Dumb mode for switches if HA crashes

Installation
1

Hello everyone,

I (and I guess we all do) need to have light 100/100 of the time (except in case of electricity interruption Ofc).
I have read the topics about High availability, but I don’t really need automations so much to plan a High availability system.

I have a home to fully renovate from scratch and my question is:
How can I plan my installation so my home lighting system switches from smart home to a dumb mode if home assistant fails?

Even if I can’t use anymore automation etc., I still want to be able to use normal dumb light.
It would be ok to have some led strips not working for 1 hour or even a few days if Home assistant fails.

But about GU10 light, for example, I plan to use some switch from AQARA H1 WS-EUK02 (Smart Wall Switch H1 EU (No Neutral) - Specs - Aqara) and for dimmer needs the
Candeo dimmer switch (https://candeo.io/store/zigbee-dimmer-rotary-switch-c202/) (by the way if you have any equivalent for this candeo dimmer switched i’d be glad, they seem to be hard to find except in UK).

Those 2 switches will control some dumb GU10 LED .

I would like to still be able to turn on those GU10 light the old way without the smart features if HA fails…

I hope I was clear and not too long.
Thank you all for reading :slight_smile:

2

Most “smart switches” will continue to work without Home Assistant - they work as a normal “dumb” switch (you can turn them on/off using the manual switch) but can be controlled by Home Assistant.

3 Likes
3

By using hardware that allows you to configure such scenarios locally.

I do this with (for me superior) esphome devices nowadays but also tried (and failed) before doing this with only ZigBee gear.

Long story short: You can configure esphome nodes (devices) to trigger different actions (local relay, remote esphome relay directly via rest or even directly without WiFi via esp-now or bt-home with a custom component) based on active HA and/or WiFi connection.

4

ESPHome is dependent on WiFi, so if WiFi is down, so are your switch, unless they are directly connected.

Your options seems to be a directly connected smart switch, specially coded ESP-Now switches and I am not sure if ZigBee groups work a failed coordinator.

5

Great ! I plan to make a small test environement to test the switches i selected.
I’ll post my results here, perhaps somebody will need this someday :slight_smile:

6

No, if we are talking about an AP-WiFi infrastructure that’s not correct.

Esphome nodes can call each other directly via esp-now or bt-home for example - both are available via various custom components.

If WiFi is available but HA is disconnected (for example rebooting for an update) a esphome node can be configured to trigger a remote esphome node (“detached mode”) via http call.

And local attached relays obviously always work with esphome. My thoughts were more about “detached” devices like a esphome wall switch which triggers a remote esphome bulb rather then the local relay. With ZigBee only a few devices can do this AFAIK - for example IKEA tradfri stuff - the majority of (random) ZigBee devices I used to own just went offline (can’t trigger remote devices) the moment the coordinator went down.

I really tried and invested (too much) money and lots of time but ZigBee is a un-debug-gable black box (for me) which couldn’t live up to praises spread in this forum.

And while it may sound cheesey, the moment I started deploying esphome devices everything became rock solid.