Many of us using smart bulbs (Hue, Yeelight, LIFX, Zigbee bulbs, etc.) have faced the common frustration: family members or guests unintentionally turn off wall switches, disconnecting bulbs from Home Assistant. All your automations, voice controls, and remote settings become useless until you manually restore power.
Traditional solutions—like Philips Hue’s “remote patch” (the battery-powered Hue Dimmer Switch)—often result in awkward installations, frequent battery replacements, and still leave the original wall switch prone to accidental toggling. It’s time Hue users finally had a proper solution!
Introducing the Brimate Zigbee Decoupled Switch
Brimate offers a practical, professional-grade alternative that directly replaces your existing wall switches:
Continuous Power: Ensures smart bulbs remain powered and controllable via Home Assistant at all times, regardless of manual switch operations.
Zigbee Group/Bind Support: Provides independent and reliable control of lights, even if Home Assistant or your hub experiences downtime.
Scene Controls: Single-click to activate predefined lighting scenes (e.g., Night Mode, Reading Mode). Double-click to save your favorite scene.
PowerOn Link Technology: Simplifies Zigbee pairing with automatic, instant setup—no repetitive manual toggling required.
Edge & End Intelligence: Offers ultra-fast “End Intelligence” for instant local control, and “Edge Intelligence,” ensuring all switch operations are reported to Home Assistant, enabling powerful automations. (Note: Both modes can work simultaneously under Zigbee2MQTT, but under ZHA, configuration must choose between the two.)
Unlike Hue’s battery-powered “remote patch,” this is a genuine switch that Hue Dimmer Switch users have always dreamed of—finally a true, reliable, and hassle-free replacement!
We Value Your Input
Your experiences and requirements are vital to shaping the final product:
First Impressions: What do you think of this concept?
Feature Requests: What additional functionalities would enhance your smart home experience?
Adoption Readiness: Would you replace your existing switches with the Decoupled Switch? If hesitant, please share your concerns.
Zigbee to Matter Bridge: Would you be interested in using the Zigbee Decoupled Switch as a trigger for your Matter-compatible speakers through a Zigbee-to-Matter bridge? Share your thoughts on this potential feature!
Call for Beta Testers
We are actively seeking participants from the Home Assistant community to test and provide feedback on this new switch. If you’re interested, please let us know in the comments.
Upcoming Information
Next Week: Release of detailed product specifications, images, and installation guidelines.
Official Launch: Scheduled within two months, including special introductory pricing.
Stay tuned and share your thoughts—we look forward to your valuable insights!
Oh, and about our slogan: “Live the fun of our smart home, leave the convenience to our family”—catchy enough or needs tweaking? Let us know what you think!
Honestly, I think you’re about 3 years too late. Bigger companies have solved this issue as shown here and here.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all out for more choice, but there’s no product link we can look at. Even searching for the name of your company only gives 1 plausible result, which is a company which seems to be deadpooled and doesn’t seem to have an actual (secure) site.
I disagree, it’s not solved everywhere. Inovelli blue seems great, but we’re still waiting on it coming out in Europe. Over here I still haven’t been able to find a good solution, Aqara H1 is the closest I found but it’s a very cheap feeling mushy switch, and does not do binding.
I’d be interested, assuming it’s available in the EU for once. But since we’re talking about something that could set the house on fire, I’d rather let someone else go first to be honest
I have the H1, H1M and the Z1pro. Of the three, only the pro feels mushy, but that’s because of the quieter contact switches. I haven’t tried binding with either switch so can’t comment.
Re Inovelli in EU, the last I heard was that the EU switch was gonna be matter (after the poll they created narrowly favoured it over ZigBee). It’s been a while though, and I could be wrong
First off - THANK YOU. We need more companies that think about the future of smart homes. Controlling smart bulbs in a smart home is a huge hassle today. If your product does half of what you say it will do, that’s so much better than most products today.
I am definitely interested in testing your new switch! I have a lot of experience trying out different alternatives (as seen in this previously mentioned thread)
I don’t think this is too late, rather the opposite. If Brimate will deliver a switch according to their own specifications I believe it will surpass the features of most (if not all) smart switches today.
I realize the need for being realistic and skeptical before we have more information, but come on. If this gets released we should be ecstatic. And it’s not like we are being asked to invest in the product. Simply to provide input and possibly test a device that could give us what we have been asking for.
At the very worst we are back where we started, without any great alternatives on the European market. Call me naive, but I for one hope that Brimate can and will deliver.
Thank you for your message. It seems there might be some inaccuracies with the information provided on the website you mentioned. However, our previous consumer-facing website, www.brimate.com, was indeed shut down. We plan to relaunch a new website once our new product is officially released.
Our initial product launch is focused on the US market, but we are already planning a European version, which is expected to be released in the second half of the year. If you’re interested, we would greatly appreciate your feedback on the European version.
Regarding the binding issue you mentioned, we have already implemented it in our software. Additionally, we support the Zigbee group feature—by simply placing the switch and the bulbs in the same group, the switch will be able to control them directly. This makes setup much simpler for users.
That’s awesome, nice to hear there’ll be an EU option with support for binding, at long last. Im currently using Shelly relays behind normal toggle switches, because I can’t stand the mushy push buttons on most smart switches and Shelly’s can be flashed with ESPHome to give them the smart-ish behavior of falling back to electrically toggling the bulb if HA is down.
But I’d very much prefer Zigbee (or matter over thread, whichever) with binding instead, a much cleaner solution.
Looking forward to it
Thank you so much for your encouragement! In fact, we have been preparing for a long time, and our US version prototype is already ready. The European version is in the planning stage, and if you’re willing, we would love to hear your suggestions for the European product—perhaps we should accelerate our timeline for its release.
From a technical perspective, we have chosen Zigbee as the primary protocol and aim to be compatible with as many standard Zigbee hubs as possible. We have already tested our product with Z2M, ZHA, and Hue gateways, and everything is functioning well. Additionally, we prefer to use native Zigbee commands for fundamental functions such as switching, dimming, and basic scenes. This ensures that even if the hub goes offline, essential functions will continue to operate smoothly. This is also what we believe sets us apart from other competitors.
Below are some of my input on specifications or features that I would love to see in a smart switch (loosely in order of importance):
If possible, make it a relay. Switch design varies from country to country and it would be great if we could mount the product in the junction boxes behind existing switches.
The smart switch should be safe to use (compliant with any required standards or regulations in Europe)
It would be great if it could support 16A of maximum current (but at the very least 10A)
Zigbee/Thread is a great protocol since I believe there are already bluetooth, wifi and Z-wave options on the market
Decoupling (disconnecting the relay from the switch/button)
Support for at least the following actions: single, double, and hold
Binding
Bonus feature: I realize that binding might solve this issue, but I would love a fallback mode option. This would mean that if the switch looses contact with the Coordinator it will revert to a non-decoupled state, controlling the relay once more (breaking power to the lights). If it’s not possible to do this automatically, it would be great if there was a specific button sequence that would allow this mode to be set and unset.
The reason for this last item is to allow users to have a fallback in case of power outage or other emergencies. Assuming everything will work is great, but we all know that unexpected things might happen out in the real world. Fail-safes are important.
Also, if you would like a call where I expand on my experiences or the list above, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me here or via DMs.
Thank you for your detailed input! We truly appreciate your insights and suggestions. Below are our responses to the key points you raised:
Relay vs. Standard Switch Design: Our current US version follows the 120-size standard switch form rather than being a relay hidden behind existing switches. However, we will take your suggestion into account and reconsider the design for the European version.
16A Support: There is a trade-off between relay size and maximum current capacity. We will evaluate the feasibility of supporting 16A while maintaining an optimal form factor.
Protocol Choice (Zigbee vs. Thread): Zigbee is currently our primary protocol of choice. However, Thread requires further research regarding market demand, technical maturity, and cost implications before we can make a decision.
Functionality Support: Our switch will support decoupling mode, single press, double press, long press, Zigbee binding, group control, and scene functions.
Fallback Mode: We completely agree with your concern regarding fail-safes. Our planned solution includes a combination key press to manually force relay control or an automatic fallback to a non-decoupled mode if the switch is removed from the network.
Your feedback is invaluable, and we would love to stay in touch as we refine our European product. If you have any further thoughts, feel free to share!
I don’t have as much feedback to offer, except to say I’m quite interested. I’m sorta locked into Hue hubs for the 14 “Friends of Hue” Lutron Aurora rotary dimmers I have about the house. To replace them all wouldn’t be insignificant, but the day will come sooner or later.
For me these where approved by my spouse…have my house full with them now…
They have 1,2,4 gang, dimmers, shutters, sockets etc etc, touch controlled, available in wifi as well as zigbee version with a range of colors for the plates, and all for a reasonable price…
And the no-neutral switches ate with a 1uF capacitor very easy to use as detached switch
