In my researching for a dimmer switch that I can use with smart colour bulbs, I did not find solution and I hope you could share your experience.
I run some Philips Hue, Wiz and Tuya bulbs.
For Hue colour bulbs, I have considered to wire bulbs directly (by passing the switch) and using hue dimmer remote in place. However the physical dimmer switch would be preferred by my SO. Maybe there is a dimmer switch that play nice with these bulbs?
For Tuya-like smart bulbs, in my case it’s LEDEPLY G9, I could not figure anything at all.
For Wiz bulbs, I’ve been considering Wiz dimmer switch, but in Canada they are hard to come by and again could not find much on how they work and if it will do what I need them to do.
Tried to use TP-Link Kasa KS225, but these buttons must be controlling the voltage to the bulbs, so bulbs start flashing.
I guess dimming buttons need to be programable and exposes to HA as separate entities, then you could assign dimming function in HA.
But maybe I’m wrong about TP-Link Kasa switches. Let me know if I’m missing something.
Ps. Any solution that will be local will be much more preferable, but willing to look for cloud options if they play nice and gets me what I need.
PSs. Connectivity: anything (wi-fi, zigbee, etc.) I will consider anything.
I totally get where you’re coming from! I was in the same boat recently, juggling between different brands and trying to find the perfect solution. Here’s what I figured out:
Kasa and Lutron dimmers - Unfortunately, they don’t support smart bulbs, which was a bit of a bummer.
Tuya smart bulbs - I struggled to find a physical wall-mounted dimmer switch that looked and felt right for Tuya bulbs.
Hue Dimmer Switch + Hue lights - This setup was my top choice for a while because it works great, but it’s super expensive. Plus, the Hue Dimmer Switch needs the Hue Bridge to function properly. If the bridge goes down, the switch and the lights stop communicating, which is really frustrating. I use Home Assistant at home, and it felt like a waste to rely so heavily on the Hue Bridge, and honestly, the overall experience wasn’t that great.
Finally, I stumbled upon a new brand on Amazon called Xsky. It’s been a game-changer! It integrates perfectly with Home Assistant, and the best part is that even if the Zigbee coordinator is offline, the switches can still control the lights directly with almost no delay. This means my family doesn’t have to worry about my Raspberry Pi crashing and affecting the lights.
Xsky’s switches have two buttons and look just like regular physical switches, so they blend right in on the wall. My family can’t even tell the difference from a normal switch. The second button adds a scene feature, letting us switch between different color temperatures and brightness levels. We all love it!
If you’re looking for a reliable and seamless smart lighting solution, I highly recommend giving Xsky a try.
For wifi there’s Martin jerry dimmers (tasmota preflashed), enable decoupled mode and you can use dimming action as triggers to dim the lights. If the bulbs also run on tasmota firmware just use device groups.
Some example here
For zigbee, there’s inovelli also decouple and you could bind it to the lights
The only downside is that the dimmer switch is battery-powered. I really wish it could be powered by a neutral wire so it would feel even more like a regular switch and we wouldn’t have to worry about changing batteries. I did contact Xsky, and they mentioned they might have a neutral wire-powered version by the end of the year. Well, hope that happens!
This is interesting, a bit more hands on direction…was hoping for more plug’n’play solution. But I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty
Thru my research I also seen this
I wonder how close this to Tasmoto and will I be able to achieve the same results where switch can act as on/of with single click and dimmer function with longer press.
