I’m relativly new to Home automation … Got hass since 4 days, but got smart bulb since 4years.
Hass is absolutly marvelous, and let me aggregate all my smart devices (squeezebox, switch, bulbs …) in a simple way : an app to rule them all.
I’ve got an hardware question : I’ve got a bulb without a wall switch (it’s always powered) : if I want to add a wall switch : I don’t want to drill down the wall, put wires, and connect all.
Can I find “a smart switch with battery”(no wires) which I can paste on a wall, and which could interact with hass (so I could turn on/off my always powered bulb) ?
I’ve got trouble to find this piece of device on google, I don’t know the rights keywords to tind the right device … perhaps the forum knows
There are a couple made by Xiaomi Aqara, like those single and doubles functioning over ZigBee. But you either need a gateway (easier way but dependent on the Xiaomi Cloud) or a custom ZigBee Router. Both approches are well supported within HA.
Excellent ! It’s exactly what I need … but from the description ; you don’t need a gateway, no ?
My bulb is a xiaomi strip one, without gateway … for me, the hub is the rpi/hass, if everything can communicate with the rpi/hass, this one can do the hub.
I’m not really aware about gateways : what can it done that rpi/hass can’t do ?
That Xiaomi strip communicate over normal wifi, those switches on the other hand communicate over a custom wireless communication protocol called ZigBee. Out of the box a Raspberry Pi doesn’t have the hardware capability to communicate over ZigBee. So you need some kind of device to bridge ZigBee towards your Raspberry Pi.
Here you have a couple of options:
Using the xiaomi gateway which acts as said bridge between ZigBee and normal Wifi. HA will communicate with the gatway via wifi, which in turn communicates with the switches. Here is the HA documentation for this.
Using a custom flashed ZigBee sniffer, which acts as a bridge between ZigBee and MQTT. This will be plugged into your Raspberry Pi. You’ll need various hardware components for setup, though. This is what I use.
You could look at LimitlessLED /MiLight on Amazon. They have remote controls you can buy for them and are well supported in Home Assistant as well (with the iBox Bridge)
