How should I approach my first smart room

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Hi there,

I am brand new to smart homes, and only just installed Home Assistant and have ordered my Zigbee Coordinator. I program/script at work using python, so I am happy to do some coding if necessary, but am new to all the HA world.

I have the following bedroom and would like to create the following setup:

  • Ceiling Light
  • Led Light Strip behind the Bed
  • Bedlamps for each bedside

Overall I want four scenes, bright, reading, cosy, off.

I’d like to be able to set these when entering the room and when lying in bed from each side.

I am BRAND new to this, and after some research I am thinking of getting a 3 gang switch to turn on the the different lights, ceiling, led and either both or one bedside lamp depending on where the switch is.

I’d also like to switch between the aforementioned scenes. This is where I am unsure. Can I use a switch with a dimmer and slide across it to blend between different scenes? This would be great as I could go somewhere in between cosy and reading to find a midground between the leds changing from white to orange and the bedside lamps going from bright to less bright. Or should I just use double press on a 3 gang switch to switch scenes.

Finally I want each user to be able to dim their individual bedside table light. I’m not sure how a seasoned user would do this, but I’d like to avoid too many switches, so I was thinking long pressing the first and last switch on the 3 gang switch to dim or increase the brightness of the lamp when lying in bed, or if a dimmer exists, maybe I can double tap the bedside lamp switch enabling to dimmer to temporarily affect only the bedside light, but this might be too much.

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I am looking at the Aqara H1 3 Gang Switch and a the TUYA Dimmer 3 Gang
Wall Light Switch which has a dimmer. I’m still figuring out what’s possible.

Can I use the dimmer to smoothly switch between scenes that affect both the brightness and color of different - smart - lights. I think I need to ensure the switches are in “decoupled” mode, to avoid turning off the current to the smart bulbs. Can I use a combination of touch actions - like double tapping the bedside light switch to enable the dimmer to affect only the bedside light instead of switching scenes?

I’m still new to this, so it would be great to get tips based on other peoples setups and product advice.

Thanks,

Yannick

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As you have lamps you could use smart bulbs as they are dimable. Just use esphome one. You can use zigbee bulb but as they are routers they can someimes mess zigbee network.
if you want to dimm lights when you are in bed there are several options for that. If you have tv in bedroom you can create automation that will dim light when tv is on.
There are also some bed sensors, look online, that you can use and they will detect if bed is occupyed.

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Not all Zigbee bulbs are routers (repeaters). Sengled as a brand doesn’t do this.

I will suggest avoiding Zigbee bulbs though. My luck is mixed. I’ve had much better results with Wiz or Lifx bulbs using WiFi.

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No, you cannot. Scenes are essentially predefined snapshots, and you can’t blend from one scene to another. At best, you can group the lights together, then when a scene is applied to the individual lights, you can manually adjust brightness/colour temp levels for the entire group to be closer to a different scene. Not sure how uniformly it would behave with 3 different light types though.

You can immediately exclude the dimmer because it’s meant to control wired dumb bulbs.
The H1 annoyingly doesn’t support hold (it clashes with the pairing process and resets the switch if you hold a button too long). You only get single & double press. Ask me how I know :expressionless:
This means you would have to have an automation to cycle through scenes on eg. each double press. Not impossible, but not quite beginner-level unless you find a ready made blueprint.

With the bad news mostly out of the way, now comes the good news.
I found two devices which might sort you out:
Sunricher dimming scene switch
Pros - Powered by mains so you can install it near the door. Sends wireless signals to smart bulbs so doesn’t need to be directly connected to them. Supports 4 scenes and can send dim & on/off commands directly.
Cons - Only supported in Z2mqtt. Is 5 years old, so finding stock will be close to impossible. This is the first time I’m finding out about it, so check reviews for reliability and whether it can route zigbee signals.

Philips Hue Tap Dial
Pros - Has 4 dedicated non-touch buttons, plus a rotary dial (perfect for your bedside table in the dark). Supported in Z2mqtt, ZHA & Deconz. Battery powered, so fully wireless (won’t disconnect your smart bulbs, but see cons). Supports hold + single press, but can be made to support double press through some blueprints. I’ve been using this for 1.5 years and it’s been rock solid.
Cons - Only suitable for bedside use since the circular part is magnetically attached and the base is smaller than standard switches. Battery powered, so no zigbee routing. Expensive - expect to pay €50 per switch if it’s not on offer.

If this were my house, I would go for the Aqara H1 (or H1M) in decoupled mode for position A in your drawing, and two Tap Dials for positions B & C.
The H1 will give you basic scene/on-off control when you enter the room, while the Tap Dials will offer more granular dimming when you’re in bed reading or watching a movie.
If your zigbee network or HA dies, you can reset the H1M switch, which should (haven’t tested this yet) disable decoupled mode. This will allow you to manually switch on/off your bulbs like in the olden times.

Hopefully this clears things up for you!

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My only tip is, do not use smart bulbs if the bulb is turned on and off more than once a week. (I have a drawer full of smart bulbs as I only use them for flood lights, flag lights at night. Never switched, “always on” light bulbs.)

Instead use smart switches to the bulb (e.g., Tasmota), you will achieve the same and you will not tick off everyone else in your HA venture.

Most people are used to switching things on and off, specially light bulbs. If the bulb is smart bulb, and it is switched off, now the smart bulb is “dead” until switched on again. Not only that, if it is a relay to other smart devices, it will force the network to reconfigure. If the bulb is “dumb”, then using the smart switch, this issue is gone.

i.e.:
Smart bulb + dumb switch, people use switch = bad
dumb bulb + smart switch, people use switch = good

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What OP is proposing is neither of the above because he’s done his research.

He wants
Smart bulb + smart switch (with decoupled mode), people use switch = great.

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Thank you for the responses! It’s so good to get advice from people who have more experience with this.

I had no idea about the lack of long press! Thank you for letting me know.

This looks great, as you say it’s quite steep, but if I can control diming wirelessly that could be a solution.

When it comes to dimming, I would like to change to multiple states per light as I turn the dial. Maybe it’s asking too much of smart switches, but in my mind turning the dial would not go between individual min/max values of the lights while turning dial from 0 to 1, but rather go through different states of brightness level and color - A to B to C …

Switch4
Is that what you meant by the grouping option? I could of course accept going from one min color/brightness to a max color/brightness per lamp and that might be enough. Unless I use the 4 buttons on the Phillips Hue Tap Dial as the scenes with long/double press and the dial for the bedside lights, which might be what you meant and is a good solution.

I had a look at the Aqara website to understand the lack of long press and I think the wireless switches - which I could use on the bedside - might include long press?

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I don’t need long press at the entrance, as I don’t mind not having control over bedside brightness there. Can I use that long press to change the bedside brightness and would it recognise when I release, so I can start dimming as I press until release the switch?

It also says the following. I’m struggling to believe that, but it does say it. :smiley: Is this because with the “no neutral” switch decoupled mode doesn’t work with zha so they don’t recommend it? Is the non-neutral switch safe?

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I think it works with mqtt:

Thanks!

Yannick

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Yep, adding your lights to a zigbee group will let you control the brightness at the same time, just like controlling a single bulb. Be wary of the following points though:

  • Different lights might have different perceived brightness ranges. 80% on your ceiling lights could be easily perceived as 60% on the bedlamps.
  • When adjusting brightness on multiple lights at once, not all of them will get the commands at the same time, and there’s a chance some will miss certain commands entirely. Using Zigbee groups instead of HA’s groups helps to an extent, but is not guaranteed to work 100% consistently.
  • If you’re using a physical dimmer to control the group (like the Hue’s rotary part), you will need to decide whether it will change the brightness OR the temperature. You can get creative and switch between one or the other, but you’d have to add extra button presses to tell the switch what it’s supposed to be dimming.

Yes, I believe the Wireless version has a hold event (and also single, double and even triple click!), but annoyingly, it doesn’t have a release event. You need this in order to tell the switch when you stopped pressing. I would exclude it immediately as an option due to this.

Safe, yes. Recommended, not really.
It should be trivially easy to pull a neutral to your “A” position, especially for an electrician. I just did that in my kitchen, and it took me less than 30 minutes, most of which was spent opening/closing the switch and trying not to fall off the ladder. There’s a neutral feeding your ceiling light, so it should be a relatively short distance with a single 90 degree bend from your switch to your light.

Just get the “with Neutral” version and you won’t have to rely on your ceiling light leaking enough current to power the switch. Plus, you’ll get power monitoring and gain an additional zigbee router.

Side note: It might seem daunting if you’re just starting out, but I do recommend going for Z2MQTT immediately. You’ll probably run into some teething issues when setting it up, but remember that you only have to get it right once, then you’re done.
My recommendation is based on the fact that it has faster new device support, the dev is extremely responsive, plus you can easily browse which devices are supported before spending any money.

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Hi @ShadowFist ,

thank you for getting back to me. I took some time to read and watch electrician videos to understand what was happening in the room I’d like the smart switches in before responding.

This is so helpful, because I feel like this makes me see that a dimmer might not be my solution for scenes. If I go from bright to reading to cosy to off, using a dimmer, the lights would require independent changes along the dimmer dial turn that aren’t linear. And if the color will be a separate adjustment, that might make the setup less user-friendly than I’d like, as at the end of the day I love the idea of having control over tweaking smart things, but only if it’s user-friendly for someone who doesn’t know the room and setup as well. So scene buttons, and then a potential dimmer for bedside lamps looks like the way to go.

That’s unfortunate but again great to know. I could go down and up through long or double click, but that’s less intuitive as you hinted.

THIS @ShadowFist is SO useful! Thank you. It’s great to get some feedback of how doable something is, as I didn’t realise this. I have been trying to understand what is going on in my room and since your message I’ve been in the loft and reading/watching up a lot to understand better as I thought things are dodgy with my wiring.

After testing with a “used” Klein Cable Tracer, I thought that my live and neutral/switched live wires were incorrectly colored in places. Live as Black and Switched Live as red. And the switches I looked at had what looked like a Live wire screwed into L1 and Switched Live into L. It did my head in. A non-contact tester proved me wrong, except that my bedroom switch had the red Live screwed into to L1 and the Black Switched Live into L. I am pretty sure that’s the only problem, so after a lot of testing - I don’t want to die, I switched them.

Now for the neutral wire! Thankfully the loft is above the bedroom, so I will try and pull one down. I found a junction box and am trying to safely track down the neutral wire from the lamp or secondary switch, as there is a decommissioned pull-cord switch at the end of the room, which unfortunately only works when the main switch is on and vice versa - the main switch only works when the pull cord switch is on. Thats seems not very useful.

Do you know whether it is required to pull the neutral directly from the light, or pull-cord switch or can I get it from the junction box in the loft if I am sure it’s part of the same circuit? I assume the latter is correct.

I realise this might be something to check on an electrician forum and I am aware that electrics need to be dealt with safely, and with care and knowledge.

Thanks!

Yannick

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First things first - you you have at least 1% doubt on anything electrical, call an electrician! I get that it’s expensive in certain parts of the world, but your life is worth more than the money you “saved”.

Secondly - regarding your pull cord switch, you’re probably only seeing Live (Lin) & Switched Live (Lout), same as any normal switch. The only difference between your pull cord switch and a regular switch is that one has a button and the other has a cord - they both switch Live and don’t necessarily have a neutral anywhere close to them. You need to be hunting for neutral at the lamp end, not the switch end.

Third, I don’t know where you live and this is extremely generic advice. Unless your house is wired up with multiple phases (eg. Three-phase in most European countries, or split phase in the US and certain other European countries), then it should be safe to use the closest neutral available. They all terminate in the same busbar in the junction box anyway.
I suggested pulling the ceiling lamp neutral to your switch because that’s an almost 100% guarantee that it’s on the same circuit.

Finally, while I agree that the red & black wires were switched in your bathroom switch, this is not the correct way to go about resolving the issue. You can get heat shrink sleeving for a few pennies.
If the cable is the wrong colour, then the correct way to go about it is to colour-code it correctly using a small piece of heat shrink.
In places like the UK, this is done when they use blue (usually reserved for Neutral) as the Lout wire. It helps people opening the switch realise that the blue cable is not neutral at all, and prevents tragic accidents.

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Hi @ShadowFist ,

You’re absolutely right. I like to do a lot by myself, but electrical work is something I want to be very careful with. I already have a task I have not managed, and felt the need to hire an electrician for.

That makes sense. Thank you for explaining.

Yes your right. I might have not have described what I discovered correctly. The wires ended up being the correct or rather expected colour for their purpose, albeit the old style colour. Except the switched live needed the red/brown marker to indicate switched live and as your said they were switched around.

Re-reading your chat, I think maybe that’s what you meant. Correct me if I’m wrong. I was a bit hesitant to do this before knowing for sure I got them correct, but I feel like I’m getting there.

I will go into the loft this week and try to track down a neutral wire!

Thank you genuinely for your detailed responses!

Yannick

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