Hi all,
I’ve tested a lot of components with home assistant (MySensors, zigbee mostly) but all was not much implemented in our daily life, because I’m on an appartment which is on rent and I would avoid to spend money in infrastructure… but… in near a year I’ll move to my new home, which is actually a lawn 
I’ll send to the electrician in the next month the schema I would need in my home and so maybe this is the right moment to think about a smart home using home assistant.
What I would like to do is a system which works with my home assistant setup BUT, in case there is an outage it should work manually as well, also without WiFi / ZigBee / home assistant.
That’s not the only reason: my girlfriend will never use a phone to turn the light on/off, so the wall switch should always work as a normal switch at least and, when used by the wall switch, the home assistant should known that the status of the light was changed.
I’ll install spotlights, RGB leds and so one…
Which setup / devices would you suggest? as always, if possible, not too much expensive devices are preferred, but that works and are reliable
Thanks a lot for your help!
Simon
Most Zigbee switches (the self powering Enocean ones can’t I believe) can work directly with the bulb, so no need for a hub to control.
Hi @robbo312 ,
Would the wall switch known the status of the bulb (on/off) even if turned on/off by other methods (HA i.e.)?
And what about to put two o more wall switches in parallel to control the same bulb?
Thanks, Simon
You will need to research the switch you have in mind, I’ve only messed with Hue stuff (which I now no longer use - my boat is all DC so I’m just using ESP32’s now)
Thanks @robbo312 for your hints.
If someother can share experiences or suggestions, they are welcome
Simon
If you are interested in making your own smart switches, you could use ESPhome to create the nodes and incorporate code within each node to switch the light based on a connected switch. That way they are controllable from HA as well as being stand-alone in the event that HA or your network is down. ESPhome is very easy to setup
If I were you I would try to stay away from smart bulbs completely. And with a new home installation that should be exceedingly easy to do.
I have an older house and I’m forced to use a few smart bulbs in a few areas but thankfully only one or two aren’t to much of a hassle because the non-smart wall power switch can stay on all the time and I operate them exclusively using automations. And if all else fails I can force them on by flipping the switch off then on. As you can start to see that wouldn’t work for everyday use.
the biggest recommendation that I would say is to make sure that you have a hot wire and a neutral wire at every wall switch location. That way you can use pretty much any smart switch on the market. And most smart switches work (or can be made to work) even if the HA system is down.
And as a side note if you plan to use security cameras make sure you run a good ethernet cable to anywhere where you anticipate needing one. Wifi is OK but your AP’s could slow way down if you use any significant number of decent resolution cameras.
I would go further for a new home/rewire and would wire everything to a single point similar to what the superhouse guy did. This way you can and adapt any single device easily.
Hello,
This seems interesting. I’ve started watching the video and I’ve seen he uses DPDT relay switches, so with double channels I could have the status back to an arduino if the circuit is closed and so the light is turned on.
That would work even if the arduino would be offline.
Simon