Conventional toggle switch Z-Wave plus

I purchased and installed several GE and Honeywell Z-Wave plus “toggle” switches.

My wife objects to them because unlike conventional light toggle switches, these switches stay in the center position after you press the toggle up or down.

That means that you can no longer tell if the switch is ON or OFF by looking at it. When operating remote outdoor lights this is important.

She has a point.

The only switches I can find that show position are paddle-type switches. These won’t do for several reasons.

  • it’s much harder to see the state of the paddle switch from across a room
  • many of my light switches are ganged, and putting a single paddle switch in place of a toggle type switch requires either a new wall plate or cutting the old one.

Any suggestions on real toggle-type Z-wave switches?

TIA

I don’t think you’ll find any such thing, the reason being that since it’s a smart switch that you can also turn on/off from Home Assistant, how would the switch physically be able to change to reflect the state if it was changed by Home Assistant?

I acknowledge your point, but that problem isn’t insurmountable.

What has happened is that the designers of these switches have chosen to remove an important ergonomic feature that is available in products for the past 100 years. They could have chosen a way to move the switch, or added indicators, or any number of other approaches. But they didn’t assign any value at all to the ability to see the switch state - which leads me to suspect they didn’t think about it.

I see HomeSeer has some paddle type switches with light indicators.

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I have the HomeSeer switches, and a couple other brands which have the same design. Although they are the type that remain in the center and have momentary switches for top and bottom, I find that the little LED light is a helpful indicator of whether the switch is on or off. By default, the LED comes on when the switch is off, but that setting can be changed. So I have the LED’s coming on when the switch is in the on position. I would even argue that these are easier to tell if they are on or off from across the room than a conventional switch.

I can’t think of any smart switches that physically move the toggle up and down without hiding the original switch. There are snap-on type smart switches that physically move the existing switch, but the ones I’ve seen cover the toggle completely, so don’t help your situation.

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Good call, forgot about the HomeSeer switches. TP-Link switches have a light on them which is on as well when the switch is off, if you’re open to Wi-Fi instead of Z-Wave @bizman

They said Z-Wave I avoid both Zigbee & Wi-Fi for a couple of reasons.

  1. They both insist on using the congested 2.4 GHz RF space.
  2. Both standards are too wide to insure compatibility when vendors are trying to lock you into their own walled gardens.

Typo on my part, corrected my previous post.

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Thanks, I’ll take a look at those. They leave me with the issue of converting from toggle to paddle switches, which may be an issue in some of the larger multi-gang switch boxes. But I agree, it provides a visual indication that is at least as good as a conventional toggle.

You can use standard Decora switches for the dumb ones and get new switchplates

@bizman,
I came across these today in a Facebook post and thought immediately of you!
So, it looks like such a device does exist…

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Thank you very much! I’ll take a look at these.

Feel your pain man… My wife has similar issues.

Most of the GE/Leviton wall switches I have here at the house, have an LED that turns on when the switch is off. That may help for seeing status of the switch from across the room or at night.

As for the toggle sitting in the middle. It feels strange to me too.

All that said. I really liked the old Leviton designer switches that did not toggle. You just push on the bottom and it toggled the status of the switch. Much more logical on a multi-gang setup. I’ve had success selling my wife on those because she is a little OCD and regular switches may not be in the correct position depending on where you turned them on/off last (all switches in the gang may not be down when the lights are off). She seems to be more comfortable with the button always being the same instead of the toggle switches that stay in the middle.

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Leviton Decora , has an indicator light that shows when the switch is off.

What has happened is that the designers of these switches have chosen to remove an important ergonomic feature that is available in products for the past 100 years. They could have chosen a way to move the switch…

+1 to this. It’s as if smart switch designers are totally unfamiliar with basic principles of human interface design.

The Ecolink Z-Wave Plus switch that @new_west_geek linked to above actually moves, which is good but the switch part is weirdly non-standard. This other version of the switch installs on top of a decora style switch, and itself operates as a decora style switch. That’s the closest thing I’ve found to a smart switch that operates manually exactly like a “traditional” switch.

Unfortunately, it runs on batteries and is a bit chunky. If anybody finds a properly installable smart switch that actually physically moves (bonus points if it’s the true traditional toggle style versus the decora rocker style), and is powered from a neutral wire rather than from batteries, I’ll buy them for every switch in my house.