtt blew up after a restore failure (freaking routers won’t connect to the coordinator anymore), and I’m left with having to do a full re-pairing across the board, our main lights are now completely dead because they depend on HA and Zigbee2mqtt.

Are there any good options for a smart dimmer that can also talk directly to smart lights? or do I need to get rid of the smart lights? ugh.

For the record, I am currently using this: https://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/pages/standalonecontrols/dimmers-switches/smartbulbdimmer/overview.aspx

[orange-assistant (the real one)]

Devices that can be fully owned (no only the hardware) can be extended with such functionalities, for example with esphome based devices you can check for a active HA api connection and in case it’s not present toggle a remote esphome node simply via a http request.

@xndz

I somehow prefer to code actions directly in ESPHOME setup rather than firing events to HA and then reacting over there, i.e.

- timing: #short
          - ON for at most 1s
          - OFF for at least 0.05s
        then:
          - if:
              condition: 
                api.connected:
              then:
                - homeassistant.service:
                    service: light.toggle
                    data:
                      entity_id: light.table_lamp
              else:
              - http_request.post: "http://192.168.10.77/light/table_lamp/toggle"

It would be even possible to add another condition and check if wifi is connected and in case it isn’t send maybe send the command via esp-now (direct device communication) with the help of a external component.

[xndz (Giedrius Kilčauskas)]

I wanted to do that in the first place, but couldn’t find anything working like this, so went with http_request at first but since that was somehow slow (and not reliable), went with calling HA service directly from device. Thanks for sharing this custom lib, I’ll have a look.

[NathanCu (Nathan Curtis)]

Smart light plus smart switch is usually bad juju and I simply avoid it. But since you’re in the US (assumed since you use lutron gear) and are already there.

Check out Inovelli Blue series. If you can find one they are what you are looking for. They pass power through to the end fixture in smart bulb mode and can direct bind via zigbee.

Smart 2-1 Switch (On/Off or Dimmer)

[jerrm]

Does binding not work?

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/binding.html

[k8gg]

Correct - you could lookup zigbee binding. What is your smart bulb(s)?

The Lutron Aurora Dimmer does support direct control (aka Touchlink) to smart bulbs, if this specific smart bulbs also being zigbee, and support Touchlink.

So, as a reference point, I have used aurora dimmers on both IKEA Tradfri & Philips Hue bulbs. And they would dim just fine, from the dimmer switch, even when your zigbee coordinator is offline.

[ferbulous (Shaq)]

Is there a list of smart bulbs that support binding other than here?

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/binding.html

Or would it work with any zigbee bulbs as long as the dimmer supports binding/decoupled relay?

[k8gg]

@ferbulous

Is there a list of smart bulbs that support binding other than here?

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/usage/binding.html

As mentioned in the page, your bulbs would have to support also for the binding to work. I have not personally seen other list yet.

[chansearrington]

If the switch has binding directly to the light, do they stay in sync with each other and are the both still controllable via home assistant?

[k8gg]

With both the bulb and the dimmer in the same zigbee mesh, and with the zigbee binding (between bulb and dimmer) in place,
(a) not sure what you meant by “in sync”, but anyways the dimmer switch can turn on / dim / turn off the smart bulb.
(b) Yes HA can control the bulb, as long as the bulb is part of the zigbee mesh where HA could control
(c) even when my HA being offline, the dimmer switch would still be able to control the bulbs - same turn on / off / dim behavior.

[Joel_DE]

are these still the best bet? I am renovating my house and am moving off of lifx to just smart dimmer switch and dumb led dimmable lights.