I have six wifi ceiling lights in my tv room that we control with an amazon echo (alexa). I hard-wired the wall switches so the bulbs always have power. Alexa wouldn’t work very well if the bulbs had no power.
But many people try to use the wall switches to control the lights. I need wall switches that can control the bulbs. I’ve googled till my eyes glaze over. I can only find wall switches that control matching power sockets etc. My problem may be terminology: is a smart wall switch what I’m looking for?
I’ve heard about the sonoff zb mini. It can send zigbee commands right? What zigbee device would I hook to my server that runs HA?
I started using zigbee a few weeks ago with IKEA bulbs and remotes.
My coordinator is a Conbee II but since I had some problems getting it running on my server, I connected it on a RPi that runs anyway for now.
I simply use 433 Mhz wall switches in combination with a Sonoff Rf Bridge for places where there was no switch. Ha receives a mqtt message, and fires an automation to toggle the lights.
An Ikea E1743 in combination with Zigbee2MQTT can do the same thing.
Any AC wall switch that is designed to control a bulb can be used. Ignore the output that controls the bulb and use the state in HA to control the state of the smart bulb.
Do you need/want to control them in a dimmable way?
Are those wi-fi bulbs controllable in Home Assistant? Or just Alexa at the moment?
What is the make/model of those wifi bulbs?
Assuming you would not want to replace those bulbs, yes?
Could you help describe where this wall switch should be? Does it have to be something in the wall, like a regular switch would, or could it be a small button thing that can be either sitting on your coffee table, or mounted on (not in) the wall?
Are you comfortable with soldering and flashing ESPHome / Tasmota? Or does the switch have to be something that is off the shelf with minimal tinkering?
What other protocol do you have in your HA setup? Z-wave? Zigbee? RF? Or wifi only?
Budget limitation: does it have to be a $5 solution? Would a $50 solution OK? Would a $100 solution acceptable?
Maybe a photo or two would help.
I have a few recommendations I could think of, but could not even settle down on feasible ones just yet. Please help us understand the scope / the request if possible.
Assuming you would not want to replace those bulbs, yes?
Correct
Could you help describe where this wall switch should be?
In the wall, replacing a regular switch
Are you comfortable with soldering and flashing ESPHome / Tasmota?
I have built many projects with esp8266 and esp32. I could put a 5v supply and esp8266 behind the old wall switch. I would much prefer an easy plug-n-play of course.
What other protocol do you have in your HA setup?
I have no HA setup yet. I do have an xbee (zigbee) serial connection to my linux server but that tty connection is in use by my custom hvac software.
Budget limitation
I would consider up to $100. Less than $50 would be no-brainer.
The most straight-forward way is probably to use “switch Smart Life app” as the keyword string to search Amazon, pick the one you like in terms of style or cost, and integrate the switch using the same Smart Life app.
You probably could then setup everything inside that app, and probably don’t even need to install HA at all.
(That said, no HA would mean a lot less fun, though )
The lowest-cost route would probably to make sure the HA could/would control the bulbs via one of those tuya integrations, and then DIY some ESP8266 together with a regular wall switch (the same switch you are planning to replace, even) to detect on/off. Feed the on/off into HA, and then setup a couple of automations to change the behavior of the bulbs based on the ESP8266 feed.
I believe a sonoff mini or Shelly Uni/1/1PM should achieve the same with a bit less soldering / coding, at a couple more bucks, comparing to starting from scratch with a ESP8266 board.
3rd route being to (again,) make sure the bulbs talks to HA, and then setup your Zigbee, also talking to HA, and then find whatever Zigbee switch you prefer, maybe via the compatibility list above and some searches in Amazon, and go from there. You could even use IKEA or Hue switches/buttons.
You can disconnect the relay (“smart switch mode”)
You can use single, double, triple-tap, up or down, and long-presses to send events that can be used to trigger scenes
…so you can use a single Inovelli in “smart bulb” mode (load always turned on), and use up, down, double-up, long-press, and dimming to set your scenes.
I like how this can act like a simple light switch (ie for visitors) (press up → on, press down → off) and have extra smarts if you know them. Also, being a local-push, the reaction time is much faster and consistent than cloud tools (Tuya cloud)
I’m using mine for double-tap-up => blinds up, double-down => blinds down, triple-tap-down => all lights off in the area (room, floor, etc)
Using a smart switch to control smart bulbs is a waste of technology. (And dumb) But since you already made the investment in smart bulbs that you can control with Home Assistant, you can put any smart switch in the wall with whatever protocol you like (WiFi, Zigbee, Z-Wave). You wire the switch to line + neutral, but NOT to any lights. When you use the switch, you can have an automation in Home Assistant to trigger on the switch changing state, then toggle the lights.
I agree – or connect the Line, but dissociate the relay to keep the bulb powered all the time, and have some programmatic control if you need to “restart” the bulb by power-cycling.
The Inovelli switches come with a mix of input options to control the lights, scenes, etc: when I double-tap-down, it triggers an automation to lower the shades. single-down, automation translates to turning the light off. Long-press up: triggers scenes for movie-watching. I’m planning to use the 7 addressable LEDs on the switch to signal too if certain things are happening: laundry machine recently finished, doors opening and closing (wired security sensors), etc.
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