TL;DR Anyone know of a hardwired sensor that will report a wall switch state to HA?
I swapped out a dumb light fixture in my house for a Zigbee one a few months ago. Everything is working great, but my wife doesn’t like having to press a button and misses having the old manual switch on the wall.
Since the box and the wiring are still there, I was thinking that I could put the switch back in place and just use it as a trigger in HA. But I can’t find any device that will connect to the switch and report it’s state. I tried a Sonoff ZBMINI (which I use in other parts of the house), but the switch sensor seems to only be used internally to toggle the relay not reported back to HA.
I don’t want the switch to turn the power to the light on/off, as the light controller needs to stay on 24/7 so it can be controlled by HA. I just need a hardwired sensor that will see the state change in the switch and report back to HA.
Anyone know of pre-made hardware that would do something like this? I know I can build something in ESPHome, but for both safety and simplicity, I’d rather just buy a pre-made unit. I’d prefer something Zigbee, but am open to Z-Wave or HA-friendly wifi as well.
Was reading in another thread about the ZBMINI and apparently the Shelly 1 can do something like what I’m wanting, either natively (using the Shelly integration) or via flashing with ESPHome.
I (and it sounds like others) would prefer a Zibgee solution, as this seems more set-in-and-forget-it, so if anyone knows of anything, please chime in.
Thanks, @Hellis81
Unfortunately, this is still isn’t Zigbee and in my case the extra sensors don’t really have a use. But I can see this being handy if you wanted to smarten a whole row of switches, like in a hallway or entryway.
Either way it will solve your issue since it will give you a sensor (as I have understood the product) in HA that will switch when you switch the old switch.
This can the be used in an automation to toggle the smart light
I posted this just a few minutes before you posted about the Shelly Plus i4. But maybe it wasn’t live when you were reading the thread, so apologies for any confusion.
I have now used the Shellys for over 9 months and am not super pleased. The HA integration works fine, but a few times when my router has been off or changed settings they have been thrown into chaos and had to be reset from the Shelly app. My zigbee stuff is just much more set-it-and-forget-it.
Thankfully, firmware updates to the ZBMINI and particularly the newer R2 seem to do better at reporting their state back to HA. I’m going to try swapping the Shellys out for ZBMINIR2s and see how that works.