TLDR; smart switch recommendations needed that ONLY draws power and sends command to HA or Alexa; NOT one that tries to switch the bulb power on/off.
Hi,
I’m super new. I’m still in a place of uncertainty if switching from Alexa as my brains to home assistant is worth the effort, as I have a lot of complex routines working well already. But I’m still tempted by a couple of minor things.
But one specific thing for this post:
Asides from bathrooms (which I’ll ignore for the purposes of this post) every single light bulb in my home is a Philips hue (there are some other varieties as strips / lamps etc, but all mains wired bulbs are hue).
I really want to change my wall switches to something that will control scenes I can setup, and I like the idea of fancy looking screens or similar (but ideally cheap).
My problem is that every type of smart switch solution, weather screen or buttons, seems to work by turning on and off the light mains like a normal switch (so you can give a dumb bulb some smartness). I specifically don’t need this, it would in fact ruin everything, so does anyone know a way to have a smart switch that is simply drawing any power it needs from the wires in the wall and sending a command to home assistant (or Alexa etc) rather than switching the bulb’s wiring.
I hope that makes sense.
I do have a bunch of small kindle fires I wondered about using, but there’d need to be a fancy way to get the usb power from a UK light socket converted for it, plus some kind of holder/fame to not be ugly. Unlikely to be possible, but certainly a cheap option.
Here you go. Plenty of threads here if you search for “decoupled”.
Also, note that you can use any regular smart switch with smart bulbs if you wire them up to the permanent live that feeds the switch. Basically you just need to join Live in and Live out wires and hook them up to the L terminal on the smart switch.
Besides the obvious “danger of electrocution” warning, I would still suggest to call an electrician to have a look at your wiring before buying any switches.
Most smart switches will require a Neutral wire to operate, and the no-Neutral ones are mainly designed to be wired up in the traditional manner. Using decoupled mode or permanent Live wiring may not provide enough leaked current for them to work properly.
Most Zigbee and Z-wave switches now have “smart bulb mode” which decouples the relay and only fires an event in HA which can be used for automations.
Another option is scene controller switches. I’ve tried a number of Zooz (z-wave) options, including the wired Zen32 (which has an optional relay) and the battery-powered Zen34 (which obviously does not). These only fire events when pressed.
I also have WiFi switches with Tasmota firmware, which lets you decouple the relay and arbitrarily reprogram the button on-device, skipping HA altogether. Esphome firmware can work similarly.
If you like touchscreens, check out Sonoff Nspanel. I flashed mine with esphome and now I can configure all the buttons and screens via HA (though personally I find touchscreens cumbersome if I just want to turn on a light).
I have not yet tried it but there is also the Gaution (?) LVGL screen.
Mine arrived in the country yesterday so probably a few days more before I can try it.
But this removes the extra firmware for the display.
“Decoupled” was the vocabulary I was missing, cheers.
I had assumed they all needed to control the mains and would be unhappy if not connected, good to know I can skip that connection and just send an automation trigger.
Will have to check for neutral. No doubt it is missing. Thanks again.