This is an old thread but here’s my experience:
Back in the day when I got into the Livolo bandwagon there were only RF switches available. It took me the best part of a year to set them up with HA and Alexa and finally reach a point where they work at about 85% consistency.
The basic idea was to use a Broadlink RM Pro RF blaster device to learn the RF sequences from my Livolo remotes (I got three), then in HA use the Broadlink integration to trigger the switches. After that, I used the Philips Hue Bridge emulation integration in HA, to expose all of the switches as “fake” philips hue lights on my local wifi network, so that they can be discovered by Alexa and control them with my voice.
Unfortunately, what I discovered soon enough were two major issues. The first was that the Livolo RF switches do not have separate RF sequences for On and Off. They just toggle states between on and off on the same command, with a small cooldown time so that repeating RF commands wouldn’t cause them to switch on and off in quick succession. This meant that any type of automation was nearly impossible as HA would not know (or even assume) the state of a switch, and any voice commands would be moot, as if I said “turn on kitchen light” but the kitchen light was already on, it would turn it off.
The second major issue was that the learning of RF commands on the Broadlink was spotty at best. Very few of the learned codes would actually work somewhat consistently. Most would either not work at all, or manage to turn the switch on or off only 10-30% of the time.
After a while I found the solution in a web app made in javascript (I don’t recall the name of it or the URL, but it is posted in a thread on this forum so you can find it, and hopefully it is still available) which emulated the codes that Livolo remotes produce, and since it is a virtual thing, you could have as many remotes as you want (which is crucial to solve the first problem). The RF command sequences produced by the app produced extremely more reliable results. I had to manually put the codes in the Broadlink integration configuration file on HA, and then pair the switches with those codes, but it resulted in all switches working. But again not at 100%. I still have some switches that depending on the time of day and ambient RF interference might refuse to work and I have to repeat the command until they do.
Now as I said, Livolo RF switches accept a toggle RF command instead of separate On/Off ones. However, they respond to specific states if you send a “set scene” RF command. As such I created two scenes for each switch, one that turns it on and one that turns it off, and that’s why I needed a lot of virtual remotes as each remote only supports limited scenes.
I also used scenes to turn on/off groups of lights.
It has been somewhat frustrating though as sometimes I issue a voice command to shut off all of my roller blinds as I leave the house, only to return home later and discover that one of them did not receive the command and stayed open which is a security risk and has me double checking that all rollers are closing when I am about to leave the house (not to mention that controlling them when away from home through the broadlink app does not guarantee the result and you don’t have visual confirmation to be sure)
Fast forward a few years and technology has advanced, so I have replaced a lot of my lights with colored wifi led bulbs and led strips (mostly by Yeelight and TPLink) essentially deprecating the remote/RF functionality of the Livolo switches.
This in turn presented a new set of problems.
First, in order for the wifi lamps/strips to work and receive wifi/voice commands the livolo switch must be always on, something that is not guaranteed as anyone (a guest or even yourself) can switch them off and then you have to first switch them on before you can control the led lights.
Then, led lights and especially led strips are a tad challenging (wattage wise) to the livolo switches. That’s because the switches in order to recieve RF commands (and light up blue) need to always be powered even when they’re off, as such when you switch them off they still send a very small amount of current through the circuit which is enough to keep them operating but not enough to light up a regular lightbulb. However, led lamps are of low wattage and even small amounts of current might cause them to either dimly light up or flicker. For such cases livolo has issued some small circuits (I think they have a capacitor in them) which you install in the circuit and it solves the flickering issue. I don’t however think that they can work with led strips that use a power supply/transformer as when you switch the led strip off (through wifi) or you set it at a very dim level the livolo switch thinks that no lamp is present and enters a weird standby mode (switch ring does not light up, and does not respond to touch) but there is still power going through the circuit. If you turn the led strip on again through wifi, it will light up normally, however the livolo switch thinks that you just installed a new lamp and to protect you it turns itself off after a couple of seconds. This is also the case for non-remote-control Livolo touch switches. To solve this (and still keep the same livolo black glass panel aesthetics) I had to buy and install a regular push switch.
To solve the issue of RF command reliability for my shutters I resorted to installing Livolo Wifi curtain switches. These switches work flawlessly, but they do require that you have a Livolo gateway so that they can connnect to. I’m not sure if there are wifi switches that do not need a gateway, or if those labeled as wifi are actually zigby ones and just use the gateway to be exposed to your LAN or the cloud. I suspect the second. Personally I prefer having a gateway as this way I do not pollute my wireless network with a lot of IP leases for all my switches.
And then came the most recent problem which I haven’t solved yet and for which I am waiting for a reaponse by Livolo support. In order to get the wifi switches working with alexa, I have to enable the Livolo Home skill. Unfortunately, alexa fails to link your livolo account to the skill every time, which looks like an issue on the Livolo api server.
In addition, the skill has very low review ratings from people who complain that it times out a lot during voice commands and fails to execute them (Alexa reports that the device is unresponsive).
All in all, for all those who are looking into Livolo switches here’s my pros and cons list after many years of experience:
Pros:
- Beautiful design with the glass feel, touch panel and illuminated ring
- extremely easy to install
- quality and durable materials (I bought many switches and all of them worked and are still working)
- protection features. No matter how you install the wires, the switch will protect itself if you do a booboo with the wiring. I am not an electrician and at points I had to do quite a bit of trial and error, especially for two or three way wiring, and the switches did not blow up
- availability of spare parts (glass panels, frames etc)
- no need for ground/neutral lines
- multitude of configuration options (single, double, triple, quadruple gangs, two eay, curtains, doorbells, sockets, ethernet etc)
Cons:
- unreliable operation with RF remote control if you want voice control or automation
- No switch state publishing (on RF switches)
- you need a lot of work/hacks and third party services/hardware to set up voice control
- for some cases the crystal panel does not align perfectly with the capacitive touch switches inside causing touches on the glass panel to not be registered (although rare)
- crystal panel after installation is not flush against the wall causing dust pileup on the bezel which is a bit hard to reach to clean