I am in the UK and am looking to put app controlled lights in my new house extension. The good thing is that my electrician has put in neutral wires to the light switches which I believe expands the options. But the only ones I can find are ones that don’t require a neutral wire.
The main area I want the wireless lighting for has 4 zones with about 9 LED dimmable downlights each (model KSRFRD350)
The compatibility notes from LightwaveRF for this LED downlights says:
Slight Buzzing Sound
7 downlight with driver hardwired
to 400 series dimmer. Good
dimming range with downlight.
Slight buzzing sound from driver
when set to lowest dimming range.
It’ll probably work, but I am slightly worried about the slight buzzing sound. Why should I have to put up with this if there is a neutral wire to the socket. Off should be off while still allowing power to the switch.
Is there any other option in the UK that would be more suitable?
Thank you very much for your reply. I had read elsewhere a recommendation for Fibaro Dimmer 2, but didn’t know much about them. I’ve spent the last few days researching and finally decided to go for them.
The push buttons match my existing switches and sockets. I have a slight worry I won’t be able to fit 3 Fibaro modules in the double socket, but it is a stud wall, so at worst hopefully 1 can go in the void below the socket.
Those varilight switches only arrived on Thursday just gone from the switchstore, they said they were waiting for the wholesaler to deliver them, to them. I guess they are pretty rare items… The electrician is installing this tomorrow. I will update soon.
Yes, it seems to have worked pretty well. Without any connectivity the dimmers seem to work fine. I have to remember to hold the button for a second before releasing as quick presses don’t seem to turn them on/off. Dimming without connectivity is a bit tricky in that you have to hold the button down for a good 3-4 seconds before you start to see it dim and it dims quite slowly, so it’s hard to know if you have done it right at first. Visitors should be able to figure out how to turn them on/off, they’d need training on the dimming though. The good thing is it remembers the dim level when you turn them on/off.
Getting them connected to home assistant was pretty easy. I just installed the dongle and then did the pairing. It took a while to figure out which dimmer was which having 4 all named the same, but with some experimentation I was able to rename them correctly.
The lights seem to respond almost instantly to a remote on/off. But that could be because the controller is about 3 foot away from the switches, so they don’t need to relay the signal.
From the Web UI I can dim the lights, but from the home assistant android app I haven’t figured that out yet, I can only do on/off.
I am pretty new to home assistant so I haven’t completely figured out how to do everything yet. I still need to create some lighting groups, figure out how to dim the lights from my phone and make them respond to speech via google home.
The switches I got work really well, but they really show up fingerprints which is a bit annoying.
Just to say i have created a custom components for LightwaveRF gen 1 devices.
It uses a queuing system to stop any commands not hitting the wifi link.
The lights are fully dimmable as well and it also works well with Alexa and Google home when emulated hue is enabled.
please let me know what you think, the installation guide is located with it. It is a full step by step.
