IKEA Jeström - 'On level' does nothing? Generic smart lighting help

Configuration Zigbee
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I bought IKEA’s Jeström LED panel.

First off, to me the IKEA declared lumen value seems too high for what the light outputs, but whatever.

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I know that the Start-up current level and Start-up color temperature are used when the mains go out. BIG CAVEAT - if the Start-up current level is set to 255, it is disregarded and the value that was last used is set (or continues to be set). For it to actually work I have to set it to 254 or lower.

I have no idea what the On level option does. Does anyone know?

As for the generic smart lighting question:

I have what I would call a double staircase lighting circuit / 3-way-switch - two lights controlled from two points, in other words two 3-way-switches running next to each other to two switch boxes. One box right at the main door and another and the end of the hall. Each box has actually two physical switches - each controlling one of the two lights. I was looking around and it seems that for that set up I would need two smart relays, like Sonoff’s ZBMini. I can’t do that since my switch boxes are pretty crowded, since there are two sets of wires there (for the two lights) - it just wouldn’t fit inside there.

My thinking was as follows - control the lights using the dumb wall switches during the day and at night have a motion sensor that would turn the lights on to a specific brightness and temp level when someone goes out of their room.
Well the first issue with that is that I’m sure we’re gonna forget to physically turn the lights on (at the wall switch) before we go to sleep. Also, from what I’ve read, it’s not a good idea to constantly connect and disconnect router devices (as would happen in the evening by flipping the wall switch). Is that so?

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If you can’t fit anything in the wall boxes then you’re always going to have problems with them being turned off at the switches, unfortunately. (I have Fibaro in-wall devices for all my switches, but we had space.)

You are correct about turning off router devices. I have 14 GU10 Zigbee bulbs and when the wall switch is turned off, that essentially takes out the network for 5-10 minutes. This is a real problem if you turn off those lights then want to use a remote to control something else.

The solution I have is to have separate Zigbee meshes on separate Zigbee radios. I put all my bulbs that have wall switches on mesh 1 and only use it to adjust their color temperature. This means that if the wall switch is toggled for the 14 GU10s, that mesh dies for 5-10 minutes, but since it’s mostly used for color temperature changes, it’s not a problem.

All my remotes and non-wall-switched devices go on the other Zigbee mesh, so they aren’t affected by the wall switches. This works great. I use Deconz and ZHA as my two Zigbee meshes, but you could use ZHA and Z2MTQ as well.

-David

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