Fly-by-Wire setup for LED wall switch

I added LED lights to my kitchen cabinets. I have 5 bays of cabinets and needed to address how I would connect all 5 bays. I thought about using one controller for all 5 bays, connected by running low voltage wire through the attic however the distance would create an issue with the furthest bay having dimmer lights than the closest bay to the controller. Ultimately I decided on 5 controllers, one above each bay of cabinets.

The experience I wanted was a wall switch that turns on and dims all LED lights together. To accomplish this, I created a light group and added each of the controllers to the group, hiding the members of the group. So far, nothing about this is rocket science, however creating the switch functionality was the challenge.

I had to add power above each bay of cabinets - which I accomplished by running a line to existing outlets in the kitchen. This was convienent and easy to do, but doesn’t allow for a wall switch. I had an ‘extra’ space in a 3 gang switch box because it was wired to allow independent control of a ceiling fan and ceiling light but the ceiling fan we bought did not (you have to use the remote to control the fan and the light). This extra space allows me to install a smart switch, however its not wired to the outlets and even if it were, wouldn’t allow for dimming functionality.

This is where I got ‘clever’ - I installed a smart dimmer in the box, however its not connected to any load. Home Assistant watches the smart switch for state changes (on, off, and dimming level) and then sends the appropriate state change to the LED controller group. This gave me the functionality of a light switch despite it not being physically connected to the lights.

My main issue with this fly-by-wire setup is that it violates a core principle of smart home design: every smart device should preserve dumb functionality in the event of smart feature failure. In this case, if home assistant is offline or unavailable, the light switch does nothing and there is no way to control the LEDs.

Ignore the messy kitchen - here is an image of the 4 bays in the kitchen itself and the 5th bay in the ‘butler’ area